A friend of mine recently introduced me to a game called Dwarf Fortress.  The pitch went something like this:

“Have you ever heard of Dungeon Keeper?”

“Have you ever heard of Fuck Yeah I’ve heard of Dungeon Keeper?”

“Well this is like Dungeon Keeper, except way more sophisticated and in three dimensions”.

At this point I started gibbering maniacally as I attempted to assimilate the awesomeness of the concept leveled at my encephalon.

“Well there’s just one thing, it’s a roguelike, all the graphics are in ASCII”.

What an emotional roller coaster.  I thought it was too good to be true.  If Dungeon Keeper 3 ever emerged from the ashes of a studio murdered by EA, I would be waiting in line outside Future Shop with tears of joy in my eyes.  The concept of hacking away at an ASCII game though did not really appeal to me.  Nevertheless, I gave it a try.

That was a week ago, and I haven’t eaten or slept since.  I sit here, moribund and wretched, hoping that this game will release me from its cruel, cruel embrace.  The developers who wrote this game are clearly doing it for their own amusement, and find the development of gameplay to be infinitely more interesting than making it pretty or intuitive.

Despite the face that the game uses only ASCII graphics, it requires a modern processor.  The reason for this is because all the cycles usually spent figuring out where polygons should go and how exactly to display them, in real-time, have been freed up to do insane gameplay things.  For example:

• The first time you play, you need to procedurally generate a world in which you will put your fortress.  This world will be big.  Fractal algorithms will be used to generate terrain.  Erosion will be applied.  Rock formations are geologically accurate, as is the hydrology.  An entire history will be generated for this world, for you to explore should you so desire to do so in Adventurer mode.
• Water behaves as water should, including transmitting pressure.  I have learned this the hard way after trying to dig reservoirs for myself and watching my fortress flood from below as the water rushes up.
• Dwarves have minds of their own.  On one occasion, one of my dwarves saw fit to kill another dwarf, drag his body into a workshop, tear his skull off, and make it into a totem.  He was laughing insanely the entire time.  I found this to be both highly amusing and somewhat disturbing (but mostly hilarious).
• Mechanical power exists, and you’ll have to build series of gears and axles if you want to harness it.  Due to what I assume is a bug in the game, it’s currently possible to make a waterwheel which powers a pump…which drives the waterwheel.  This setup will in fact also generate additional power that you can use to do useful work.  Apparently the developers don’t give a shit about the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
• Extremely sophisticated build pipelines exist, there seems to be 40-50 different types of work that dwarves can do, and it’s reasonably amusing to find a way to get that working properly.
• Losing is fun… and lose you will.  The learning curve of this game is like scaling a sheer cliff made of jagged glass - and your eyes only see the world in ASCII.  There’s something deeply amusing about piping a magma vent into the lair of some rowdy minotaurs who happened to be sharing the land with you, only to discover you’ve breached your fortress into theirs at a different level, and all your dwarves are dying in a firey blaze as well.

This is not a game for the meek, but if you can get over the initial struggle, you may also find yourself near death in front of your computer, contemplating how many times the sun has gone up and down since you last went outside.

I’ve always wanted to choke a wookie.

If Portal was a Flash game, it would be You Have To Burn The Rope.

You should go play it right now. If you get stuck, here’s a walkthrough.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, the Byron Review has been released (full text here).  Tanya Byron, she’s a widely respected clinical psychologist who actually knows what she’s talking about.  She was commisioned by the Prime Minister of the UK to conduct an indepentant review of the risks to children from exposure to potentially inappropriate content on the internet and in video games.  Instead of a knee-jerk reaction typical in the media and Mothers know best, Byron presents a rational, evidence-based and analytical view of the situation.

Parents are often much less adept at the usage of technologies that have emerged during their child’s lifetime, and the review recommends improving the support framework so that parents can make decisions about their children in an educated manner, instead of reacting to fear-mongering impulses.

Some sample recommendations:

• Globally, the video games industry is thriving and the popularity of video gaming amongst children and young people is widespread. Games are diverse and developing rapidly, especially with the growth of online gaming and increasing convergence with other media, such as film. We need to take a sophisticated approach to classifying games and managing children’s access to them in the context of this diversity and convergence. We also need to recognise that there is no single solution to the problem of children and young people playing games that might not be appropriate for them.
• There are some possible negative effects of violent content in games, but these only become ‘harmful’ when children present other risk factors
• When it comes to content, parents want better information on which to base their decisions – but importantly, they do see it as their role because only they can take into account the characteristics of their children and the context in which they play. This is reinforced in the research evidence, where context and what the child brings to the gaming experience is key to understanding potential risks and harms.
• Children and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe – this isn’t just about a top-down approach. Children will be children – pushing boundaries and taking risks. At a public swimming pool we have gates, put up signs, have lifeguards and shallow ends, but we also teach children how to swim.