Dwarf Fortress - Losing is Fun

I'm going to warn you right now, I don't recommend playing this game unless you like learning from your mistakes and, most of the time, mistakes in this game can equal a one way ticket to a new beginning.

Dwarf Fortress at it's base is just as the name implies. You begin with seven dwarves along with (chosen before hand from a list) materials that you will need to begin the construction of what will (hopefully) become a bustling, industrious fortress of epic proportions. While doing so however, the game continuously throws more dwarves to manage at you, along with an increasing chance of being attacked by other civilizations or possibly demons from the pits of "hell" (as I so affectionately refer to it as).

Before you even get that far however, you must generate a world to your liking and then choose an appropriate and strategical location to start your fortress, taking into account aquifers, rivers, flux stones, well wooded areas, temperature, volcanoes, elevations and more. The location of your fortress in comparison to other civilizations and the world in general is extremely important and can spell life or death for your dwarves.

Below is a picture of one of my own worlds, which has been generated to include a minimum of 200 volcanoes (notified by the red, upward facing arrows).
Generated World
(Each tile on the exported image represents an area. The world itself is actually quite massive.)



Once you've generated a world and chosen your location, the fun (or hellish nightmare) begins. From now on you must manage your dwarves and to give you an idea of the amount of managing you are required to do I'll list a few simple things that are required right off the bat.

-Food Production
-Wood Production
-Crafts Production
-Housing
-Bedding
-Barracks
-Creating Stockpiles

That may not seem like much right? Wrong, I only listed what must get done in it's most basic form. There are many things that must be done in order to begin accomplishing those tasks (not an agonizingly long process once you get the hang of it). By the time you have actually gathered everything in your stockpiles and built housing and bedding for your original 7 dwarves, migrants will have arrived. Now you must provide them housing and bedding as well. After this point you can start working on many, many more projects, how you go about them is completely up to you!

While you complete the beginning projects and the ones you choose to undertake afterward, you design your fortress by digging it out and, depending on your location (how many Z-Layers you are above or below ground), it can become easier or more difficult to decide how your fortress should be laid out. Do you want a moat? Better divert that river and build some floodgates to control it. How about a moat filled with magma instead of water? Better find the right stone or your entire base may literally crumble to the ground. Planning to farm outside instead of underground? (A lot of effort and some intelligence is required to farm underground, the Dwarven civilizations apparently have their own plants that do grow underground) Better get started on irrigating the land.

Here's what the interface looks like in game.
DF Interface



I could spend hours writing about the complexities of this game, including how awesome the physics engine is becoming. But the best way to play this game is
to read everything on the wiki from first hand experience (seriously though read the introduction article . And as a last note: The game is barely half-way done, there are still thousands of features the creator has yet to implement.

P.S. And remember, losing is fun! Is anyone else here already playing DF?

There's an entire Wiki dedicated to Dwarf Fortress, as already noted in my thread (I linked the introduction article). Though I can understand if some may find it a bit too complex. The majority of people who play it are Comp Sci majors.