The Most Complex Game Ever Made

I didn't set out to make a cat sanctuary, but I guess that works.
What is Dwarf Fortress?:
According to the developers: "The deepest, most intricate simulation of a world that's ever been created. The legendary Dwarf Fortress is now on Steam. Build a fortress and try to help your dwarves survive against a deeply generated world."
Dwarf fortress is the original colony sim game that has gone on to be inspire other games such as Rim world and Minecraft. Lead your dwarves to dig, mine, build a fort, and try to survive in a randomly generated world full of threats such as vampires, wizards, necromancers, environmentalists, and other monsters. Its ugly and for most of it's existence it's been extremely hard to play, but it's unironically a super influential video game that can get into way deeper detail what what I went over here. This is possibly the most complicated game ever made.
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My name is OnADock! We mainly do Video Game highlights, lowlights, funny moments, meme montages and whatever else I find entertaining here on my channel. If you like what you see, make sure to Like Comment and Subscribe, it really helps the Channel out and helps me make more content.
#dwarffortress #review #dwarfgame

[@JethasK12]

can I be in your video Devon?

[@WD_RatLad]

congrats bro

[@whannabi]

Yoooo that's class

[@willgarlick7734]

ummmmmm

[@bigfluppus5461]

ummmm

[@guidinglight1lul]

ummmm (chain

[@mrbismarck]

"Draw a place to dig and a Dwarf will dig." Welllll.... Most of the time. Sometimes they're sleeping, sometimes they're eating and sometimes they're accusing a goose of murder.

[@zitronenwasser]

As someone who's only tried the text version of dwarf fortress (and gave up fairly early because everything was a pain to navigate and see), that last thing made me wheeze

[@jzburda]

@@zitronenwasser There were really good texture packs back then for df. Made the game SO much easier to look at

[@fritt_wastaken]

That actually summarizes the game pretty well

[@ishigamithanku4960]

Craft the world in a nutshell?

[@cornblaster7003]

sounds on brand for dwarfs lol

[@lydierayn]

Ah yes,The game where a dwarven barkeeper that lost a finger keeps dropping beer jugs therefor making the cats become alcoholic and either die or vomit all around the place. Its a beauty to behold

[@no_social_skill1369]

The cats have become dirty due to the beer Cats lick beer off Cats become drunk Cats vomit Cats become dirty Cat licks off beer vomit Cat becomes drunk Cat vomits....

[@LaCinturaDiOrione]

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

[@WarioNumberOne]

When I try to explain this game's complexity to people, I tell them my struggles trying to make soap for the first time

[@dutchy4400]

I have over 200 hours on the steam version and the total amount of soap I have made is two bars.

[@trueleopard5508]

screw the soap honestly, i prefer breeding cats till my computer dies :p

[@Purfait]

Do you keep dropping it or something?

[@ThePhantom4516]

@@Purfait you'd have to make one TO drop first

[@Purfait]

@@ThePhantom4516 what if it was almost done and they dropped it

[@squintzrules7326]

With most games a simple graphical style is usually an artistic choice, but I'd like to think that Drawf Fortress uses such simple graphics because it literally couldn't function on any device otherwise

[@voxlknight2155]

No way could Dwarf Fortress have animations. Instant CPU death.

[@DemoniteBL]

20230414170612_1

[@PastelPiku]

I really like games with simple graphics because you know the developers' focus was almost entirely on the gameplay.

[@shcade8926]

Looking forward to year 2050 when we will have computers fast enough to run Dwarf fortress with animations

[@FernandoDenise2558]

Shit, it can barely run on the current hardware lol

[@WolfHreda]

Probably my fourth attempt at a fortress, I embarked upon an Untamed Wilderness. While I was chopping wood and fishing, a flock of Giant Cardinals swooped down and murdered six of my Dwarves almost immediately. Couldn't help but laugh.

[@nicholasmolberg1043]

You gotta get underground ASAP and then stockpile everything from the wagon into the hole you dug.

[@MrPervSan]

One of my more successful forts in Dwarf Fortress for Steam was constantly harassed by all types of birds. From giant ravens to cardinals that took turns picking out my dwarven children who went too far.

[@nicholasmolberg1043]

@@MrPervSan Burrow commands will let you stick the children in safe places. Keeping them off the surface is pretty simple.

[@jordanbradford7729]

On one of my embarks the tree that my only woodcutter was chopping down fell on him and killed him. In another of my fortresses every time a dwarf would try to drop something in the garbage dump hole, they’d be attacked by bones and wool and skulls. I eventually figured out why: my surgeon was a necromancer, and his child daughter was always playing in the refuse stockpile next to the garbage dump zone, and so she had been reanimating everything in the garbage dump. This game provides a constant supply of you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up emergent behaviors and that’s why people love it.

[@JeadyVT]

The same happened to me on my very first fortress because the tutorial dropped me into a wild biome. Giant Wrens killed ALL of my dwarves except a last one which they let to slowly bleed out with only one limb left. I had to abandon the fortress because waiting for the last one to die took too long.

[@BirdsBestAnimal]

"Fixed cats coming into a bar, drinking and then exploding" will always be the funniest fix i ever will see

[@WackoMcGoose]

"I think I made the carp too hardcore..."

[@LeftoverPat]

My favorite part about Dwarf Fortress is that it's a colony manager that doesn't care whether you're playing or not. Shit will happen to fortresses all over the world. And it will happen to yours. What's beautiful about this game: The fact that everything you said after 7:00 is completely unique to your playthrough

[@george-stefanleoca1319]

You mean about the curses? If your dwarves don't pray to their deity for a long time there is a chance they might get cursed to turn into either vampire or a werebest.

[@Kyle_The_Furry]

I once had one of my peasant dwarves go full sicko mode after having a mental breakdown and decided to attack a child. The fight immediately escalated as one of my hunting dogs attacked the peasant, the fight was actually pretty even. In the chaos the peasant accidentally kicked a chicken, the chicken joined the fight and immediately blinded them. The hunting dog and chicken working together signaled the end of the peasant, who got torn to literal shreds, all because they punched a fucking child. 10/10 I will never stop playing this game.

[@hi28]

i mean.. they punched a child based asf dog

[@shayneoneill1506]

@@hi28 Yep. Accurate modelled dog tbh. My old bull terrier the only time she ever attacked a human was when she saw some father hit his kid, and she went terminator on him. Thankfully he recognized that though innapropriate, jazmine was just trying to protect the kid from what she thought was an attacker and went full momma dog mode, so declined to report the attack. Pretty much straight away booked that dog into obedience classes and she never bit someone again, but in her mind, she was just defending a child. My cat on the other hand will attack anything with a face, including me if I'm more than 30 seconds late to feed her lol

[@GustavoSilva-ny8jc]

If they ended up making peace and the dog became the guide for the guy it would truly be peak writing

[@lucasflanagan656]

Another awesome thing is that when you abandon a fortress to ruin, it’s story and inhabitants still exist in the world of you want to play in that world again, meaning that you can even stumble across the ruins of your old fortress

[@thereinforcementshavearriv8288]

This concept is legitimately horrifying

[@banaana1234]

This was actually the original premise of the game: you were supposed to go as an adventurer and explore an abandoned fort to find its secrets and the reason it fell. Then the developer decided that it would be fun to also get to make that fort and things spiraled from there.

[@ProtozoanKid]

Nothing affected me more in this game than when I saw that my broker was not getting to the trading post in a timely manner, so I went looking for her and found a few different things. First, I had accidentally broken the main staircase upwards, so anyone going to the ground level had to use the back entrance, which went a looooong way out of the way. Second, this was first broker in a while that did not immediately get disheartened and go drinking instead of doing her duty. And third, my broker had apparently been a victim of a recent olm person invasion and had suffered nerve damage making her a paraplegic. I found her 90% of the way to the trading post, having crawled all the way through the back entrance (which I later calculated to be a journey of 9 in-game days for her), dutifully making her way to the trading post. I immediately relieved her of duty, got her to the infirmary, made her own room out of solid gold, and gave her her own personal crafting station. She is doing much better no, and has learned how to walk with a crutch (somehow). Just the absolutely staggering level of detail in this game within every single aspect of it has blown me away.

[@GustavoSilva-ny8jc]

Oh WOOOOOW, and no one have commented on that, both of you are a LEGEND 👏👏👏👏👏. Mad respect. Probably the first time i truly wanted to meet a character in real life, she's goated.

[@emptyaccount9821]

ive never heard of this game until now but i gotta say that tavern waterfall seems to have claimed more lives than actual enemies 10/10 thoroughly convinced to play

[@williamguy88]

It’s rimworld on crack

[@Xer0sama]

Veteran of the Classic version, I can confirm that the deadliest thing in your fortress is the Fortress. Until you find the Clown College at least.

[@Welgeldiguniekalias]

You can put ghostly dwarves to rest by making a stone tablet, chiselling a memorial text on it, and placing it anywhere on the map.

[@OnADock]

I honestly thought you needed the body. I’ll have to try that. Thank you!

[@Ed-1749]

@@OnADock I believe dwarves prefer to have bodies put in tombs, but the tablet memorials are also available if you lose the body through melting or having their atoms smashed. A skeleton waterfall is probably preferable to a ghost waterfall.

[@exapsy]

Dwarf Fortress, is what you get when you have a bunch of Backend developers, designing the most complex game, but not having any idea on how to make any of the graphics or the UI/UX.

[@lavatrex]

if the game had good graphics it would not be the same

[@joemck85]

Or perhaps the simulation eats so much processing power that there's not enough leftover to draw much more than text or sprite graphics.

[@revimfadli4666]

​@@lavatrexlike the steam edition?

[@pico1201]

Fun fact, personalities are so developed in this game, making what's called a "puppy fountain" which entails a hole on the a pit of spikes over a room with pregnant dogs, so when they gave birth and the space became to crowded they fall to the spike pit, that way desensitizing the draeves to death, since they see it every day down at the puppy fountain on their way to work

[@OnADock]

This fact isn't fun at all. :(

[@cccbbbccc5910]

WHAT THE HAHAHAHAAHAHA

[@spooky6703]

@@cccbbbccc5910 Welcome to Dwarf Fortress, next episode we talk about the mermaid bone farms, which were so fucked up that the devs cut back the sale price of mermaid bone.

[@ildar.ishalin.chelovek]

Ah sweet. Man made horrors beyond my comprehension

[@magmaduke8512]

@@ildar.ishalin.chelovek well I can comprehend these man made horrors perfectly fine so idk maybe you have a skill issue or smth

[@Tabby-nw3bu]

Dwarf Fortress players look at numbers and letters all day being like "Yea, theres a real world happening here"

[@conspiracypanda1200]

Since the steam release people have been getting into DF again, but I gotta say the legends of Dwarf Fortress over the years are crazy. - Cats would die from alcohol poisoning because their paws soaked up too much dwarven beer and they'd get instant liver failure when they tried to clean themselves. - People used to build mermaid bone farms that were so cruel (yet profitable) that the devs had to actually address it as a problem. - Because the game generates thousands of years of history for every seed, we have the legendary Elf King of the Dwarves: an elf child who's parents were eaten by monsters is adopted by dwarven conquerers and eventually becomes their King who rides an Undead Wyvern and has armor of obsidian and a cloak of solid gold - Multiple players devoted their time and effort into seeing who could make the biggest statues out of butter - There are multiple instances of dwarves toddlers beating to death creatures such as monkeys, cave crocodiles and captains of the guard - A group of players created a save with the worst possible starting point and swapped it between them. They ended up with a dwarven cult that worships cheese, a lava trap that would "kill the entire fucking world" and an entrance under constant attack by zombie elephants, seemingly immortal goblins and miasma

[@OnADock]

I almost included the cat story in this video. I laugh every time I read that one and it's such a great example of how all the systems in this game interact.

[@ardensetiawan353]

Is that Boatmurdered?

[@jordanbradford7729]

@@ardensetiawan353Yes, that last one is Boatmurdered.

[@Mewseeker]

How about that fortress entrance that could not close because a butterfly was stuck in it? XD

[@williambarnes5023]

@@Mewseeker That is also Boatmurdered.

[@fryingpanda9103]

If there's one thing to take away from this video it's that tavern waterfalls are awesome and everyone should build them

[@petezarole]

I only ever heard of DF in 2023, but it’s immediately become my favorite game ever. Most complex game is correct. My favorite moment in my short time playing was a dragon attack on my fortress. The dragon immediately attacked my stables, melting all my animals before he tried to attack my fort directly. I sent my army out to try to intercept, but I guess I messed up because only a single spear dwarf carrying her child went out to meet him. My speardwarf deftly hurdled a fire blast intended for a camel and stabbed the dragon in the liver, and while the dragon was vomiting uncontrollably my speardwarf stabbed it in the head, killing it instantly. She saved countless souls that day. In honor of her heroic deeds, she became captain of the guard and I made platinum and golden statues commemorating the day.

[@jordanbradford7729]

If your fortress gets large enough and wealthy enough to become a barony and have a Baron in the nobles menu, you will also be able to assign someone as the fortress’ Champion. The Champion role doesn’t mean much in the current game version - they’ll just lead combat demonstrations like a militia captain will - but I always use the role as a nice reward for any heroic dwarves. Your speardwarf definitely counts. You said you made some statutes of her, but you can also give her a really nice bedroom, build her a really nice tomb, etc. and you can assign her to wear or use legendary artifacts as a symbol of her Champion status. (On the nobles page that’s what all the crown buttons are for.)

[@Oiljacker]

​@@jordanbradford7729 so doing this will boost morale and all dwarfs will want to do something heroic too? Is that how this game works?

[@NBH-xh3nq]

@@Oiljackeryes other dwarfs will feel inspired or joyful, they may even write songs or carve pictures that may spread throughout the world. I’m not sure specifically if they get inspired to do something heroic, but they will definitely talk about the event

[@Oiljacker]

@@NBH-xh3nq damn that's amazing

[@chill5783]

df=dangerously funny

[@Ben_Lloyd]

slaves to armok: god of slaves chapter 1 was a game they had tried working on previously but did not get very far with. they wanted to use some of this new 3d technology you talked about but found it to be cumbersome to do some of the crazy weird things they wanted. for example, there were be a fully procedural 3d world and characters generated with many limbs, heads, and basically any other feature they thought of. however, i believe the effort required to do the 3d work was a bit overwhelming which led to them switching to ascii graphics. lots of screenshots still exist out there on their own website if you're curious.

[@OnADock]

I actually found out about slaves to Armok while writing this video, but I ended up cutting any actual explanation of the title since it didn’t really add anything in a video about Dwarf Fortress. It is cool to look at that piece of development history though!

[@RADZIO895]

dwarf fortress, but 3d doesn't sound like a realistic task even in 2023. Maybe we'll get something like that in the next 20-30 years, but the best we have right now is probably minecraft

[@josecoronadonieto6911]

@@RADZIO895 with a fuck-ton of mods

[@xylophoneserpent367]

Fun fact: Those 'cave worms' are designed after a real animal! It's a kind of blind cave salamander called an Olm

[@OnADock]

I had no idea an Olm was a real animal. lol.

[@xylophoneserpent367]

@@OnADock Yeah, that is totally fair, they're one of the strangest animals I know of! There's actually a lot of folklore about them being baby dragons, which is super interesting, especially because they look the part

[@DecisionsRQuestionable]

the hell thats an axolotl

[@Inuweeb]

One of my lecturers when I studied PC maintenance in 2009 would sometimes spend half the class talking about the catastrophes of his fortresses (and also talk about EVE online) and I've been hooked on both games ever since.

[@rattlesalad4472]

actually you could cage the cats instead to butcher them, they couldn't go anywhere even reproduce if they are inside the cage

[@user-wy6se6dp2n]

Just geld them.

[@Zorro9129]

Or as a preventative measure you can just geld them.

[@crazy_wwww]

so a horny jail?

[@bradley1995]

Since I started programming at 13 I've always wanted to make an advanced ai game like this. Where you are just a player in the world, but truly do not hold the control. The fact this game did just about everything I could think of plus. I might have to pick up this game or go start coding myself! Thanks for posting this video!

[@atomicc_43]

You should learn to code I believe in you

[@GruntKF]

Should check out Kenshi, it's similar in that regard

[@atomicc_43]

@@GruntKF can it work on a potato PC? That game's been in my head for some time

[@GruntKF]

@@atomicc_43 ah not sure, it is a bit demanding since its 3d. could always "borrow" it and see how it runs on your machine lol

[@atomicc_43]

@@GruntKF ok , thanks bro

[@alexisthepangolin4145]

im awful at these types of games and this unironically sounds incredibly fun except i know i would suck at it and play it for like only an hour before giving up for ever

[@inthefade]

I have yet to play it, but DF is less about being good and more about enjoying losing hilariously. Yeah there are people who know how to make seemingly indestructible fortresses, but that isn't what it is about at all! A lot of it is telling your story.

[@vasosvacios7694]

Yeah, I feel just the same, I really find the idea of complex rich stories and the world building present on DF incredibly interesting, but as with many other games alike, I struggle with the slow gameplay and all the managment they require to fully explore their potential.

[@Oniguma]

I started playing the game learning from Quill18 videos - still the best tutorials for DF that you can find on KZbin

[@jacobcain9008]

The first rule of Dwarf Fortress: Losing is fun!

[@D..S..]

Yep that's what I did lol

[@tymera]

You know it's so funny I played Df in ASCII And I'd get going but eventually I'd get stuck trying to get the miasma out of my fortress. Well I play the steam version for two weeks and find now all you need to do is take a one by two bridge make it slam against a wall and then throw stuff on it and then it gets deleted it's that easy what a great game

[@tymera]

I actually lost two dwarfs Based on my inclination to put the trash compacter in a pit. So pro tip do not do this. You can literally just put your trash compactor on the surface (or anywhere) and it's fine

[@tymera]

Dangerous cave dwellers that live near the valuable minerals is a crazy double entendre I picked up on that I don't know if that's what you meant but it was hard as fuck

[@mrbismarck]

Also works for getting rid of Mayors.

[@Welgeldiguniekalias]

@@tymera The trick is to put a trash storage on the surface (must be in open air to work), designate a trash dumping zone inside that trash storage, and then order your dwarves to dump your threadbare clothes and other junk in there. It will rot away relatively quickly, and because it is a dumpsite, not just a storage, there is no limit to how many items can fit in there.

[@vianneyb.8776]

Oh! I've heard of this thing! The "atom smasher", right?

[@NimhLabs]

So uh... the Let's Play of Boatmurdered is what introduced me to this game Also, the thumbnail of "This is a Cat" had me screaming... as cats have been the biggest causes of game breaking glitches in the history Dwarf Fortress. Sometimes just exploding, sometimes dying on mass due to alcholism--sometimes various other things involving leather goods Being concerned about Elephants is a meme... Cats are the _REAL_ threat of this game xD

[@kyledoran1671]

For some reason, I talked to an acquaintance of mine about this masterpiece prior to the steam release. I apparently painted myself as some for of master of the game, as he invited me onto his stream where he did a blind playtest of the game. In front of many people in the audience I watched in horror as his entire fortress was slaughtered by a roving band of elephants within an hour of starting. At least I got to show him how to look up said elephants in Legends Mode!

[@BrianPotterProductions]

VO sounds like a chill version of Videogamedunkey. The inflections, pauses, etc.

[@Ed-1749]

I remember my first real attempt. I'd started getting pretty competent with the game, had some farms going, all my dwarves were happy and making fun artifacts, had some peahens and a peacock hanging around, made some nice steel, and ate an elephant. But all went awry when I found a bunch of elk birds running around in my mine. What is an Elk Bird? Good question, they didnt really do anything, but the 30 odd little cave gremlims that followed them up the mineshaft certainly caused me a great deal of fun. Evidently I had walled off the caves incorrectly, must've missed a corner. Oh well, that's that. Might as well check out that sick looking volcano on the other side of the map, steel be damned.

[@koopaplayer5996]

Thanks for making the vid. Glad to see how much more attention the games been getting. Been my favorite for years

[@WackoMcGoose]

A sentence that will only make sense to DF veterans: "I needed just one more tile worth of cotton candy to finish my axedwarf squad's armor, but I opened the clown car and wasn't prepared for the circus"

[@SkyeEnno]

adjusted value of bees

[@NowitsLeah]

The humor and pacing in this video is fucking immaculate. Best KZbin recommendation in a hot minute, keep doing your thing man!

[@baneblackguard584]

Dwarf Fortress requires you to invest your time, mind, and imagination into the game. a pretty small portion of the gamer population are willing to do that. most see a video like this and think "man that sounds cool", they get it play it for 2 or 3 hours and declare it boring and move onto something else.

[@certainsomeone186]

I began playing once.. 6 years back.. couldn't handle the controls despite having played ASCII-based dungeon explorers and similar games. Moved on to Rimworld and loved it.. Began using Linux as my only OS, made my own vast arsenal of commands in Linux and Vim. Became quite confident about this game and started again. Nope. Will try again in a few days

[@baneblackguard584]

@@certainsomeone186 yeah I played DF long ago, when Rimworld came out i got into that. when i heard DF got a make over and had graphics more akin to Rimworld i decided to jump back into it. The world needs more games like DF and Rimworld. Not everyone likes games with insane levels of complexity, but it's a niche that is horribly underdeveloped.

[@TekExplorer]

suddenly i wonder if game logs can be fed into some ai and generate awesome summaries about the world you created

[@Chedski]

I'm fairly sure the game has this as a built in feature

[@ZekwaldIX]

that's what legends mode is for though I guess it's not a summery as it is the entire history of the world and every named entity, named item, every event and all the settlements

[@sadghst862]

One time I had a dwarf get inspired to make something and he did something like this. He laid out on a tapestry on a bench the ENTIRE FUKING HISTORY PAST PRESENT AND ALL FUTURE things in my world down to details like how many socks we had who died where they died when they died how may stocks I had details and dates of it all. Craziest thing that ever happened to me

[@prod.lanista]

@@sadghst862 brooo that's crazy

[@strictlybananas]

I saw the title and thought “whatever it is, can’t be as complex as Dwarf Fortress” and then the video was about Dwarf Fortress lol

[@Jo_Wick]

I remember getting into Dwarf Fortress back in 2018. I took one look at the interface (as you did) and got so confused by everything that I quit before I began. Now that it has this graphical remastering, I will try and play the game. I really can't wait!

[@dumbleking5172]

Well, now I have the perfect video to explain my addiction to my friends. Also, a forgotten tidbit information that got left out is that it can be a buggy mess, especially the military.

[@Lord_Drakostar]

this is my favourite dunkey video of all time

[@runtergerutscht4401]

The thumbnail had me thinking this was NetHack. For those of you who don't know (which I assume is all of you), NetHack is a descendant of Hack, which is a descendant of Rogue. The rogue. Anyways it's a really cool roguelike (duh) and carries a similar complexity as Dwarf Fortress (I also cannot play NetHack without the wiki open) with a totally different gameplay, but the same tileset. Luckily you can install graphics there too. It's open source and thus 100% free for everyone to enjoy. If you ever feel like you have too much free time and want to try out a real roguelike classic but don't actually want to play rogue, this game might be worth your attention.

[@conspiracypanda1200]

I actually played Nethack in-browser a few months before I played Dwarf Fortress because I was bored and trawling links on TVTropes or something. The experience I had actually sold me on ASCII games. At first I didn't know what I was doing, but I did find a cool anti-magic cloak. I also knew how to kick down doors. So, I kick down a door that happens to be a shopkeeper's space. The debris from the door goes flying inwards and the keeper is furious and tries to kill me. However, I'm wearing an anti-magic cloak! All his magic bounces off and hits him instead! So I mamage to kill him first and now I'm left in a room filled with free stuff! Excited, I start checking out all the items and trying on all the better armor. I equip a cool magic wand that shoots lightning or something. But then, a kobold enters the room! So I shoot him with my magic wand! Unfortunately, the kobold had picked up my discarded anti-magic cloak off the shop floor (because I unequipped it earlier to try out the different clothes) and the magic bounced back on me! I immediately exploded and died! I must've laughed for a good five or so minutes because of that.

[@runtergerutscht4401]

@@conspiracypanda1200 lmao nice

[@colbyboucher6391]

Other great "real roguelikes" include: -Brogue, it's free! And also weirdly pretty for an ASCII game. It's relatively simple but IMO it's a really smart take on the genre. -Cogmind is seriously the most underrated roguelike. It's *shockingly* in-depth, especially whem you realize it's got a whole branching storyline with quite a lot of lore attached. You play as a sentient robot in a mining facility. There's BattleTech-ish customization, weirdly deep combat and a cool focus on simulating the way enemies communicate with each other & stealth. - Pixel Dungeon. There's quite a few different forks of it. It was designed for mobile, but it actually does a great job of making the genre playable on a touchscreen and doesn't have the problems most mobile games have. - Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is pretty much a "zombie survival" roguelike, although zombies are the least of your worries. This is the kind of game that simulates every major component of the car you found on the side of the road and lets you perform surgery on yourself to get robo-legs. Project Zomboid was directly inspired by Cataclysm but still fails to reach it's level of depth. - Tales of Maj'Eyal is an interesting one because instead of items it's focused hard on having an MMO style hotbar. It's really a fusion between traditional roguelike and something more like Diablo. - Rift Wizard is kind of a more modern, minimalist take on ToME - Caves of Qud is a Morrowind-inspired game that also takes a queue from Dwarf Fortress in that it also has randomly-generated history (although nowhere near as deep). It's sort of a YT darling for being pretty and... weird. Very weird.

[@DeronMeranda]

I played so much Nethack way back when it was still a new game. "c" (lowercase) was a cat and "C" (uppercase) a centuar. That was a truly awesome game, it didn't need graphics. In fact I think the "tile sets" that came later actually made it worse.

[@killianwoods3892]

I just found you, and I LOVED this video! Please keep making more dives into games :)

[@mox3909]

Always glad to see DF getting love. I've been playing since 2007.

[@TheVincenzoGaming]

3:20 thousands of hours and he doesn't know tile sets exist?

[@OnADock]

🤫

[@eoinmacantsaoir811]

Sounded like dozens of hours to me

[@twofacesa]

Excellent video, interesting, to the point, no wasted words. Kept me engaged throughout the duration.

[@benaussa]

Great video mate, love it!!! Can't wait to watch more videos from you

[@davekachel]

The oldschool version was even more detailed than the steam version We will (most likely) get it eventually but for now the steam version is missing a couple of features

[@sheikneedles9250]

MARIO SUNSHINE GETS SO MUCH UNDESERVED HATE ITS A MASTERPIECE

[@Aespha]

Great video ^^ very informative

[@wilhelmschmidt7240]

DF is definitely one of my favorites, and only became more so as I dove into the files and added some new animals and tweaked some of the internal tags, made my own workshop, etc. I highly recommend using a graphic overlay and making sure you can load your dwarves into Dearf Therapist, managing large populations is much easier that way. Also soundsense for some awesome sounds.

[@chippitheaccentguy8018]

The steam release really brings me great joy that people can easily access this amazing game and make their own unique and amazing storys to share with others a really great feeling seeing how far the game has come fueled by nothing but passion of 2 lads to make what they like not what will be popular and quick money but a thing if pure passion that shows itself at every corner of the game

[@xRosaliax]

Losing a Fortress isn't a failure, it's inevitable. It's the most consistent part of them game. Losing is FUN.

[@Agentekd]

U need more subs great vid. Loved learning of this game

[@onofriomasina4916]

New sub! Thanks for the video on one of my favourite games!

[@laughingvampire7555]

imagine if DF could have a fully detailed 3d animation of everything in the complexity of the game, it would take like a team of 10,000 animators

[@UnknownMFe]

This is one of my favourite KZbin videos

[@fisc_rl]

When you said "that's dig-dug" I felt @videogamedunkey possess you for a moment and I was contractually obligated to subscribe.

[@OnADock]

Dunkey is my favorite creator to steal delivery cues from. Huge influence on me tbh.

[@emnersonn]

@@OnADock we can tell keep up the hard work and you’ll start to develop your own style i’m sure

[@EPMTUNES]

Awesome video! You really sing this game's praises.

[@erohwnaibsel]

ive never been so hyped for a video in my life

[@TheGloriousLobsterEmperor]

I first had heard about Dwarf Fortress many years ago, it was one of those games that was famously brutal. I watched someone stream it and thought it looked cool, so I donated and played it. I could not understand anything. It just got its remake on Steam with proper graphics, and I am stuck trying to figure out how to make stairs. Worth. Every. Cent.

[@timchallenge]

Another video I'm not quite sure why KZbin recommended to me, but I'm sure glad they did!

[@seriouslyigiveup]

Alright, I gotta admit. The continuous waterfall callback got me. Hahaha Good video man!

[@UnknownMFe]

Just. Wow Also thank you for introducing me to Rimworld

[@cpp3221]

Wtf ? Only 187 likes for a video that good ? Anyway, i didn't know game with that level of complexity existed so early.

[@colbyboucher6391]

People make a lot of weird assumptions about needing "new tech" to do cool stuff.

[@cpp3221]

@@colbyboucher6391 More like "I didn't think game could be that complex without having old computer lagging as hell"

[@colbyboucher6391]

@@cpp3221 Oh, it did, quickly. Honestly DF still starts to lag out past 150-200-ish dwarves.

[@Defhrone]

I love how this game generates stories, even before you start playing and adds more epic stories to the world as you are playing. For example how one of my hunter dwarfs killed a world dragon when he got caught out with his practice bow, which got disarmed right away after wich the dwarf succesfully dodged a flame breath attack and then punched the dragons teeth out his mouth. After the battle, he got into a 'mood' in which he used one of the dragons teeth to make a legendary amulet which depicted the fight with the dragon and was adorned with... dragonteeth. And I like how the community talks about the games 'fun' moments (translation, epic fortress death). Even if you master the game, you'll die eventually. If the forgotten beasts don't kill you, the diseases they carry will

[@geckoram6286]

Even after like 2000 failed tries at not sucking at this game I won't get tired of the intro, it's just so good

[@EugeneHerbsman]

I would love to see more of you narrating dwarf fortress play throughs

[@itsjustme7450]

I love the way each z layer has a small floor tile, I’m on my first play through, and I knew I had to be careful of collapsing while trying to make a vaulted ceiling, but I got ahead of the carving job and started removing stairs below a dwarf, and holy crap it was scary and hysterical to catch a small collapse and watch the dwarves freak out lol. Thankfully nobody was lost, but what a scare for making one room a little taller lol.

[@yararinamiil]

I zoned out at some point in the video and when I started paying attention again he was talking about how the dwarves could have depression...

[@TheFreeFlea]

You don't have enough subs for these views. I subbed:)

[@jaspermaij3753]

As it sounds now, all should be safe as long as you don't build waterfalls in your taverns

[@Ed-1749]

Technically, the waterfalls in the tavern is actually the key stone to keeping the whole fortress together. Probably stopped countless bar brawls. At least until it didn't.

[@brandonsutton7474]

Wow. It tracks every tooth, finger, and minute detail. Thats pretty insane.

[@ffc1a28c7]

imo, the most complex ever game is C (or indeed any turing complete programming language) itself. Literally comprises every possible game.

[@christophhofer303]

The programming language itself is not really that complex, only if you start making complex things, it gets complex

[@ffc1a28c7]

@@christophhofer303 I guess I should say that it is complex in that it's the ultimate sandbox.

[@blindsniper35]

I learned about this game from my programming / Linux friends around 2010. (plus or minus a few years) Interestingly enough until very recently, They were really the only people who really ever talked about this game.

[@chriswillis713]

I finally managed to get a decent fort going. First 5 floors are dedicated to a military installation. I have a 5 layer moat surrounding it, bridge, etc. I realize the militia commander is missing. Body is in the moat. Weird. I built it 3 years ago. Figure they fell in, but next year it's a kid, then another dwarf, I didn't recognize. That's when the game stopped working.

[@1gnore_me.]

the opening to dwarf fortress does something to me, man. so nostalgic

[@lissythearchitect]

My recollection of this game was failing a lot to get anything established at all (i.e. they all died before creating anything significant), then once getting all the way to the point where I was seriously trying to construct a table. I successfully got a number of other things built, but I don't think I succeeded at the table before my dwarves all died off. It looks like there's a prettier UI than the one I used, now.

[@myounes5494]

I like the little red alert 3 gameplay at 3:58 great game.

[@gamelandmaster3680]

7:54 I remember an interview with Toady where he said that dwarves were not as resilient as humans. So imagine my laughter when 1 second after I get to that timestamp.

[@boneless70]

i remember when i played this game, one of my dwarfs was a little girl, who became an orphan after her parent died infront of her eyes, that made her become a sociopath and she started killing and torturing cats. when she grew up she wanted to go back into sociaty and started being a normals person, but then her husbend was killed and she became a serial killer. this game is wild

[@LeftoverPat]

Great video making style

[@The-EJ-Factor]

Have you heard of rainworld, I'm sure you'll love it. Considering this game.

[@multipleSpiders]

gotta be one of my favorite games that i’ve never played

[@Magicwillnz]

I'm kind of proud that I was playing DF since before it had Z-levels, only a year or so since it had come out.

[@alansmithee419]

5:16 "He felt restless dwelling upon being able to rest" Dude, same. smh...

[@biuliu7157]

I remember playing Dwarf Fortress a few years after release. I was just a small child then but I was actually a tad interested in the game, also looking forward to buying the steam release soon

[@Pavlinka__]

I remember trying this game out when i was little because it was so artsy fartsy to me. I couldnt believe it ended up being this popular years later but good for it, its really cool.

[@jonaut5705]

My second fortress was entirely killed by a singular dead horse, somehow a horse skeleton rose from the dead and just, murdered everything. My army was powerless to stop it.

[@devinwindfield5380]

Homie is running waterfalls through his fort for fun, meanwhile I can't even get my dwarves to throw out shells that the fishermen get to the point where they are literally preventing other dwarves from doing their jobs because it's clogging up the hallways 🙄

[@krybling]

you will figure it out something, 1 sell them, preferably make crafts out of them then sell 2 make a stockpile for them on top of lava, 3 or under a bridge while closed then open the bridge and smash them to atoms

[@rakiy22]

Awesome video!

[@mappinus5028]

My math professor went to Stanford with Tarn Adams, and has nothing but nice things to say about him! Super cool guy, and made an awesome game

[@AJ-tk1uo]

Fortress mode is only half the game of Dwarf Fortress, the other being Adventure Mode (unavailable on steam release for now, but is still playable) and let me tell you, if you think Skyrim is incredibly in-depth, and find it fun, you will quickly become addicted with Adventure Mode. Imagine Skyrim but in a world that you can randomly generate, the world is filled with insane amounts of lore, and the environment around you continues to change due to the relationships between different factions in the world. All relationships with every single NPC are dynamically forming, creating loads of drama in the world for you to uncover. That inn keeper that you always love to stop and talk to on your adventures? On his off days he could be off murdering people, or he could be banging someone's wife. Maybe one day you go there and he isn't there. Why? Because he randomly decided he was going to join up with a bandit group and dedicated his life to crime. Literally anything can happen, and it's incredible. A dragon could attack a city, and as long as you're in render distance, any foliage, wood structures, people, or animals, will burn to ash. No game can compete with a truly living breathing world, especially not RimWorld.

[@Theorphan81]

Like your video, you put in work and effort to make it entertaining. You just need to work on the sound a little more. Eventually you'll wanna invest in a better mic or recording area. I hear some youtubers litteraly record with a blanket over them to make sure the mic only pics up their voice and not the acoustics of the room they're in.

[@OnADock]

Yeah, I'm going to buy a better recording setup at some point this year now that I'm monitized, but until then, I'll try recording under a blanket the next time I do one of these faceless voice over videos and see how different it sounds. Thanks for the tip!

[@krebissu]

Plz guys, let's recommend this game to Let's Game It Out. I'm dying to see how josh would turn these dwarves fortresses into a living hell!

[@brokenearth7079]

Chapter 1 was a game that they were working on before dwarf fortress, but this and that left dwarf fortress remaining

[@leonas9843]

"Wot teh fuk" 😂😂😂

[@coco_rthritis6462]

I'm so glad this game finally clicked for me. I remember seeing it on YT a decade ago. I knew I would love it one day but as an 11yr old , I couldn't even tell what I was looking at. When the Steam version came out I finally tried it out...I then proceeded to rage quit after I couldn't plant plump helmets lol. Now that I did some actual research it's gradually getting easier to do things independently. It's funny you mentioned Morrowind, it ended up becoming my favorite game ever after my 3rd or 4th try. Now I can make 20k intelligence potions and become stronger than Vivec lol. I think DF is similar in that way, hard to get into but once your there it's easy to love.

[@c3cris2]

Much better quality and funny video🎉

[@shayneoneill1506]

Quick hint about burying dudes whos body you cant retrieve. Just build a pile of slabs and then have someone engrave a memorial to that dwarf on them, then place the memorial. It has the same effect, it stops ghosts.

[@Slucker_]

i like how it starts with all the console games, and then suddenly shifts to pc

[@OnADock]

Early 2000’s was a bit of a weak era for PC exclusives if you weren’t into mmos tbh.

[@colbyboucher6391]

I mean, I'd say Morrowind was a PC game first and foremost. The Xbox port felt pretty clunky by comparison.