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Iconic ASCII sim 'Dwarf Fortress' will hit Steam and Itch on December 6th with major upgrades
The new version of the 16-year-old game has pixel art, a new sound track, a tutorial for new players and a revamped UI.
Legendary ASCII game 'Dwarf Fortress' is coming to Steam
The 17-year-old classic Dwarf Fortress is considered a pioneer in gaming through its massive, highly interactive world, but it's a tough sell to modern gamers with its ASCII graphics and its absence on modern game stores. That won't be an issue for much longer: Bay 12 and publisher Kitfox Games have announced that Dwarf Fortress is not only coming to Steam and Itch.io, but will launch with honest-to-goodness artwork. While it won't ease the learning curve for the game, you at least won't have to squint at your screen quite so intensely as before.
The Game Archaeologist: A brief history of roguelikes
As with adventure games, it appears as though the mobile market has triggered a resurgence in the popularity of roguelikes with both developers and players. I've been stumbling over them left and right for a while now (I'm quite fond of FTL, which takes the roguelike into space), and every time I can't help but think of how this genre is almost the antithesis of an MMO. Instead of persistent worlds rich in lore, roguelikes favor randomized dungeon crawls with little or no story. Instead of immortal characters that grow with a player over months and years, roguelikes feature permadeath around every corner. Yet there's love for both in many gamers' hearts and perhaps even a few similarities that help to transcend differences. I find roguelikes fascinating because they are so hardcore, they yank me out of my comfy little leveling bubble, and they force me to use my brains for something more than figuring out whether it's time to use the "2" key once more. So what the heck, let's take a quick trip through roguelikes this week and see where -- if at all -- they connect with MMOs.
EVE Online coming to NYC's Museum of Modern Art
New York City's Museum of Modern Art is prepping a new video game exhibit for next year and has selected EVE Online to be one of the first 14 titles included. The sci-fi MMO will join the company of titles like Tetris, Portal, and The Sims starting in March 2013. While attendees will be able to play some of the titles in the gallery, Senior Curator Paola Antonelli said that the staff had to get creative with titles like EVE Online: "To convey their experience, we will work with players and designers to create guided tours of these alternate worlds so the visitor can begin to appreciate the extent and possibilities of the complex gameplay." Antonelli said that all of the selections were chosen "as outstanding examples of interaction design." The museum hopes to expand the exhibit to 40 titles in the near future.
The New York Times examines Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress is an ASCII roguelike/city-building game for Windows, OSX, and Linux. The New York Times wrote a six-page magnum-opus about the game and its creators.
