The Driftlands used to be a standard fantasy realm, and that was nice while it lasted. After a mage war shattered the landscape into an expanse of floating islands in an endless sky it was never the same again, although a new group of mages did their best to rope them together a few centuries after the initial cataclysm. It’s areally big skyout there, though, and the dwarves don’t need to be overseen by mages and their endless conflicts. Tru has set out with his mini-dragon friend Ragna looking for suitable places to set up new colonies, and while the crash landing may not have been the best start all his limbs are in one piece so the rest is just a matter of dwarven know-how.
Wood And Stone And Steampunk Mech Suits
While Tru may have gotten through the crash with little more than a few bumps, the same can’t be said of his mech suit. First Dwarf is a base-building adventure, but building a base is maybe a bit more labor-intensive than a tech-savvy dwarf needs to put their own muscle to. Instead Tru has a mech suit that he stomps around the land in, making quick work of trees, stone, and the occasional tainted beast. It doesn’t take too long before there’s no need for tree and stone harvesting beyond clearing out space for the village, though, because if there’s one thing dwarves love as much as mining it’s machines. A miner in the quarry and harvester at the edge of a dense stand of trees will take care of the majority of resource-gathering, and then it’s time to start building a village.
Stomping Through the Floating Islands of First Dwarf Open Playtest
First Dwarf is a third-person adventure with a touch of city building and automation, where you build new settlements in unclaimed lands.
While the point of First Dwarf is to build a new settlement, there’s a fair amount going on to make that more difficult than just dumping a few houses down and hooking them up to the mana well’s pipe network. The tainted beasts roaming the land aren’t that difficult to defend from, thanks to towers on defense and the Tru’s mech suit and its axe covering offense, but there’s still something wrong with the land requiring investigation and this is where the adventure starts. The gameplay can switch from Tru either in the mech or out of it, depending on the situation’s needs, and the dragon Ragna is playable as well for scouting out secrets from the air. Different islands will also have different threats to deal with, such as polluted lakes or the worryingly-named “taint rains” which one can only hope aren’t as horrifying as they sound.
First Dwarf got arelease-date trailertoday for its June 19 Early Access launch. While trailers are nice demos are even better, and that got a releasetoday on Steam. The game has had a number of playtests as well since its initial reveal a couple of years back, so it should be a lot of fun to see how all that feedback has improved things sincethe first oneback in 2022. The driftlands may be shattered beyond repair, but a little dwarven tech just makes that a more interesting land to conquer.
