While the free version of Dwarf Fortress is great, it’s arcane UI and losing-is-fun design does turn off a lot of would be players. Dwarf Fortress has since gone on to inspire its own new generation of city-builders and narrative management games. That older but just as classic text-based clan manager is near unrecognisable to our modern town-builders, but its influence is still felt. As Charles Caleb Colton said back in the days of the Commodore 64: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. But what must also be remembered is that without imitation we wouldn’t have innovation, and without innovation we wouldn’t have variety.ĭwarf Fortress, iconic for its deep, emergent gameplay and ASCII graphics, actually innovated on games like King of Dragon Pass.
