Dwarf Fortress, the creator of the survival strategy, colony-building, and base-building games we've been playing, is getting more beautiful as it prepares for its graphical reveal on Steam. (Creator Tarn Adams revealed the look of one of Dwarf Fortress' best features, the new world map, in a development update. Previously, the Dwarf Fortress world was difficult to parse without a pro, but now it is clearly a map, not just an assortment of ASCII characters, and it looks quite nice. Below is the old medium-sized world map and the same map in the new style.

The new map has greatly improved readability for even the most experienced player: instead of 8x12 ASCII tiles, we now have 16x16 pixel-art tiles, which even out the proportions of the map and make it more recognizable." There is still a lot of work to be done on estuaries, wetlands, oceans, mountains, trees, etc." Tarn Adams said in his post." But now that we've reached the point where we can achieve our goal of making the world map easier to understand, we thought it would be fun to share."

The world of Dwarf Fortress is procedurally generated and detailed. Historical kingdoms rise and fall, and unique gods, monsters, and demons roam the world. All of this detail is reflected in the worlds you set up fortresses and traverse in the Adventure Mode. They are truly works of art, and you could spend hours just reading about the historical events that the world generator creates. Just ask the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which has added this game to its permanent collection.

We've known for about a year that Dwarf Fortress would be released with graphics on Steam.