The Dwarf Fortress Of Survival Gaming Has Been In Continual...
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Dwarf Fortress has achieved mythical status for its furiously detailed algorithmic worlds, its legendarily long development, and the fact that its creators, Tarn and Zach Adams, seem content to continue working on it for the rest of their lives. But Bay12 Games' monument to emergent storytelling isn't the only project of its kind. In fact, it isn't even the oldest life simulation that's still in active development.
Indeed, while calling UnReal World the Dwarf Fortress of survival gaming is convenient shorthand, it might be fairer to say that Dwarf Fortress is the UnReal World of fantasy fortification management. A procedurally generated survivalist roguelike set in Iron Age Finland, UnReal World has been in continual development since 1992.
In the decades since it launched, UnReal World has amassed a dizzying array of systems. It pioneered mechanics like crafting and shelter construction years before they became mainstream, while it also boasts complex animal AI, a highly detailed combat system that simulates injuries to specific body parts, and magic inspired by Finnish folklore. And it's all the work of just two people.
UnReal World is the creation of Sami Maaranen, who together with programmer and longtime UnReal World collaborator Erkka Lehmus, runs the indie studio Enormous Elk. Maaranen began designing UnReal World when he was just 14 years old, having learned to code during his childhood.
"At about the age of maybe eight or nine, we got our own Commodore as a Christmas present, but it wasn't a Commodore 64, it was a Commodore 16, because it was a little bit cheaper," Maaranen tells me over a scratchy video call from his home in rural Finland. "We had my uncle visiting [that] Christmas, and he was a bit of a tech guy, into computers and stuff, and he used to read this manual to us kids, me and my older brother."
Eventually Maaranen graduated to a PC, where he became obsessed with online Bulletin Board Systems, even running his own for a time. "The BBSs were full of interesting indie games, and I found the roguelike [genre]—Nethack, Moria, Omega—and they hit me really hard," he says. "At some point
Source: PC Gamer
