{"id":1642223,"date":"2026-07-23T00:33:31","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rAEfyqXGDAQM3Q3KJs2WmF"},"modified":"2026-07-23T00:33:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:33:31","slug":"the-challenges-of-developing-the-colony-sim-from-dungeon-keeper-to-dwarf-fortress-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-challenges-of-developing-the-colony-sim-from-dungeon-keeper-to-dwarf-fortress-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"The challenges of developing the colony sim, from Dungeon Keeper to Dwarf Fortress and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From the archives: <\/strong><\/em>This feature was originally published in <\/em>PC Gamer #305 (UK, June 2017)<\/strong><\/em>. It appears below as originally written, with only minor changes in formatting and presentation.<\/em><\/p>\n

No gaming genre can generate stories quite like the colony sim. Almost entirely unique to PC gaming, colony sims task players with building and sustaining a habitat for a group of AI characters, which could be anything from dwarfs to demons. <\/p>\n

Although the player controls how the colony is shaped, constructing rooms or buildings and filling them with useful objects, they do not control the inhabitants directly. Instead, the colonists interact with their surroundings and other NPCs via AI systems that simulate their needs and desires. <\/p>\n

Through these desires and the player\u2019s ability (or inability) to meet them, colony sims produce incredible, incidental plotlines; tales of dwarves who delve too greedily and too deep, unleashing hordes of monsters into their fortress, of bitter rivalries between demonic creatures that tear apart the plans of an evil dungeon master, of prisoners who explode into riot because the warden forgot to build a shower block.<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Electronic Arts)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s the autonomous personalities of these AI individuals which separate colony sims from other populace-focused strategy games such as management sims and city-builders. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou watch more named non-player creatures interacting with each other over a longer period of time in a colony sim,\u201d says Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress, \u201cAnd you\u2019re watching them more carefully than you generally watch, say, scheduled NPCs in an RPG. It gives you a chance to really get to know the characters, and how they respond to situations both you and the game world throw at them.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this also makes colony sims tough to develop. Since the release of Bullfrog\u2019s Dungeon Keeper, which set the template for colony sims through the colourful and often fractious personalities of its demonic creatures, only a handful of similar games have been made. In recent years, however, the genre has witnessed an exciting resurgence, thanks to the dedication of a few tiny development studios.<\/p>\n

Dwarf Fortress is the flagship in this resurgence. Created by Bay12 Games, Dwarf Fortress is an immense, 20-year development project currently halfway to completion. Its simple premise is that you build and maintain a colony of dwarfs, but the ultimate aim is to generate and simulate unique fantasy worlds in their totality. This includes everything from the terrain to the history, right down to what clothes individual characters wear.<\/p>\n

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Dwarf Fortress generates its world history by essentially playing a strategy game with itself. <\/span>(Image credit: Bay 12 Games)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sheer scale of Bay 12\u2019s project is mind-boggling. The aforementioned features are merely entry-level stuff for Dwarf Fortress\u2019s preposterously granular simulation. <\/p>\n

More recent additions include procedurally generated poetry, the result of a cascade of new features that typifies the rabbit-hole that is colony sim development. \u201cIf I recollect,\u201d says Adams, \u201cwe were working on taverns at the time and we were dedicated to allowing the dwarves to play the instruments that had been in the fort. This led to procedural instruments, which led to procedural music, which led to procedural lyric descriptions, which led to procedural poetic forms and also dance forms.\u201d <\/p>\n

Such detail increases the range of unique events that can happen to the dwarfs in any given fortress. But it\u2019s also important that the player is not ignored as a part of the game. Indeed, one of the immediate challenges in designing a colony sim is determining how much control the player should have over the colony and its inhabitants. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important at some point to have a conception of what the player \u2018is\u2019. For us, it\u2019s the \u2018official will of the fort,\u2019\u201d says Adams. \u201cSo you\u2019d ideally be able to give orders and decide on other fortress-level activities, while the dwarves are in control of their own lives, and can even decide to disobey orders in extreme cases.\u201d <\/p>\n

Dwarf Fortress\u2019s dedication to simulating every angle of fantasy colony life has made it legendary within the industry. But it is an extreme game in all senses, and this applies to its flaws. It is famously difficult to get to grips with, thanks to an archaic presentation and user interface, while its commitment to random numbers means your experience with it can vary wildly.<\/p>\n

Rimming the changes<\/h2>\n

Not all colony sims are so uncompromising, however. Ludeon studios\u2019 sci-fi colony sim RimWorld is a natural evolution of Dwarf Fortress\u2019s design. <\/p>\n

But not only is it more accessible, with a straightforward user interface and a modern art style, it also flips Dwarf Fortress\u2019s design philosophy on its head. Rather than using procedural generation as a basis for its storytelling, it uses storytelling as a basis for its generation. <\/p>\n

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\"Rimworld\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cRimWorld is designed at every level to generate story,\u201d I\u2019m told by Tynan Sylvester, founder of Ludeon studios and lead developer on RimWorld. \u201cThat\u2019s always been the central pillar of the design, to the point that I deliberately decide every design conflict between \u2018game\u2019 and \u2018story generator\u2019 directions in favour of the latter.\u201d <\/p>\n

This concept is embodied by RimWorld\u2019s AI Storyteller. Inspired by Left 4 Dead\u2019s infamous AI director, this is an overarching AI system designed to maintain the pace of the game. The system comprises two principle components. \u201cStory watchers\u201d monitor the game state along specific parameters, such as player wealth or dangers encountered. <\/p>\n

Then \u201cincident generators\u201d take those statistics and respond to them by triggering events in the game. These could be positive, like a much-needed cargo drop, or negative, like a disease epidemic. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe [the AI storyteller] attempts to match a rising and falling pacing curve, and not to over-brutally murder struggling players,\u201d Sylvester explains. \u201cThough she also is not pandering or cloying. A struggling colony can still be hit by pretty brutal raids or disasters, because in extreme challenge lies the greatest drama.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Boxout\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Future)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although it helps to mediate the player experience, the AI storyteller adds another layer of complexity to the colony\u2019s simulation, which already has potentially dozens of AI agents moving through it, all with their own goals, needs, emotions, and ambitions. <\/p>\n

Add all the different rooms you can build, items you can craft, trading systems, weather systems, environmental hazards and hostile aliens also included in the game, and you\u2019ve got one huge pile of overlapping, interlinking, and potentially conflicting systems.<\/p>\n

This is another of the major challenges of colony sim design\u2014structuring the development. <\/p>\n

Knowing when to add features and game mechanics, and when to stop adding features and game mechanics, is crucial. \u201cI think the characteristic design danger in this genre is drowning in your own complexity,\u201d says Sylvester. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to just end up submerging players in complexity and micromanagement. <\/p>\n

“My approach here is to treat player learning and player attention as precious, limited resources and \u2018spend\u2019 them accordingly. If any mechanic would require any amount of player learning or player attention, I try very hard to redesign it so it can be optional, or set things up so it only applies in some situations, or so it can be introduced gradually.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inner space<\/h2>\n
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Although it is a hybrid RTS, Dungeon Keeper\u2019s creature management mechanics were a defining moment for colony sims. <\/span>(Image credit: Electronic Arts)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Considering the player\u2019s experience of your colony sim is vital in other ways too. One of the toughest challenges when designing these games is not creating a system that produces interesting events, but ensuring it communicates those events effectively to the player. This is a problem that has been agonised over by Simon Roth, the creator of the colony sim Maia<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Maia traces its origins more to Dungeon Keeper than Dwarf Fortress, but has a similar commitment to simulating its alien world at an extremely granular level\u2014particularly with its human colonists. In Maia, everything can affect a colonists\u2019 mood, not just hunger, thirst or fatigue, but whether they\u2019ve spent enough time around other people, and even the lighting of the room they\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

In total, Maia\u2019s colonists have around 50 needs that can affect their mood, but communicating all this information to the player in a way that\u2019s both clear and unobtrusive isn\u2019t easy. \u201cPresenting more information to the player has been the biggest difficulty in the game,\u201d says Roth. \u201cThe thing is with the AI it\u2019s so incredibly complex now, although the code is well laid out.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Every creature uses Maia\u2019s decision-making AI, even the chickens. \u201cThey\u2019re probably smarter than real chickens at this point,\u201d Roth says. <\/span>(Image credit: Machine Studios \/ Simon Roth)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Machine Studios has tried to solve this problem by giving the player both direct and indirect information about the colonist\u2019s mental states. Unlike Dwarf Fortress and RimWorld, Maia\u2019s 3D engine means Roth and the team can use detailed animations to communicate colonist emotions. <\/p>\n

Ironically, this only works for obvious emotions and needs, such as hunger, anger, fatigue, etc. For subtler problems, the team needed a more direct solution. So they enabled the colonists to send the player emails. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe emails were not such a big thing,\u201d says Roth. \u201cBut since we realised we needed to present more depth to the player, the colonists can send emails. They can send these long procedural things.\u201d <\/p>\n

Alongside straightforward statements about their physical and mental state, in an unusual move, the colonists can also present the player with direct choices about how to deal with certain scenarios in the colony. <\/p>\n

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From the archives<\/div>\n
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\"PCG<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>

(Image credit: Future)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This feature was originally published in <\/em>PC Gamer #305 (UK, June 2017)<\/strong><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n

You can still subscribe to PC Gamer<\/a> to get new issues of the magazine (in print!) every month.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIf they\u2019ve got a skill for a thing and they spot a potential problem in the base, they can suggest doing something to the player, and the player can either give them a yes or no answer\u201d, Roth says. \u201cIt shows the AI are more self-aware than you realised.\u201d <\/p>\n

Although almost 30 years old, the colony sim genre has barely been explored. This recent smattering of games has pushed the envelope enormously in the last few years. But the great irony of colony sims is the more detail you include in the game, the harder it is to ensure that detail will be appreciated by the player. <\/p>\n

Hence they need to be thought of like any storytelling medium. Ultimately, it\u2019s not about how many words your story contains, it\u2019s about how entertaining they are to read. <\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/p>\n

2026 games<\/strong><\/a>: All the upcoming games
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Best co-op games<\/strong><\/a>: Better together<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the archives: This feature was originally published in PC Gamer #305 (UK, June 2017). It appears below as originally written, with only minor changes in formatting and presentation. No gaming genre can generate stories quite like the colony sim. Almost entirely unique to PC gaming, colony sims task players with building and sustaining a habitat for a group of AI characters, which could be anything from dwarfs to demons. Although the player controls how the colony is shaped, constructing rooms or buildings and filling them with useful objects, they do not control the inhabitants directly. Instead, the colonists interact with their surroundings and other NPCs via AI systems that simulate their needs and desires. Through these desires and the player\u2019s ability (or inability) to…<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1642224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[336],"tags":[748,516],"class_list":["post-1642223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pc-gamer","tag-games","tag-strategy"],"yoast_head":"\nThe challenges of developing the colony sim, from Dungeon Keeper to Dwarf Fortress and beyond | Arcader News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From the archives: This feature was originally published in PC Gamer #305 (UK, June 2017). 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