Rock, Paper, Shotgun

05/04/2010 at 16:08 Iucounu says:

It’s already awesome and I haven’t even figured out many of the cool new features yet (learning another suite of Toady’s cryptic interfaces is going to take a little time; the military management screen in particular is like Linear B.) But there’s a lot more going on in the environment, which really makes a difference. There are many more useful minerals, fascinating caverns and underground seas, lots of interesting new wrinkles like medical care and the ‘burrow’ system.

Most importantly, it still kills you in entertaining ways. I delved down a few levels and discovered a vast underground cave system, which I started to explore. Then one of my dogs got into a scrap with an ‘elk bird’. OK, I thought, a bird has become confused and found its way into my fort. Then a flock of elk birds started harassing my miners, so I sent in my woodcutter (the only dwarf I had who could reliably swing an axe) to make some bird soup. Soon my woodcutter was on the wrong end of a savage beating, and for the first time I thought to check the new combat log feature.

It turns out that elk birds have horns. Also, it turns out they are represented by big capital Es, which any student of Dwarven history knows is a red flag. I checked the description and discovered that what I had thought were somewhat aggressive birds of prey were, in fact, giant elk with the heads of birds, native to the cavern system, and now apparently boiling over with dwarficidal zeal for some reason. The subsequent campaigns of my hastily-assembled wrestler militia’s against the elk bird menace went about as well as you would expect elk-wrestling to go; ith terrible swiftness, all that was left was my brewer, cowering in his still behind a locked door and nursing his broken leg. That was the end of my first 2010 fortress.

I generated an adventurer and went back to explore and it was exactly like the start of Aliens. I love this game.

05/04/2010 at 16:30 Iucounu says:

I’ve definitely got turtle shells, but the remains of vermin have been building up in my fort for two years now with no sign of rotting away; I had to butcher a cute puppy to get bones for a possessed dwarf. I had to abandon my second fort because the invisible underground cave system seemed to be crumbling away; it would zoom to twenty thousand leagues below the sea every three seconds with an urgent announcement about a cave-in. Also, my hunters don’t fancy hunting for some reason, and farming requires irrigation even in soil layers; I haven’t had the acid rain thing yet.

05/04/2010 at 21:35 a says:

“turtles don’t leave shells behind (meaning a LOT more dwarves lost to insanity)”

Wait, what? This sounds like a game.

05/04/2010 at 16:17 jarvoll says:

I’ve played, and it was loads of fun, especially when people use the same handles as on RPS, so I can recognize who’s killing me :) My only complaint is that it’s hardly ever on – more please!