Dwarf Fortress is best known as a colony sim, but the wonderfully detailed fantasy world’s it generates can be played in different ways. Adventure mode is a procedurally generated RPG campaign in which you control just a single character, and it’s now on its way to Kitfox’s DF-with-graphics Steam release in April 2024.

Adventure mode brings several new features to Dwarf Fortress, some of which will benefit the colony management sim, too. Characters now have faces, for example, with portraits of dwarves reflecting “their description, from wounds to clothing to hairstyle.” The world map is being revised to more clearly highlight roads, towns and homes, all of which important landmarks on your adventures.

Combat is also being updated visually and mechanically, with a new wrestling system. “This will encourage players who may have in the past avoided grappling, to maybe look forward to a tussle,” says the press release. This is Dwarf Fortress though, so you can also ignore combat entirely and spend your time reciting poems in taverns.

If you’ve always been intimidated by Dwarf Fortress, my experience is that Adventure mode is a good way to experience the charms of its procedural world and high level of simulation. I wrote about playing it in the original ASCII release all the way back in 2014, in which I’m given a quest by a local farmer. “A creature of the night has our people cowering in fear,” he says. “The Ignorant Holes is very near. Seek this place and kill Laka Wordsblotted.”

While on the fast travel map, bounding across hills and forests with Kafek at my side, an icon appears dead ahead of us. “You have discovered a camp,” a message reads. A camp! All of my experiences with the people in this region have been positive so far, and I imagine a travelling band of friendly tradesmen who might offer us new jobs or sell us tools. Also, every conversation has an “Accuse of being a night crawler” button, and I’m dying to try it out. Doing so in the wilds with a small group of people seems a better idea than pointing fingers in a heavily populated city.

This ends badly. I look forward to getting to experience similar adventures with a better, mouse-driven interface and some lovely sprite art come April.