It's an insanely complex and obtuse game, designed so that no matter how perfectly your fortress is built or run, something catastrophic will happen.
If you're unfamiliar with Dwarf Fortress, here is a good summary, and you can find excellent dramatised fortress reports in the form of comics recounting the stories of Bronzemurder and Oilfurnace. Having familiarised myself just a little with the ridiculously complex and silly narrative machinations of Dwarf Fortress (by reading and hearing stories, not playing), Facebook style addiction was absolutely not what I was expecting from Minecraft. Notch has said a major inspiration for Minecraft was wondering what an accessible game in the vein of Dwarf Fortress would be like. Why did a prolonged session with Minecraft leave me content, where the same time spent with Facebook games would leave me feeling hollowed out? Still though, there was definitely something more to Minecraft. Had I been suckered into playing Skinner Box game design, something I usually swear to avoid, simply by the aesthetics and theme of the game? Someone got to the comparison before me, and after hopping onto an established multiplayer server and seeing the amazing things people had built, the comparison to Farmville art had occurred to me too. Mining is a fearsome addiction, and a quiet, lonely pursuit, which again makes my closest comparisons in terms of UX Farmville and Packrat. Scattering sweet, sweet rewards and monsters through the bedrock of an infinitely generated map, beneath beautiful terrain, makes for some compulsive exploration.
#Minecraft dwarf fortress full#
There's this place full of mystery, possibly hostile creatures and maybe diamonds, and noone else has ever been there. Maybe there's iron behind that one, or the next one".Īs well as that, finding and exploring dark caves underground is decidedly more atmospheric than screenshots would suggest. Always, when digging exploratory tunnels, the thought is "Just one more block. Nearly all of the mining part of Minecraft reminds me of Facebook game mechanics: Upgrading tools, searching for that elusive reward, the excitement of finding obsidian and diamonds, going deeper to find better ores, the near miss of mining something valuable then seeing lava pour out unexpectedly and obliterate it.
#Minecraft dwarf fortress Pc#
Historically, being a hardcore console and PC gamer, thinking of Minecraft this way makes it feel like pop music I can listen to in public. The pair make for a very peculiar contrast, and really wouldn't be put in the same basket by many perhaps this is one of the reasons that Minecraft has done so well. If I were to write a (very) scant genealogy of it, the major features would be just two games: Dwarf Fortress, and Farmville.
#Minecraft dwarf fortress skin#
Not many games have ever got under my skin like that, but Minecraft is definitely one of the few.Ī couple of us at Mudlark have been playing it for the past few weeks, and we were very surprised at just how addictive it is. I wanted to go and explore, deep underground then return to build towering constructs and landscaped pools. Not a single human built thing in sight outside the coach window, just tree flecked scrub and lakes whizzing by I wanted to plant and build more of them. At the exact moment it was passing a nature reserve, my phone shuffled to a piece of music from Minecraft. This morning I was staring out the window of my train to work, listening to music.
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