Losing is Fun... for Everyone! 😈

Dwarf Fortress has the well-earned title of being one of the most torturous games to learn. There is a lot going on, even after we changed all the ridiculous keyboard commands and replaced the Matrix-like interface with some understandable, and awesome, pixel art. It still needs something. Something to ease the need to head straight to a wiki just to understand what's going on. The answer is the tutorial of course.

To make the tutorial all it can be, we found the ultimate play tester: my wife Annie. There are a lot of base-building games out there now, enough to make Dwarf Fortress easier to get into. She doesn't play any of them. The closest she gets to DF is Overcooked 2. After one failed attempt with the original, the latest version of the tutorial allowed her to get good enough at the game to tunnel under a bog and drown her fortress.

Our aim is to make this level of play achievable by anyone. We want the world to be able to lose this game and have fun doing it.

• Zach

P.S. A note from Kitfox, our publisher: Very soon, Alexandra will be starting a streaming video series on learning this new version of Dwarf Fortress! Follow along and get ready to stock up on knowledge at our Twitch or YouTube channels.