A Game of Dwarves - Star Dwarves DLC Review

Star Dwarves is a substantive DLC pack for Zeal Studio’s dungeon simulator game, A Game of Dwarves. It is not the first DLC pack available for the title, the Ale Pack (which was bundled with pre-orders) has been released separately and there are numerous small content packs available for purchase in-game adding a few items of furniture here-and-there. At it’s heart, Star Dwarves is a content pack, adding a wealth of new items from basic furniture, to dungeon decorations and functional items such as research tables and beds.

It’s a more ambitious offering than previous content packs and offers a lot more content for use in constructing your ideal underground lair, along with two new Dwarven warrior types and the addition of a new extra-terrestrial enemy unit. Unlike less-substantial offerings, which provide further customisation options for your existing dungeon stylings, the new content has a unique sci-fi theme that stands apart from the rest and contains enough content to craft an entire dungeon using only the DLC aspects.

The new content is mostly decorative and provides little changes in terms of gameplay; holographic statues, floor types, wall tiles and decorations allow you to explore the new spacey themes, while functional items such as food tables and research benches are aesthetically different but fulfil the exact same practical purposes as their non-technological alternatives.

The new units have a unique comedic appearance; the Redshirt is your new ranged unit who 'treks' towards his enemies wielding an impressive space-gun, while the melee-focused Knight is ready to 'force' his way passed all opposition with his light-sword. However, once again these additions don't really change the gameplay and function pretty much the same as your regular soldier Dwarves.

It is very difficult to describe the nature of the new content given that it mostly comprises of new items and the best way to do this is to show you. With this in mind, I spent some time developing my own space themed dungeon-section to demonstrate some of the new content visually. This is my creation, the SS Not-at-all-a-ripoff-of-the-Enterprise: -

That’s about all there is to say about Star Dwarves: at the end of the day this is a content pack designed to allow for the creation of new space-themed dungeons. Nothing here will provide a substantial change in gameplay. There are no new missions, no new abilities and nothing that will affect how you play through the campaign or what strategies you adopt in a custom match, so if that’s what you are looking for then there is little to recommend. If you are the kind of person who enjoys loading up a custom game and seeing what sort of dungeon you can construct then you may get some enjoyment out of this, but it won’t take too long to exhaust the limitations of the new options.