Dwarf Fortress gets Steam version with graphics update

Dwarf Fortress (DF) is a settlement builder essentialy. It also features a world generator, meaning you can randomize your maps and determine the "history" of events that will be simulated. Let's say you make a world 500 years old - the generator will simulate "famous people" (including horrible beasts), wars, factions over those period and have a world ready with procedurally generated history. Of which the most will likely consist of how Urist chopped the Inckelwoppins, the Undead Hydra with a pickaxe (mencing with spikes of slate and engravings of cheese) in the nose, but there is potentially a weird story unfolding.

The dwarfs are individually simulated on the "settlement level", which is the main part of the game, potentially adding to the history. Dwarf crafts a masterpiece? It will be recorded in the annals. And you will even be able to explore the fortress after its inevitable fall in "adventure mode" - a thrid part of the game in which you set out as adventurer in this world you generated and hack and slay rogue-like through or try to revisit the history of old.

Now, the settlement part - or fortress, hence the name - features building rooms, digging through rock, silt, aquifers and whatnot, managing water (with pressure) and lava, constructing workshops, farm crops, make furniture and all kinds of goods, decorate the fortress, craft weapons, ammo, devices like ballistas, wind/water power, power transmission, defences and fortifications, creating jobs for the dwarfs, assigning dwarfs to professions, inventory management, mining ore and resources, fighting invasions, trading with caravans, managing the mood, levelling skills of the dwarfs and whatnot. It's pretty complex and allows quite sandbox building with good amount of simulation.

Oh and it's 3 dimensional map. So you can dig down, discover a lava tube, pump the lava up. Melt ice and snow with the lava. Or install some device on your entrance that opens a hatch and sprays lava on invaders after a dwarf pulls the right lever (which you let craft, install and connect. Ah, and labelled - you wouldn't want to pull the wrong lever. Be a shame if you happen to order the drawbridge to be lowered with an enemy army outside the gate.)

Sounds good? Sure is. Game has been developed since 2006, constantly adding features. It's all working and probably will get still added to. One of the quirks of the devs is to have a bit of story that plays out differently each time, let's say they are some kind of pioneer on procedural story telling and world building.

Now the catch: It's a txt game. Yeah, And limited mouse functionality. The UI is user-unfriendly. It's hard to get into. So that means the vanilla DF is where you see ASCII characters populating the world. A major no for any market penetration for the game.

But now it gets a Steam Version with graphics update. Dorfs will be dorfs and not "Q" (nice beard btw) or "@", mules will be mules and a rock pot will be a rock pot and this will probably make it way more accessible to a much larger audience. Release: When it's done - it's been going for 14 years already, we wouldn't want to be hasty now.

This is but a dip into it. The game has over a decade of history - the succession playthrough of Boatmurdered is quite legendary and illustrative to what usually can unfold with a fortress.