Dwarf Fortress News

Dwarf Fortress has the well-earned title of being one of the most torturous games to learn. There is a lot going on, even after we changed all the ridiculous keyboard commands and replaced the Matrix-like interface with some understandable, and awesome, pixel art. It still needs something. Something to ease the need to head straight to a wiki just to understand what's going on. The answer is the tutorial of course.





To make the tutorial all it can be, we found the ultimate play tester: my wife Annie. There are a lot of base-building games out there now, enough to make Dwarf Fortress easier to get into. She doesn't play any of them. The closest she gets to DF is Overcooked 2. After one failed attempt with the original, the latest version of the tutorial allowed her to get good enough at the game to tunnel under a bog and drown her fortress.









Our aim is to make this level of play achievable by anyone. We want the world to be able to lose this game and have fun doing it.

- Zach

P.S.
A note from Kitfox, our publisher: Very soon, Alexandra will be starting a streaming video series on learning this new version of Dwarf Fortress! Follow along and get ready to stock up on knowledge at our Twitch or YouTube channels.

Hello!

We're continuing along with the art. The last bit we need to update is the buildings. Jacob has put together some amazing workshops. Their color reflects the material they are made from. Here are twelve different workshops made from three different woods:



These workshops were built in a volcano, sadly. Watch the destructive power of lava here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

- Tarn

Hello!

My brother Tarn and I recently returned from PAX West, an entire 30 minute ferry ride across the Puget Sound in Seattle. There we met with the Kitfox community manager, Alexandra, who introduced us to the crowd waiting to see the first ever live demonstration of the new Steam version of Dwarf Fortress! The link to the show can be found here (https://youtu.be/uE-FCtGdwMI), where you can listen and watch as we take a ponderous tour through the new controls and give away the Easter eggs - spoilers!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

I would like to thank Alexandra and the many fans who showed up in person to visit with us. Extensive Influencer BlindIRL also came out to meet us. His many Fortresses online are an inspiration, including one that aims to span a thousand years! He and the many other streamers have kept our project afloat for almost 20 years and it soon will be accessible to all.

- Zach


Hi everyone!

It's Alexandra, just wanted to thank everyone who talked to us at PAX and everyone online who watched online. We did not have a booth this year so it might have been hard to find us but hopefully we will be back with one for next con! Now that the game is in a more showable state, we can start making more video updates and hopefully working a lot more with any Dwarf Fortress content creators so stay tuned!



-Alexandra

Hey there!

It's Alexandra from Kitfox Games with some very exciting news about the new Dwarf Fortress soundtrack. Watch the announcement video from Tarn and Zach on Youtube:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Dwarf Fortress Steam edition will have a 15 track soundtrack by Dabu and Simon Swerwer including tracks in the Dwarvish language! You might be familiar with Simon from his work on the SoundSense utility for the original Dwarf Fortress. We are so excited to be able to work with both Dabu and Simon to bring you this new soundtrack that will be available on Steam, Spotify, Bandcamp and more!

[h2]Dwarf Fortress at PAX West[/h2]



Tarn, Zach and I will be at PAX West in Seattle, Washington hosting a demo for Dwarf Fortress Steam edition. It will be taking place this Friday September 2nd at 4:00pm Pacific Time from the Horse Theatre.

This will be the first time you'll be able to see the game in action on stage! If you'll be at PAX West you won't want to miss this! If you can't make it to PAX, the panel will also be streamed live on https://www.twitch.tv/pax3 with a VOD available shortly after.

Looking forward to meeting some of you soon!

- Alexandra + Bay 12 Games

Hello!

Here's a quick update on some new artwork. There are lots of biomes you can embark on in Dwarf Fortress, and we have some new plants and terrain made by Carolyn to make the drier places come alive.



Here you can see the baby toe succulents and pebble plants in flower (and Neoriceisgood's leopard gecko people). These flowers only show up briefly once during the year.



We also have sandy deserts of various colors! This is a sure place to find material for glass making, though you'll have to work a little harder to put some fire in the glass furnace without trees for charcoal.



Now we'll take a look at some more environmental art, but we'll have to create it by giving these dwarven soldiers some friends to play with.



I've placed five trolls in the room!



Our trolls have cyan blood! There's also a touch of dwarven blood spatter here in red, but all the soldiers survived, along with some helpful citizens that jumped in with the dogs.



Here's a combat report, which you can get to by clicking on an alert over on the left side. We only have one troll corpse picture, even though the headlessness lines up in this case, ha ha.

- Tarn