Frankly, the user interface achieves mind-blowing levels of confusion and unnecessarily repeated actions which lead to a sense of tedium and frustration that overwhelms my interest in continuing the play the game – so I don’t. But it has been over a year and I still have to press a series of awkward keyboard shortcuts to build things, I need to hand-designate every square of ore to be mined, I need to tell each workshop exactly what to make. It is true that part of the charm of Dwarf Fortress is about the ridiculous level of detail. This brings me to a common criticism of Dwarf Fortress: development over the last year, year and a half has focused on revising very low level details about the game’s simulation of how materials interact, particularly how creatures bodies are built with layers of bone and muscle and hair, what properties these each have, etc. It was sweet while it lasted, but I grew tired with the tedium of a very rough user interface and tedious gameplay. I even had fun playing some Dwarf Fortress until I explored most of what there was to explore. I admire Tarn’s goals and his creative freedom which lets him indulge his whims – I wish I could do that. From a development perspective, DF is a very long-running obsessive project coded by one guy, Tarn Adams, who makes more money than I do (not difficult) entirely by donations from his fans. I hope you know about Dwarf Fortress, the very complex roguelike-lookinglike fantasy world sim / citybuilder. I think it already contains instructive lessons for game development and design. This is only the beginning of a story, but it could prove to be a very interesting story if it bears out.
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