lemon poppyseed bread
That was hardly the first time I've stayed up all night playing a video game. Rarely, however, have I been so completely unaware of the passage of time while doing so. It wasn't until Alejandro started making "I'm hungry" faces at me that I noticed it was light out again. Then Megan got up to go to work, discovering I was where I was when she went to bed ... she came home from work ten hours later, I was still playing... It wasn't until about the 24-hour point that I passed the reigns off to Martin.
[the rest is behind a cut tag to spare the LJ readers -- apologies to those of you reading a syndicated feed who are being subjected to the whole thing.]
The thing that has me ensnared so is the latest from Bay 12 Games, Dwarf Fortress. They're conservatively calling the current release an alpha, but it's certainly playable, and while there are a few known bugs of varying degrees (e.g. hunting logic is overwhelmingly inefficient, opening a floodgate occasionally floods an entire map), most of the gameplay seems pretty bug-free. If it's "alpha" due to not all features being fully fleshed out, it's only because of the mind-boggling scale of the game.
Thing is, there are actually two or three games in here, intertwined by the fact that they take place in the same world. It's being called a roguelike, because it uses character-cell graphics on an 80x25 screen, but the primary gameplay is really more of a Sims type game. If you were comparing it to nethack, you would start by imaging that you are going to build the Mines of Moria, or at least as far down as Minetown. You start with a settling party of seven dwarves at a cliff face. Some of them have pick-axes, some know how to hew furniture from stone, etc... Then there's exploration of the inside of the mountain for resources, building up an industry to produce trade goods, and provide for your population's desires for food, comfort, and grog. That last bit is not to be ignored -- all the dwarven character descriptions seem to include the line "needs alcohol to get through a full day of work."
The characters remember what has happened to them recently -- have they been caught in the rain? or sleep next to a noisy workshop? -- and all this goes on to contribute to their mental state. Being comforted by pets, eating fine food, witnessing death, making friends, admiring art and craftsmanship, all this goes in to determining whether a dwarf is happy or going on a rampage. You don't want to have a dwarf on a rampage; he or she can do a lot of damage, both to the surrounding area and to other dwarves. Bodily damage is location-specific, and some of it (such as spinal damage) does not heal.
So, you're going to build yourself a dwarf fortress. But maybe you let all your food get stolen by raccoons or your fortress is overrun by frogmen. What next? Well, the site of your fortress was just one possible fortress site in this world, and the world is large. (and generated randomly just for you when you initialize the game. Unless you don't want to wait twenty minutes for one, in which case you can download one from the web site.) So you can send out another party of seven dwarves to try to settle somewhere else, or you can make an adventurer dwarf and play the game in Adventure Mode.
That mode is closer to your traditional roguelike, it's pretty much a turn-based computer RPG, you've got your guy and he can run around the wilderness, occasionally meeting other people who he can go on quests for or convince to join his party. Along the way you learn about the world and its legends, both those created by your gameplay and those myths and legends from the world's history. You may encounter other (attempted) dwarf fortresses. Perhaps you will try to reclaim them? Perhaps take your party and start a new one?
As I finally went to sleep last night, I hoped that a twenty-four hour binge was enough to satisfy my attraction to the game, if not enough to make me sick of it. But I still feel it calling me now...
I wonder how Martin did last night.