Last month, the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress received the long-awaited addition of its absentee roguelike Adventure Mode after a lengthy beta period. The fan-favorite feature from the game's ASCII era allows players to venture the vast, procedural wilderness as a lone, probably doomed wanderer. Today, Dwarf Fortress publisher Kitfox Games announced via a Steam news post that Adventure Mode's return signalled a "new era of development," detailing the plans that Dwarf Fortress's creators have for its future now that they've brought its past to the present.
"Now that both modes have been updated for the Steam version, we can focus on quality of life fixes, more modding support and brand new features Tarn’s been excited to add," Kitfox said. "We will be busy with Dwarf Fortress development for a long time!"
The first bold new addition in the march towards Dwarf Fortress's tomorrow? New fruit art. In a patch today providing bug fixes for both Adventure and Fortress mode, the game also received new pixel art for "all of the tree growths, like fruit, flowers, and leaves."
If new banana visuals don't do it for you, Kitfox also offered a look at the plans for Dwarf Fortress's next updates. First, an upgrade to the game's Lua scripting, coming courtesy of developer Bay 12 Games' first non-Adams programmer, "will allow you to create more powerful mods and lay the foundation for future Myth and Magic updates."
Then, an upcoming Fortress Mode release will aim to add some additional depth to sieges, and "add the first Fortress mode abilities to interact with magic systems." A list of possible additions—"none of which are guaranteed," Kitfox said—includes:
- Letting besieging armies learn from where they're taking losses and plot out alternate invasion routes
- Allowing besieging forces to "build, demolish, and dig" provided they have the appropriate gear
- "More interesting" kidnapped humans and dwarves, including "warlords and demon-trained sorcerers"
- "Temple/etc.-based defenses" for nullifying magic from aforementioned demon-trained sorcerers
- Making invading megabeasts "more interesting," which I'm sure my vulnerable fortress population will be thrilled to experience
Further down the roadmap, an Adventure Mode update will enable "Site Building," letting adventurers build their own settlements by hand. Following that, Bay 12 Games is aiming for a world map generation overhaul with "rewrites and additions and beautifications, especially those needed to get us prepared for a more magical and procedural, dynamically-reactive future."
With those planned updates checked off, Kitfox says Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams intends to "return to systems," diving back into the work on "villains, army warfare, civilizations, etc." that he'd been working on before the Steam release. Throughout those planned updates, Kitfox says Dwarf Fortress will get "even more myth and magic changes and content that make sense to add along the way," continuing Adams' now eight-year effort to add an absurdly ambitious mythology and magic system to his already-sprawling procedural fantasy. Whether it takes two years or 12, I'm eager to see it.
Dwarf Fortress is available on Steam, and you can still download Dwarf Fortress Classic for free from the Bay 12 website.
