One of the most popular and emblematic indie games of all time, Dwarf Fortress, took its time coming out on Steam. Its Steam release included a fancy new GUI, but no single-dwarf Adventure Mode, which was a shame. Thankfully, that’s all changing right now. Indeed, Adventure Mode is now out!
More specifically, Dwarf Fortress‘s long-anticipated Adventure Mode is now available on Steam in its beta form, allowing anyone intrigued by the prospect to give it a fair shake. Its appeal lies mainly in the fact that Adventure Mode doesn’t saddle you with a whole civilization’s worth of Dwarves to manage right off the bat. Instead, in Adventure Mode, it’s just your custom-built avatar and either one of your previously colonized worlds or a newly generated one instead. It is, therefore, a more focused and far simpler experience than you’d get in a regular Fortress Mode game of Dwarf Fortress.
Access Dwarf Fortress: Adventure Mode via Steam now
Anyone interested in Dwarf Fortress‘s Adventure Mode can download its beta build by doing the following:
- Right-click Dwarf Fortress in your Steam Library
- Go to the ‘Properties’ menu
- Select the ‘Betas’ option and then select the ‘beta – Public beta branch’ option from the dropdown list
This will kickstart the updated download and get you into Adventure Mode in short order. Curiously, it would appear that Adventure Mode comes with its own exclusive soundtrack made by Dabu and Simon Swerwer. The OST is already purchasable on Steam, and it’s interesting to note that this suite of music “will not be in Fortress mode for now,” as per the official blog.
The reason Adventure Mode is only in beta at this time is that the developer Bay 12 Games has a lot more to do before the mode is polished up enough for full release. As per the official announcement from the devs, they still wish to do all of the following:
- Resolve all major crashes
- Improve the quest log and information UIs, among a variety of other interfaces
- Add butchering and crafting, ability use, composing, motion and attack indicators, building interactions, wrestle buttons, stealth vision arcs, and heaps more
- Improve certain aspects of the UI in general, such as the hatch and ramp prompts
- Complete Adventure Mode’s full graphics and audio assets, as not all of them have made their way into the beta just yet
And this, as per the developer, is just scratching the surface of what else is coming to Adventure Mode and Dwarf Fortress proper. A long list, then, but that’s just how it is with Dwarf Fortress!
