There is likely little we could say about Dwarf Fortress that hasn't already been said, so we'll keep this brief.
Dwarf Fortress is a construction and management simulation roguelike that has been in development since 2002 (yes, really!). As the title would suggest, you take command of a small group of dwarves looking to make a fortress home in the vast wilderness of your uniquely-generated world. Rather than taking direct control of any character, you play as a sort of god-like task manager, designating what the dwarves should do, and allowing them to assign the specifics of the task amongst themselves. Originally, the game was entirely in ASCII art, with modifications allowing players to add visual imagery. 20 years after inception, the game was brought to Steam, with huge upgrades to the graphical elements of the game, along with a slew of quality of life controls.
Dwarf Fortress is a game which, on its surface, looks quite complicated, and this assessment isn't completely inaccurate. Its complexity, though, is really a result of dozens of smaller, simpler systems interacting with each other. Each practical mechanic of fortress maintenance is interwoven with each dwarf's individual needs and desires, ranging from biological processes to metaphysical ones, such as socialization and religious practice. Managing these needs while protecting the fortress from external threats, like enemy nations, giant monsters, or annoying birds, makes up the main gameplay loop of the game. The game is emergent narrative finely tuned; there really are seemingly countless ways that a run could conclude. And as there is no technical end goal, a conclusion generally means you have lost the game. Thanks to its frequently unforgiving gameplay, the community has a sort of mantra: "Losing is fun!"
We first played Dwarf Fortress in 2018, making this one of a handful of revisits in this project. When we played it then, we bounced off it somewhat quickly due to its daunting scale. With the updated presentation, we found getting onboard quite a lot easier this time around. Our first fortress showed some mild success, though it was trounced by a horde of living dead within the first 10 hours of gameplay. Our second was a fluke, with a major flooding disaster sweeping through the fortress before our first hour was up.
Our third fortress, Bridgebinds, has about 30 hours in it at this point. We have a modest army, a thriving agricultural and brewing economy, and access to magma, making forging metal much breezier. Our successes have earned the attention of our dwarven home empire, promoting it to the status of a duchy. We could be working on this file for quite some time, so we feel comfortable calling the review here. We may post an update on the fortress's ultimate demise, though how it will happen, we can't foresee at the moment. Maybe it will have to do with our growing vampire population.
Whatever happens, it should be fun.