Dwarf Eats Mountain (PC) Demo Preview

During a Steam Next Fest, one might say I “consume” an unhealthy amount of game demos within the span of a week. I’ve found one such game demo that metaphorically references eating in a weird way: Dwarf Eats Mountain, developed and published by Green Wizard. Dwarf Eats Mountain is an incremental game in which you recruit leagues of Dwarves to destroy legions of mountains in front of them in order to extract all the gold and gems hidden within said mountains. What do your Dwarves do with those valuables, exactly? Well, that’s where Dwarf Eats Mountain starts to get weird.

You’ll need at least a few Dwarves designated as runners in order to maximize the profits from each mountain you mine. Runners have the most highly-regarded and most dangerous job in Dwarven culture because their task is to run towards every mountain your miners are currently destroying, pick up as many valuables as they can carry, and then bring everything they’ve gathered back toward your base. Your runners will have to do their best to dodge falling rocks and monsters during each trip they make, lest they meet with a fate that’s as painful for them as it is inconvenient for you.

Once a runner has made it back to your base with valuables in tow, they’re expected to deposit everything they’re carrying into “the Great Maw.” The Great Maw is a giant hole surrounded by a stone carving intended to look like a mouth. The Great Maw (apparently) has certain mystical powers and is therefore worshiped as some unspecified kind of deity by the Dwarves. Everything your miners extract from every mountain – be it ore, gems, pure chunks of precious metals, or anything else – only counts toward your spendable money once dropped into the Great Maw.

You can spend gold to construct new buildings, train unemployed Dwarves in any of a myriad of jobs, and purchase upgrades for all the various types of Dwarves you’ll recruit. You have to construct new units of “underground housing” to acquire more Dwarves. Each new Dwarf you get by doing this will be considered unemployed at first, until you spend any required gold and other resources to assign them a job. You’ll start with just miners and runners, but you’ll unlock plenty of other jobs for Dwarves to do as you progress.

Aside from your runners, most of the jobs you can have Dwarves do involve throwing a projectile of some kind at the mountain you’re currently mining. Basic miners throw pickaxes at the mountain to both extract valuables and damage the mountain. You’ll eventually be able to train “demodwarves,” “flamers,” and Dwarves that can use “Great Duke Cannons,” just to name a few. Respectively, these throw packs of dynamite, shoot flamethrowers, and fire giant cannonballs at mountains. You’d best believe I made frequent references to Team Fortress 2’s “Meet the Demoman” once I unlocked demodwarves; to do otherwise would be ridiculous.

Mountains have their own health bars, and all the various projectiles your Dwarves can throw at mountains damage them. As you’d expect, when a mountain’s health bar reaches 0, it’s destroyed and the next mountain appears behind it. The concept of all the valuables your Dwarves extract from all these mountains being “eaten” by “the Great Maw” might actually be the least weird thing about Dwarf Eats Mountain, though. All the Dwarves in Dwarf Eats Mountain collectively refer to all mountains as “the Great Mother,” which I guess means they’re intentionally destroying their mother for the sake of obtaining obscene levels of wealth.

Much of the in-game text in Dwarf Eats Mountain references that entire “mountains are the Great Mother of the Dwarves” idea in ways that might make some players uncomfortable. For instance, in-game text refers to the Ballistics Workshop building as a building where your Dwarves can learn “the science of penetrating your Great Mother from far away.” I don’t think I need to tell you why I raised an eyebrow at that. Dwarf Eats Mountain gets even weirder and more potentially uncomfortable than that, but I think the examples I just mentioned are enough for you to get the gist.

Speaking of the in-game text within Dwarf Eats Mountain, I’m afraid I have to “be that guy” once again. I’ve spotted several errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization (or lack thereof) within Dwarf Eats Mountain. For instance, clicking on your Dwarven stronghold will display the following text: “The mightiest of strongholds led by carver king and his council.” I strongly suspect that should read “led by the Carver King and his council.” There’s one instance where the devs used “atm” as shorthand for “at the moment.” Your unemployed Dwarves are said to be “ready to ‘pickup’ a tool” rather than “pick up.”

I know I’m nitpicking, especially since this is a demo version of Dwarf Eats Mountain rather than the full game. That’s exactly why I’m pointing out these minor issues now, though: The sooner the devs are made aware of these complaints, the more time they’ll have to iron them out before Dwarf Eats Mountain goes up for sale. Aside from that, I’m excited to play Dwarf Eats Mountain whenever it releases. It is currently listed as “Coming Soon,” though. Dwarf Eats Mountain combines my tendency to get fully immersed in incremental games with my love of all things high-fantasy.