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Watch as we stride into war atop a cave dragon in Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is as fascinating as it is confusing, but we want to unravel its mysteries.

Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter 2: Dwarf Fortress, which received its first major update in two years last month, is difficult to describe and challenging to begin. The product of a team of brothers, Tarn and Zach Adams, it looks like it might have been released in the 1980s. But its graphical simplicity masks a game that can span hundreds of miles, thousands of characters and multiple races. And all of Dwarf Fortress is displayed as simple ASCII text so impressive that it's on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Yes, in Dwarf Fortress, you play as a dwarf and there are certainly fortresses, but that's hardly a fair description. Today, Charlie Hall will be our guide into a game so dense that it will crush your CPU.

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