Let me tell you about the greatest game since Nethack. No, it’s not Team Fortress 2, as much as I enjoy stabbing people in the back. And no, it’s not Halo 3 as much as I enjoy overpriced franchises that have lost their luster and innovation. It is the one and only Dwarf Fortress - and it will reign supreme in my heart until the day Starcraft 2 comes out and I disappear into a hole to re-master the art of the dropship.

Dwarf Fortress is a difficult game to explain quickly, let alone learn how to play. It’s a mix of Nethack, SimCity, Dungeon Keeper, and the Lemmings. Also, it looks like this.

In case you can’t tell, this is a picture of a meeting hall centered at the well. There are sleeping quarters at the top, stone piled outside, and food stored in the stockpile at the bottom.

Ahhh, ascii art. See, the reason Dwarf Fortress is the greatest game since Nethack isn’t because they spent half a million dollars on a rendering engine with fancy schmancy specular effects (clearly). It’s amazing because of the depth that the game offers, even at version .26xxxx. You can build a custom fortress, an inordinate amount of furniture, floodgates, doors, traps, bridges, forges, workshops; train war animals, hunt animals for food, capture elephants for your local zoo, fend off hordes of angry mandrills, demons and kobolds; create a standing army of dwarves armed with a variety of weapons of varying quality; satisfy increasingly obnoxious demands from nobles, trade with human caravans, and best of all: build a device that FLOODS THE WORLD WITH MAGMA.

That’s right. The game has enough fluid dynamics built into it that you can dig into the mountain until you find the river of lava, build a channel that routes the lava out of the mountaing, rig up some levers that open the floodgates to the outside world, and BAM! Instant elephant stew.

If you do decide to play, start by checking out the wiki. It is your friend and the only thing that will keep you from starving to death in the winter your first time. Though a fortress of starving dwarves is pretty amusingly fun as well… if you enjoy murder.

The other excellent resource is this (absurdly long) Something Awful forum thread. It contains a quick how-to and should get you up and running.

And oh — it’s free. And there’s a new version. Which adds z-axis support… among other things. And better adventure mode support. And my head is exploding with glee over the sheer options available from this single game.

If you do decide to play and you just can’t stand the graphics, check out the tilesets available. Just remember the Dwarf Fortress motto: Losing is fun!

Elephants are not.