Two of my favorite mediums in this world are colony management game Dwarf Fortress and John Carpenter’s The Thing, the 1982 sci-fi horror film about an underground base in Antarctica in which Kurt Russell discovers the true value of friendship. Now, a holy modder has united these two blessed properties with a Dwarf Fortress mod called The Parasyte-Thing.
As you might have guessed from the title, the mod is inspired by The Thing and Parasyte, a horror manga series that also features small alien organisms entering and taking over humans’ bodies with horrible results. Combine the necromancers, vampires, and beastmen of Dwarf Fortress into one unpredictable and contagious enemy, and you have Parasyte-Thing.
With the mod enabled, you’ll find parasites on the surface at random: modder GhostPutty says they look like titans, but are usually the result of bites from infected vermin in frozen biomes or the third layer of the cavern.
When that happens, you will have problems; this is known in the Dwarf Fortress community as “FUN”, always capitalized. GhostPutty worked on the mod with LJneko, who created the extremely red and crude artwork for when the FUN really begins: there are heavy, toothy beasts in places they shouldn’t be, dwarves squirming open to reveal toothy alien maws and similar plants. structures (also with teeth).
GhostPutty says there are a few recipes that can be used to stop the spread of the beast or possibly attract it; players can figure it out for themselves, we suppose.
You can find Parasyte-Thing on the Steam Workshop for Dwarf Fortress, and to use it, just click the green subscribe button. Fire up Dwarf Fortress and activate the Parasyte-Thing mod during world generation, and you’ll be ready to embark on what is sure to be a very tense expedition.
Check out our picks for the best horror games on PC if you like being scared or disgusted on your desktop.