Dwarf Fortress Notes

I mentioned in a previous post about Dwarf Fortress that the game was free, with the lone developer, Tarn Adams, surviving on donations from his fans. (The game doesn't even bug you to donate. There's just a nondescript PayPal link on his home page.) I thought it was telling that, during the year and a half he'd been working on a new version, he was still getting donations - generally between $2,000 and $5,000 every month.

Well, he released the new version at the end of March. It's still free and still nothing like a commercial game (note the graphics above). But in the month of April, fans donated a total of more than $16,000. Isn't that amazing?

Sure, that's nothing for a mainstream game company, the kind of multinational corporation which requires millions of dollars just to break even. But for fans to voluntarily support a single game developer, dedicated - maybe obsessed - with his own vision, like this,... well, I've got to think that it's really impressive.

I haven't had time to try the new version yet, myself. And I'm not in a big hurry, until the bugs are cleaned up a bit. (In this kind of effort, Adams relies on his fans to identify bugs, which he'll clear up in minor updates. He warned us that it was buggy when he released the new version.) And although I've donated before, I'll do so again when I get around to playing it. Frankly, I'm getting anxious to try it out. It's really an incredible game.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the tales of other players. Earlier, I posted about one of them, an illustrated battle report. Well, there are some nasty "forgotten beasts" in this DF version. Here is another fun example. It shows what happened after a beast with "deadly blood" was defeated.

Keep in mind that these dwarves have emotions. You must keep them content, if not happy. If they get too unhappy (if, for example, they lose friends or family members), they can go berserk or even completely insane. And their actions will tend to make their neighbors unhappy. So you can get a fortress spiraling out of control in violence, suicide, and despair.

I guess that's why the Dwarf Fortress motto is "Losing Is Fun."