Nothing compares to the brilliance of Dwarf Fortress, and the fact it's still alive and kicking after all these years, is a testament to that. A game all about the player-driven story in a truly vast universe. Sure, you need to program the actual Kraken, but the bones of that encounter have been completed in mere moments.įew games embody this limitless potential like 2006’s Dwarf Fortress. If you want to add a thrilling combat encounter against a Kraken, all you have to do is plonk a K somewhere surrounded by a few blue ‘W’s and you’re good to go. Once again playing into the simplicity of ASCII - there are no limits to what you can do with the engine. ASCII does the latter, and it does it superbly. Now there’s something to be said about having a bit of mystery in a game, but the same can be said for total transparency. The only exception in my mind is the superb, Into The Breach. It leads to informed player decisions and a tactical approach to encounters that even the cleanest of modern games can’t fully replicate. If you see a green ‘O’, you know that it’s an Orc Priest ready to throw a sneaky spell your way. Such things are not possible in ASCII, because everything you see is exactly what it is. There is always room for error, and the ambiguity can lead to games feeling unfair when the developers throw in a cheeky “gotcha!” You need to recognize that the brownish blob in the distance is a bear, not a wolf, giant rat, or weirdly shaped tree. No matter what game you're playing, you as a player need to interpret the mass of pixels on the screen. One thing ASCII offers that no other graphical style can, is pure, uninterrupted, clarity. Eventually, you don’t even see the code, you just see blonde, brunette, redhead.
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It’s less forcing yourself onto a pre-established world and character, and more the game handing you a free pass. You can impose your own story into the game, you can be that and that is whatever you want it to be, doing whatever it is you want to do.
Heck, ASCII being such a blank slate approach to graphics design, leads to the ‘Gordon Freeman effect’. If a dog dies in Dwarf Fortress, everything from the breed to the ultimate cause of death is modular, thanks to the thinking box in your dome. If, in a recent game, someone shoots a dog and it dies you see everything. Like reading a book, the letters fade away, and the mind conjures up stories and images that are unique to you. You just have player input, a basic interface, and text to guide you. You don’t have a sprawling play space made up of a bazillion pixels powered by however many flops. Many of them feel like interactive choose your own adventure novels from the '70s and '80s. Call me old-fashioned, but nothing really hits quite like an ASCII game.
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