I’ve been curious about Dwarf Fortress for a long time, but I could never get over the hurdle of ascii graphics (ironically) so it never happened. Turns out Gnomoria scratches that itch quite well, and actually has pretty pictures to look at.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); }); As you’d expect from a Dwarf Fortress-like, it’s got a bit of a learning curve. Hopefully by the time it’s out of alpha, they’ll add some more tutorials. Despite that, once you get into it, it’s riches777 easy to get lost in designing the perfect little base for your gnomes. The most frustrating part of the game for a new player is that you don’t give orders directly to your gnomes. You g2g1bet queue up jobs and the first free gnome with an appropriate skillset will take care of it. So often I’d find myself wondering why a job wouldn’t get done for an hour. Which means off to the wiki to dig through lists of items and jobs to figure out what was missing. Eventually you get the hang of it, and it can get fairly addicting. I ended up going back to the game before finishing the video because I wanted to just add one more thing to my base. One more thing. Until some goblins invaded and everyone died and I figured I should probably get back to work. It’s $8 right now for the alpha on Desura, Steam, H25 or the Humble Store. You can also check out a demo on the game’s site Watchlistis where we show off gameplay of new and upcoming games. You’ll see some videos that aren’t on the front page of Kotaku, and hopefully some games you haven’t seen before!