Dwarf Fortress’ Adventure Mode awakened the tiny, pixelated Indiana Jones within me

Dwarf Fortress is many things. Most fans of PC gaming know it as a byzantine simulation of a colony of dwarves. Look closer, however, and you’ll also find that it’s a byzantine simulation of geologic forces, weather systems, and tidal movements; language, psychology, and poetry; medieval combat, of course, and even siegecraft. But the reason that I love the game so much is that it also simulates its own history, with tales of epic heroes and powerful artifacts strewn all across its procedurally generated digital worlds. Starting Wednesday, those histories will be more accessible than ever before.

On April 17, Bay 12 Games and Kitfox Games are adding Adventure Mode to Dwarf Fortress on Steam. It turns the colony sim into a turn-based third-person isometric adventure game, one where players can create not just their own singular character, but an entire party of adventurers. That means you’ll be able to retire that fortress you’ve been working on since the Steam version was released in 2022, and then explore its abandoned ruins in the third person.

But why stop there?

Also included in the Steam version of Dwarf Fortress is a module called Legends Mode. With it, you can explore the ancient history of the digital dimension where your dwarven fortress has been built. Like the wizard Gandalf poring over ancient texts in the archives of Minas Tirith, you can read about dozens of fantastical artifacts that have played a role in the creation of that world. Then, in Adventure Mode, you can attempt to hunt them down.

The developers shared an early version of the update with Polygon earlier this week, and since then I’ve been using it to create and explore a half dozen different worlds. For the latest world, I let the simulation run for 250 years before I dug deep into its historical record. What I found there was amazing — and surprisingly easy to navigate thanks to a modern, mouse compatible, hyperlinked interface. I was quickly able to drill down into just one of my world’s 116 historical artifacts, and read about its creation and who has wielded it in the nearly 180 years since its creation. I even know who last possessed it more than a century ago.