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Back in December 2022, I wrote in our Dwarf Fortress review that its Steam release is “a worthy revision of the legendary settlement sim.” And I stand by that. But there was something missing: The beloved Adventure Mode, which let Dwarf Fortress Classic players trade their mountainhome management for wandering the procedural world in traditional roguelike fashion—until some kind of ogre or colossus inevitably punched your skull in. Two years later—or almost a year after the mode became available in not-quite-complete beta form on Steam—the wait is finally over. The fully-fledged Adventure Mode dropped today, and it’s waiting for you to grab your heroic destiny by its individual teeth.
That’s not a joke. Like the titular Fortress Mode, Adventure Mode possesses the same near-absurd degree of simulation. Once your adventurer leaves their starting hamlet and inevitably enters combat with some sort of goblin or hyena, you don’t just have to settle for aimlessly hacking at them with whatever weapon you’ve got on hand. It might not be the most effective tactic, but thanks to being able to target any individual body part for grappling in the wrestling menu, the option to grab an assailant by their rear left molar is always there if you want it.
Doing so will probably give your enemy a free turn to stick a shortsword in your guts, but every battle has its risks and rewards.
While it’s compelling enough to wander one of Dwarf Fortress’s procedural worlds firsthand, what makes it even cooler is that your actions can weave back into that world’s simulated history. If one of your burgeoning metropolises is destroyed by a minotaur in Fortress Mode, you can load that same world in Adventure Mode and hand-craft a heroic dwarf or elf or wombat man with the goal of hunting that same minotaur down and exacting your vengeance, potentially reclaiming some of your fort’s treasure in the process.
Even cooler, once you retire that adventurer—or watch in dismay as they meet a grisly end—you could then start up another game of Fortress Mode in that same world. There, bards might compose and recite ballads about their exploits. Engravers might etch murals of their triumphs. Sculptors might carve statues of the precise moment their limbs were torn off by the manifold jaws of a hydra. The possibilities, like the manifold jaws of a hydra, are near-endless.
Adventure Mode does have a tutorial in the Steam release, but as with many things in Dwarf Fortress, it can be daunting to try to get your head around. The Dwarf Fortress wiki is your friend. I’d recommend its Adventure mode quick start guide, in particular.
You can find the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress on, well, Steam. To celebrate the return of Adventure Mode, the game’s 20% off until January 30.
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Kurt Indovina
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