If you haven’t played Dwarf Fortress, the incredibly detailed fantasy world simulator, you can’t understand what it’s like to be a nightmare. It is not the ASCII gaphics that deceive you, it is the menus, which hide information and common actions in several huge different menus, each of which must be accessed by pressing a different button.
Look at the image above, then. You might think that it looks like the user interface of a Paradox game from the early 2000s that hasn’t yet been art. But to me, it feels like paradise.
This is an ongoing view of the menus for the next relaunch of Kitfox’s Dwarf Fortress on Steam, which aims to make the game accessible with a good tileset and a set of menu improvements. What you are seeing above has not yet had an art passage, according to the Steam blog post about it, but it represents an attempt to gather important information and actions in one place when the player is inspecting a specific block and the creatures on it.
“The tabs and overview boxes are still changing, but the screenshot here is where we are in the game so far,” says the post. “Among physical attributes, mental attributes, personality facets and beliefs, the game chooses the six strongest or most unique and displays them in the overview. You can still get the complete set of data on the tabs; the intention of these boxes is to answer simple questions and provide the best flavor and context. The same is true for items, skills, positions and the rest. Complete data and options can be found in tabs, with a brief summary at the top level. “
If there is more than one dwarf or creature on the tile you are inspecting, you can navigate through “small tabs that appear on the right side”. This should facilitate the cycle between birds in Nate’s birdhouse, for example.
There is no proposed release date for the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress yet, but there are several development updates every month for anyone who wants to keep up. It’s the game I’m most looking forward to in the world.