Thirteen-year-old construction simulator/roguelike/indie computer game ‘Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress’ is known well around the interwebs for its brutal difficulty, complex mechanics, and almost draconian text-based graphics. But the game’s advanced age doesn’t make it ineligible for a snazzy new update: publisher Bay 12 Games (composed of brothers Tarn and Zach Adams) announced a new update to the freeware game that, yes, introduces even more mechanics into the game for you to wreak on your dwarves.
Seriously, this update is nuts.
The base game is very open-ended and simple: you have a community of dwarves that you want to manage, grow, and hopefully keep alive. That’s easier said than done, as there are so many different things to account for that the game reduces otherwise adept gamers (like this writer) into blubbering and confused noobs.
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The new update, in addition to fixing bugs and adding many new actions, adds a significant piece to the game in the form of culture. Now, dwarf fortresses can have libraries, taverns and temples to help the community shape its values and ideals. Dwarves can write poetry, play instruments, make art or just get sloppy drunk.
The new update also carries with it a significant amount of diplomacy — particularly in the form of allowing non-dwarf visitors to become citizens of your fortress — and scholarship, with more to follow.
So now, if you have dreams of mastering Dwarf Fortress, you likely have hours worth of new strategies to learn and so much more. The game plans on continuing its legacy of becoming increasingly complicated, thanks to good contributions from the game’s Patreon.
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