Dwarf Fortress players are about to be freed of their underground lairs and set loose upon an unsuspecting surface world.
Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode is a new mode for the enduringly popular civilisation sim that adds a little RPG adventuring to the mix. Now in beta, Adventure Mode lets players create a character and venture to the surface. Their adventures above will take them far beyond the tightly controlled confines of their subterranean fortresses.
This news will be tremendously exciting to DF fans for a number of reasons, but I’ll try to explain the primary one for folks who may not have ever played it before. Dwarf Fortress is already a huge game, and famous for the complexity of its simulation. It’s regarded as a work of design brilliance, a game that deeply rewards those committed enough to engage its Byzantine systems. Beyond a certain scale, Dwarf Fortress becomes immensely tricky to control or predict as its myriad systems collide and interlock in a constant cascade, the results of which are frequently hilarious and always create an interesting story. And now the team wants to expand that to an entire open world? Chaos. Madness. I love this.
And here’s the really good news: if you already own a copy of Dwarf Fortress on Steam, you can try Adventure Mode out right now. Right-click on Dwarf Fortress in your Steam library, then Properties. Click the Betas tab and select “beta—Public beta branch” from the dropdown. You don’t need a password or anything. The beta branch will download and you’ll be able to access Adventure Mode next time you log in.
You can find Dwarf Fortress on Steam here.
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