In embarking on my first ever venture with Dwarf Fortress, I must admit that I relied heavily on the Wiki. Unlike Machine, I loath the music that accompanies the game- it is annoyingly simple and melodic (apparently played on a 6-string guitar by Tarn Adams himself) and seems to taunt me as I toil over the intricacies of the game itself. Indeed, I turned my laptop’s volume off and appreciated the early 2000s hip-hop issuing forth from the coffee shop’s speakers instead.

So vintage Jay-Z accompanied me into the Dwarf Fortress. I opted to follow the Fortress Mode tutorial step-by-step, as I’m a complete beginner, and this guide offered the basics for building a “minimal fortress”. I’ve not only never played DF, but have also never played a “construction and management simulation” type of game, like DF or SimCity. I’ve only ever played in worlds where the virtual structures were already present, and my main goal was to guide the protagonist through a series of riddles.

So I feel like a complete novice. To add an extra dose of anxiety to this experience, I read that Dwarf Fortress is unique because: “unlike many games, the world that your game takes place in will always be procedurally randomly generated by you or someone else.” Whoa! This game is already making me feel disoriented! (Is DF a type of “metanovel,” as Wardrip-Fruin defined it? A computer program that tells stories that only a computer can tell?). Is this why I feel like I have zero control and keep pressing the spacebar to pause the game?

My sea of clubs…

Anyway, the Wiki provided helpful advice as I conjured up my first world– no aquifers and low savagery levels, please! I had to do a few searches before I found a suitable region, and then it took me an additional while to assign all of the tasks to my various dwarves (and avoid the useless stray cats and dogs and yaks). I could only find six dwarves in my virtual world, so I had to do my best with them. I’m not sure if the seventh was hiding somewhere, but I scoured the entire region and found no trace of him or her. With Ast, Tirist, Tulon, Urdim, Udib, and Rigòth as my faithful (sometimes) companions, I attempted to do some mining and channelling. The channeling seemed successful, as evidenced by a rectangle of upside down triangles. However, I couldn’t seem to successfully mine the area. Or, at least, there were no visual cues beyond the original blinking “+” signs to indicate that the area had been zoned for mining. Was the mining happening, and I just couldn’t see this process? After leaving the dwarves alone for five minutes to work on their invisible mining, I found that much of my region had been overtaken by white club symbols. It seems I must restart again…

Beyond being frustrated by the absence of visual queues to indicate certain processes (or being unaware of their presence because of my own stupidity), I was also annoyed by the fact that I couldn’t seem to successfully “save” my progress in the game. I had to restart my fort-building three times with three different sets of semi-cooperative dwarves because I had encountered obstacles or had had to temporarily shut down my computer because it was lunchtime and I had to walk home, etc.

I haven’t given up, but I also haven’t turned the volume back on.