I've been learning how to play Dwarf Fortress for the last three days. You wouldn't think just learning how to play a video game would be a three plus day ordeal, but with Dwarf Fortress it seems to be. If you don't know what Dwarf Fortress is, it's essentially a dwarven settlement simulator and sandbox. A fully developed and gigantic world is generated, and a crew of 8 dwarves is dropped into it and while they'll kind of do their own thing, they completely require your guidance on how to survive.

So far in three days I've learned how to instruct my dwarves to mine, build furniture out of stone or wood, chop trees, organize their goods, cook meals, hunt and butcher animals, construct mechanism, and set up traps for intruders. I've spent time myself arranging small bedrooms and assigning them to the dwarves, a job that never seems to end as new migrant dwarves randomly show up to live in my mine. I was near the end of ten bedrooms built when a migrant wave of 22 dwarves showed up. Sometimes it feels like a dwarven hotel simulator...

What's the objective of the game? There really isn't one, other than hopefully allowing for the continued survival of your dwarves. The fun of Dwarf Fortress really comes from the absurd or complex situations your dwarves can get themselves into. I was talking to someone who I saw playing Dwarf Fortress on Steam, and I asked him through chat if he had any epic DF stories, because everyone has an epic story to share. He called me on voice chat, and proceeded to regale me with an epic tail of a morose dwarf driven to rage by a series of events to absurd to remember. The dwarf smashed through several walls and supports of the fortress, flooding it, and killing everyone inside but himself. Technically, he lost the game, but really, that story was the whole point of playing for him.

For me, too, though I don't yet have a fortress seriously built. So far my only story is that twice now I've had a dwarf build a wall to plug up a hole that I used to flood my indoor farm, and the dwarf has trapped themselves in the hole where the lake was on the outside of the fort. I have to send a miner to build a staircase on the outside for the other dwarf to climb out of the hole. Last night while I was playing, a pony and horse started kicking each other in my pastures. They wouldn't stop, not that I think there was a way that I could get them to. For about five minutes they're just kicking each other back and forth, bruising each other's legs, chasing each other around the pasture.

If you're interested in trying to play Dwarf Fortress, because your curiosity is peaked by a game that takes days upon days to learn, you'll want to do it by downloading the Lazy Newb Pack. To see how to get it up and running, I recommend watching this first YouTube video. A few of the ones after it are good for getting a feel, but really your best bet is to just follow this Quickstart guide from the DF wiki. Those videos go on forever.

This song is used during spring when you turn off DF's default sounds and use the SoundSense utility. I like it a lot, which is why I'm posting it here, and even talking about Dwarf Fortress at all. Keep in mind this band is Viking Metal, which is completely bad ass, but it's not what I normally post. Just fair warning. This song is so great though, isn't it? So great.