A Game of Dwarves Bedtime Story Trailer


Paradox’s latest trailer for A Game Of Dwarves shows us the antagonist in the game – mages! Dastardly wizards, it seems, are responsible for dwarven hardships, and it’ll presumably be the becowled-ones that you’ll be taking on as you carve your kingdoms. The presentation of the backstory as a bedtime story is cute, too. Which sort of sums up this entire “if Bullfrog made dwarf fortress” sort of affair…


I regard it as the great tragedy of my life that no one reads me a bedtime story anymore. Sniff.

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65 Comments

  1. 08/06/2012 at 11:06 Gnoupi says:

    Funny trailer, but I hope the game will be better than it looks, at least on the animation level.

    Character animations are quite “flat”, for now. They feel like floating around instead of walking/turning. And when breaking the wall, you don’t really feel like they are doing it. You just see some movements in front of the stone, which magically disappears.

    I doubt this will be changed before release, though.

    • 08/06/2012 at 16:40 Joshua Northey says:

      Honestly I hate to sound like someone who got their first PC in 1991, but I could honestly care less what it looks like if the gameplay is really good. Granted if the gameplay is iffy visual spectacles can sometimes save a game, but this isn’t that kind of game. It will either stand or fall on the gameplay not on animations (from an enjoyment perspective, obviously from a sales perspectives having the pretties is required sadly).

    • 08/06/2012 at 18:38 cptgone says:

      as long as the gameplay is good, and the interface is intuitive and user friendly, i couldn’t care less about the animations.

      • 09/06/2012 at 00:39 escooler says:

        You say that, but good animation is incredibly important. Its the loving touches that really make a game look polished and special. They are the details that you never notice until they are wrong, then they make a game feel hammy. Animation especially, even more so than the graphics.

        Good animation does not cost any more than bad animation, it just takes a little more time. Although this is not a realise its a trailer I suppose.

  2. 08/06/2012 at 11:13 Some_Guy says:

    love the music at the end

  3. 08/06/2012 at 11:17 Chris D says:

    WIZARD!

    I couldn’t help myself. I’m so sorry.

  4. 08/06/2012 at 11:18 Drake Sigar says:

    *Spits* filthy mages.

  5. 08/06/2012 at 11:20 BurningPet says:

    This hardly resemble anything bullfrog would have done. their trailers were short, witty and beautifully made.

    However, i still hope this game will turn out good, although, i am becoming skeptical each passing day and trailer.

  6. 08/06/2012 at 11:22 lionheart says:

    That’s the most appalling Scottish accent; couldn’t they have just called a random Scottish person from Sweden (or wherever they are) and asked them to read the lines?

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      08/06/2012 at 11:46 Sinomatic says:

      Scandi-scottish was a new one on me.

      Still better than Mel Gibson though.

    • 08/06/2012 at 11:49 aldo_14 says:

      That’s meant to be Scottish?

    • 08/06/2012 at 12:18 iniudan says:

      There is a random Scottish person in Sweden at Paradox Interactive, Chris King.

    • 08/06/2012 at 12:24 kikito says:

      Then only the Scottish would have understood the trailer.

      Which might have played in their advantage, incidentally – “Hey, they invented a new language for the Dwarfs and everything! Like Skyrim!”

    • 08/06/2012 at 12:25 Drake Sigar says:

      Next you’ll be saying Magicka’s Sweedish was wrong.

    • 08/06/2012 at 12:37 Kollega says:

      Yeah, i agree that the accent was bloody awful.

  7. 08/06/2012 at 11:28 hjd_uk says:

    Magicka / Game of Dwarves corssover ?

  8. 08/06/2012 at 11:29 adonf says:

    “The dwarves will rise again” is funny in many ways.

    • 08/06/2012 at 11:32 Vexing Vision says:

      Just not to the same niveau they occupied before. They’re a very level people.

      • 08/06/2012 at 12:08 frightlever says:

        Did you realise you had used “level” twice in a sentence so you checked thesaurus.com for a substitute and came up with “niveau”? There’s worrying about your writing, but that’s just unbalanced.

    • 08/06/2012 at 17:59 Saiko Kila says:

      In Dwarf Fortress that would mean that the dwarves will be risen as undead creatures by necromancers, to strike at they former kin, and to work as slaves for the undead civilisation. Maybe these “mages” here are indeed necromancers.

  9. 08/06/2012 at 11:36 svick says:

    Can somebody explain to me what does the X-Wing do in there?

  10. 08/06/2012 at 12:31 Artist says:

    “if Bullfrog made dwarf fortress”….
    … it wouldnt look as if a 5yr old made the textures and animations….

  11. 08/06/2012 at 12:36 Kollega says:

    This trailer strongly reminds me of a similar trailer for Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution.

  12. 08/06/2012 at 14:09 HexagonalBolts says:

    What was the other similar 3D dwarf-y / dig-y game in development? I can’t seem to find it anywhere in searches!

  13. 08/06/2012 at 14:51 Kestrel says:

    I think I prefer the artwork from Dwarf Fortress over this. Hopefully they’ll polish it up so the dwarfs don’t look so bland and lifeless.

    • 08/06/2012 at 15:02 Torgen says:

      The art and animations do feel “placeholder-y.” I fear the execution is going to fall short of expectations.

    • 08/06/2012 at 15:43 HexagonalBolts says:

      The animations really are dire…

    • 08/06/2012 at 16:44 Brun says:

      The artwork and style of DF is fine – you get used to it and once you know what all the symbols represent it’s easy to visualize what’s happening.

      DF’s biggest shortcoming is its interface – a lot of the complexity of that game comes from the fact that doing ANYTHING requires navigating through several menus and lists with your keyboard (no mouse).

    • 08/06/2012 at 20:11 hjd_uk says:

      Tilesets FTW – you dont have to play in ASCII.

      • 08/06/2012 at 22:01 ichigo2862 says:

        I used tilesets when learning the game, but now that I’m getting the hang of it, I don’t know, the ASCII just feels more…dwarfy. To each his own, I suppose.

  14. 08/06/2012 at 18:37 cptgone says:

    i’m not into midget pr0n, but this looks sexy!

  15. 08/06/2012 at 19:00 Scuzzball says:

    Now that I halfway understand what’s happening with DF, I really don’t want to sacrifice complexity for graphics. I do use Dwarf Theripist, and a tileset, but those just help with the game, they don’t sacrifice complexity. The problem with DF is that it’s a niche game, and probably will not get mainstream love. There was that one article about in in the New York Times, but still. Anyone trying to make a game that will make money, you need to make it user friendly. And DF is not that. It is about Fun. I was hopeful about this game, but not as much anymore. I think I’ll stay with DF, even if I don’t really understand military bits yet, or have enough dwarves to start playing around yet.

  16. 08/06/2012 at 20:05 Ironclad says:

    “if Bullfrog made dwarf fortress”

    They did. It was called Dungeon Keeper.

    • 08/06/2012 at 20:56 Trinnet says:

      And it was fantastic.

      I’m looking forward to this game. If it winds up being a spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper, then it’ll be great, if it turns out to be a shallower but more accessible version of Dwarf Fortress then I’ll be even more excited.

  18. 08/06/2012 at 21:46 MrEvilGuy says:

    Why do the mages look so evil?! The wizards should be like real people with feelings and all that. It would be funnier to me if the game portrayed a clash of stereotyping and misunderstandings between the wizards and dwarves rather than a fight of good versus evil.

    • 08/06/2012 at 22:05 ichigo2862 says:

      Dwarves=win. I always have room for more dorfs on my plate. ALWAYS

    • 09/06/2012 at 01:48 Joshua Northey says:

      The same reason Tolkien made his books about good versus evil. It is an easy and thoughtless way to move the narrative without any planning.

      This guy is bad because, well he is just BAD! Why bother with real motivations and storylines when you can just make everything black and white.

    • 09/06/2012 at 07:01 Jackablade says:

      They can’t have good wizards. The bible says they’re all evil and in line with Satan and such like. To say otherwise would be heresy and then God-faring people would have to come and set them on fire and that would be rather unpleasant for all involved. Particularly the on fire people.

    • 09/06/2012 at 10:16 LionsPhil says:

      If only we could talk to the mages.

  19. 10/06/2012 at 12:53 bladedsmoke says:

    At 0:40 in the video, is… is that Haunter?