Dwarf Fortress: Mouse control could make it a construction hit

Dwarf Fortress is now a real veteran of the building games. After all, the first version appeared in 2006. But she suffered on a huge problem: Not only because of the graphics – or the absence of graphics – but also because of the lack of mouse control, the game was the absolute antithesis in terms of accessibility. The upcoming Steam version should set it up with the simplest features.

The mouse is finally used!

What was still missing in the game, the team already presented in a developer update from December 2020. And the answer is very simple: You simply expand the building game with simple interface elements that have been standard in the genre for years.

Simple mouse clicks instead of keyboard warriors: Above all, you will no longer operate the game’s cursor with the keyboard, but with the mouse. So you can easily place the blueprints for the various objects and rooms in the game world.

Tooltips help understanding: In the old ASCII version you no longer have to click through hundreds of submenus to get important information. In the future you can get them by simply placing the mouse pointer over an object. You can also find out the thoughts of your dwarfs very comfortably in this way.

The classic version of Dwarf Fortress is completely free and not monetized. There are corresponding games more often. We present ten of them in an extensive list:

When it comes to gameplay, Dwarf Fortress has never lacked. The game offers a completely new game world with every run, including centuries of history. All of the dwarfs in your fortress are simulated individually and each settlement is a new challenge.

The game offers a wide range of possible events. Some of them are so exciting that the Dwarf Fortress community sometimes produces entire video series just to illustrate them.

So even though the game is really exciting for strategy fans, it never got much fame outside of its die-hard fan base. The mouse control and tooltips now remove the last major hurdle and soon everyone can enjoy the profound game mechanics.

That should to shake up the genre of building games in the future. Because games like Rimworld have already shown that there is definitely an interest in titles like Dwarf Fortress if you can really play them without a degree.