look, the new steam release still has some rough edges. you're still going to need to have the (excellent! well-run!) wiki page open a lot. there are still bugs, and things that might be bugs or might be misunderstandings, and lots of you fighting the interface.

but it's worth it. worth it for holding your breath to see if you accidentally flooded your fort when you forgot water flowed diagonally, and dug too deep. worth it for barely squeezing through a winter as animals help themselves to your weapons stockpile while you try to brew enough alcohol to stave off a fort-wide temper tantrum until you realize you forgot to clear out a rotting corpse and oops, all miasma! worth it for when a vampire or a dragon or a necromancer shows up and you realize you are just going to not survive this one, and Losing Is Fun.

And you know what? the community is really sweet about it. because we've all been there. sometimes it's just out of our hands. if you want to opt out, you can absolutely roll a map of even-tempered wildlife by a gently babbling brook (and sigh as your mayor gets his eyes pecked out by a wild parrot anyway). Or you can tempt fate and and wage total warfare as nobles sling demands at you and you dump them into lava pools.

i'm not going to pretend to be objective about this. I've been playing this game for over ten years. it means a lot to me, and i immediately sunk in to a new round. it's not the easiest thing to learn, but it's influence is wide and deep. it surprises me still. what else can you say in praise of a game?

Reviewed on Dec 08, 2022


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