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I can now no longer play with anything except the default graphics set in Dwarf Fortress. I'm addicted to the ASCII. And, of course, vivid textual descriptions of carnage the game provides: bones breaking, fat and tendons tearing, various internal organs exploding....
I'm finally getting the hang of it, though, to the point where I can achieve a comfortable equilibrium of food and booze for the dwarven population and a rather stable economy with traders -- only to be thrown off that equilibrium by a goblin siege or, more likely, simple immigration. Great, twenty new mouths to feed, twenty new beds to hammer out, twenty new coffins to chisel.
Adventure mode is a fun change of pace, until I realize that the monster my party is charging is just one of a pack of five and everything goes pear-shaped in a splatter of red alphabet soup. Or my adventurer gets his left foot hacked off and has to crawl back to the city with his contingent of fourteen able-bodied warriors looking on in detached disbelief. Karma, perhaps, for those twenty or so poor civilian fools (peasants, glazers, farmers and the like) I recruited and sent directly into harm's way solely for the purpose of meat shielding, and whose belongings I looted after they were rent limb-from-limb. One part Conan, one part John Constantine. But full of life lessons, and that's before we get to the magma floods and catapult accidents....
I'm finally getting the hang of it, though, to the point where I can achieve a comfortable equilibrium of food and booze for the dwarven population and a rather stable economy with traders -- only to be thrown off that equilibrium by a goblin siege or, more likely, simple immigration. Great, twenty new mouths to feed, twenty new beds to hammer out, twenty new coffins to chisel.
Adventure mode is a fun change of pace, until I realize that the monster my party is charging is just one of a pack of five and everything goes pear-shaped in a splatter of red alphabet soup. Or my adventurer gets his left foot hacked off and has to crawl back to the city with his contingent of fourteen able-bodied warriors looking on in detached disbelief. Karma, perhaps, for those twenty or so poor civilian fools (peasants, glazers, farmers and the like) I recruited and sent directly into harm's way solely for the purpose of meat shielding, and whose belongings I looted after they were rent limb-from-limb. One part Conan, one part John Constantine. But full of life lessons, and that's before we get to the magma floods and catapult accidents....
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Also, it sounds like a fun game. :)
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The game itself has a learning curve like a shuttle liftoff trajectory, but once you get into orbit and embrace the insanity (sometimes literal, when your dwarfs are taken by a particular mood and go berserk, killing everything in their path), it's a revelation.
And of the narratives I've seen of the games' peculiar outcomes, this one is one of the more visually pleasing and well-designed....