You sneak along a dark corridor towards the red eyes in the distance. When your eyes finally adjust to the deep darkness of the fortress, you discern a humanoid shape some meters away. Sneaking ever so carefully, you get within hands reach of the form, but then the silhouette spins around to reveal a goblin's grin and draws a menacing blade! You grab the goblin swordsman by his sword arm, but not before he plants the blade in your leg. You internally scream in agony, and brutally break his arm in retaliation. While he's still stunned, you grab his face and unmercifully rip out both eyeballs from their sockets. You finally end his life with a rock to the skull. You then proceed to pull the sword out of your leg, but before it is all the way out you hear a arrow whiz. The savage arrow thuds through your chest and you fall to the ground. You try to crawl back to the exit, but now there are dozens of red eyes around you, and you regret ever venturing into this lair of evil. These are your last thoughts as goblins tear you limb from limb.

These events have happened to me more than once in Adventurer mode in Dwarf Fortress. After playing DF, I can no longer play any other rougelikes, because the combat is so dull, monotonous, and uninspired as compared to DF. I've only played the Adventurer mode of Dwarf Fortress, and that has kept me entertained for a very long time. Unfortunately, the focus of the game is on the Fortress aspect, but I could never get into it because it was so complex. In any case, many other people have found the Fortress mode to be very fun, but I'm just not the type of person who likes to micromanage. The adventurer mode is great, but don't get too attached to your character, because anything can kill you if you're unlucky enough.

The entire world is randomly generated, and you can make as many as you like. Theoretically, gameplay is endless, but we all know that no game has an endless fun factor. Many people dislike ASCII graphics, but DF does some innovative things with text, and so thats why I gave it 3/5 for graphics.

Overall: give it a try! You'll probably not be disappointed.

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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Arguably the most innovative game to be released on the PC in quite some years, Dwarf Fortress is a game of discovery and survival, trade and diplomacy, adventure and intrigue, dwarves... and elephants. Yes indeed. They'd get upset if I didn't mention them, and believe me, that would not be a pretty sight.

Dwarf Fortress attracted very little attention to itself during its long development period, yet since being released it has created its very own tornado of hype that has seen it reach cult status. All very well, I can hear you saying, but how do you play it? That's not a straightforward question to answer, but I shall do my best. Imagine, if you will, a cross between Dungeon Keeper, Rogue, Civilisation and Settlers. Now throw in a hint of The Sims and add a dash of Lemmings (minus the purple jumpsuits and with beards instead).

On second thoughts, you may want to forget that rather unlikely combination and instead play the game to make your own comparisons. Quite honestly, Dwarf Fortress is a mix - and a rather excellent one, at that - of so many different gaming styles that it can easily overwhelm a newcomer.

The aim of the game, as you may expect, is to build a successful underground city for your dwarves. You will work your way up from a humble outpost that barely scratches the mountainside to a sprawling network of rooms and tunnels in whatever design takes your fancy. As you expand deeper into the mountain you will uncover more valuable treasures, but at the same time you will have to fight off increasingly dangerous monsters and overcome barriers to your expansion (the first being to plan your development around and across an underground river).

There's still more to it, too, for the world you generate to build these fortresses in is persistent, and can also be explored in the "Adventurer Mode". This is a more clear-cut Roguelike variation of the game universe where you take your hero out on quests and engage in brutal combat against terrible monsters - but the locations you visit could be towns your dwarves were trading with earlier, or even the dusty and danger-infested remains of past fortresses that succumbed to the (many) evils of the universe.

The complexity I've hinted it can also be Dwarf Fortress's downfall; it takes a fair while to get to grips with the slightly cumbersome controls, and it's not entirely obvious how certain things work until you try them out - and in the case of channels, this can lead to catastrophic results as your entire fortress becomes engulfed in an infinite flood. Since the game is still at an alpha stage, bugs are to be expected - but you are unlikely to find many unless you are trying out something particularly unconventional. For an alpha, the game is extremely stable.

I defy anyone to play Dwarf Fortress and not, at least, admire the dedication and level of detail that has been put into it. Try and see past the ASCII graphics - you'll be rewarded for doing so.

Oh, and by the way, I'm deadly serious about the elephants...

Summary
It's.. .

Massive

Great fun

Complex

It's not...

Good for coffee breaks

Very forgiving

That difficult to learn

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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