Dwarf Fortress on Steam proves it’s still one of the most important video games

My animals and master craftswoman are both in grave danger. This is my current state. Dwarf Fortress run. I’ve accidentally made a civilization of drunken vegans, too, since I can’t quite grasp how the hunting system works. However, everyone seems to be quite happy with drinking alcohol and eating plants. Rakust Locuntun was the only exception. Each day she gets up and works on masterwork. However, she is missing her family. Simple conversation with friends doesn’t satisfy her. All around Rakust, her inebriated peers rejoice at the installation of a new tavern, but she can’t find it in herself to care. She dutifully goes back to work, knowing full well the tavern and its revelry won’t satisfy her — that nothing will.

To Dwarf FortressGoogle the game’s complexity. The game is complex, but that’s a disservice. The Steam release has a helpful and welcome tutorial, guiding you through the basics of surviving the winter, but in a game where you can open up entire submenus dedicated to diplomacy between civilizations before you’ve had a chance to build so much as a trade depot, my initial hours felt like someone had taught me to spell, only to then immediately ask me to write a novel.

The comparison I made to writing is not an accident. Zach Adams (who created the game along with Tarn) spoke to The Guardian about how development is important. Dwarf FortressThey began their journey by creating short stories. Tarn talked about the game in a recent conversation with Noclip. He described it as a writing prompt. “Your own mind is a story-building engine, and we can help that,” he said. “It’s really sort of a collaboration with the player to produce a bunch of stories.”

Collaboration is the key word Dwarf Fortress has demanded more of me than I’m accustomed to when playing games. This requires you to not just play but participate in the game. It was difficult for me to find my feet in what I was doing. Sure, there was the basic video game satisfaction of making order out of chaos, which in this case meant making berries into booze and watching my dwarves’ happiness levels shoot up. But once I had a vaguely functioning miniature society (forgetting, for a moment, all my dying animals), I wasn’t quite sure what I should focus on next. They were happy, healthy and well-fed. All except one.

Image by Polygon: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games

Rakust Locuntun — a talented carpenter. She’s furnished the entire fortress with beds, tables, chairs — you name it. One of her peculiarities was that she produced almost only masterwork pieces. She finds it difficult to find satisfaction in work, despite her talent. This is because I can easily see her thoughts.

• She didn’t feel anything at work.
• She didn’t feel anything due to inebriation.
• She didn’t feel anything discussing her problems with an acquaintance.

As I listened to her thoughts, it became clear that I was imagining a tale about a master craftswoman who felt nothing but admiration for her craft. Her fellow dwarves are enchanted by the fine products she creates every day, though she takes little pleasure in them. Because she’s dependent on her, she goes along with the flow. What else can she do? She found her calling even though it is not fulfilling her soul. Even though she’s not content, she knows that her work is valuable.

It was sad to think about her. This feeling only got more severe when I found her personality tab. Among the many gutting sentences contained therein included: “She has a great kinesthetic sense, great creativity, a great deal of patience, a very good sense of empathy and a sharp intellect, but she has a little difficulty with words and a large deficit of willpower.” And if that wasn’t devastating enough: “She needs alcohol to get through the working day.” Then finally: “She doesn’t really care about anything anymore.”

Image by Polygon: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games

There’s no lack of Dwarf FortressOnline stories. Many are wild stories, too, much more dramatic than the one I’m telling here. There are many stories about zombie camels, chain reactions to magma or other dangerous fluids. You’ll discover stories of diplomacy gone awry, of bloody war, of ghosts who come back to claim what is theirs. That was my expectation for the game’s story engine going in. This was what I expected to have an epic tale to tell. Instead, I find myself surprised by the game’s capacity to tell smaller stories. These stories are sadder. They are human stories, regardless of the subject. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what the simulation has to offer, but already my Dwarf Fortress story has become about one artisan’s life and her lack of a sense of purpose. Mechanically, I’m unsure that it’s possible to make her happy. Narratively, however, I have no choice but to try, even if it means failure. Rakust may die in the near future. I am worried about her masterpieces being left behind for future generations. Their beauty is stunning, but their suffering will never be seen.

It isn’t the story that I was expecting to see in this game about building an economy and managing dwarves. Dwarf FortressIt is well-equipped to produce epic stories of great fantasy. However, its inability to tell smaller stories caught my attention. The fact that Rakust’s personal character arc of work and its relation to her self-worth could at any moment be washed away by flood, famine, or magma only makes it all the more important to me.

Image by Polygon: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games

If you’ll permit me, I have one more writing comparison to make. There’s an oft-quoted bit about writing from Donald Barthelme’s essay “Not-Knowing” that comes to mind when playing Dwarf Fortress. “The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do,” he writes. “Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how. We have all heard novelists testify to the fact that, beginning a new book, they are utterly baffled as to how to proceed, what should be written and how it might be written, even though they’ve done a dozen. At best there’s a slender intuition, not much greater than an itch. The anxiety attached to this situation is not inconsiderable.”

Dwarf Fortress operates under a similar logic. It will instill in you, the player, that “slender intuition” of what to do. As it did with me, it can cause anxiety and make you feel uneasy about what you should be doing. Follow your gut instincts and stories will emerge, much like a novelist does when they start writing. Your base motivation (survive the winter) will be supplanted by something else as you respond to what unfolds before you — whether that be drunken cats or, in my case, a dwarf who struggles to find purpose in life. The only thing you can do is see the story through.

Dwarf Fortress The game will be available on Steam for Windows PC on December 6. Kitfox Games gave us a pre-release downloading code. We reviewed the game on PC. Vox Media also has affiliate relationships. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.