Digital Dragons Indie Spotlight: First Dwarf

At Digital Dragons 2023’s Indie Zone I caught up with Kuba Wojcik of Star Drifters to chat about their game First Dwarf. First Dwarf is an action-RPG that will be released soon on PC.

First Dwarf is set on the planet Driftland. A war between mages shattered the planet, sending its inhabitants into a state of barbarism and scattering them across the floating islands that are now all that remain of the planet. The one civilization that survived was that of the dwarves, but they realize that their time is short. They send airships to explore the islands, looking for resources and sites to found new colonies. You play as Tru, one of the dwarves sent to scout what’s left of Driftland.

A new island to explore

While Tru is the protagonist of First Dwarf, he has the support of two additional companions that you’ll play as well. The first is Ragna, a dragon whose magical powers and ability to fly will prove vary useful on the floating islands of Driftland. The second is a mech “character” - I put quotes around the word because it is really a hybrid. You take control of the mech when Tru climbs in to pilot it, but you can also set it to perform autonomous actions. Each of these three characters has their own skill tree each with a unique focus. For Tru it’s engineering skills, for Ragna it’s magic and knowledge, and for the mech you can develop its capabilities.

Ragna in flight

The action part of the game comes into play when you encounter the various creatures and barbarians that inhabit the islands, but the game is not battle-focused. Exploration is one major aspect of the game, both because the world is procedurally generated and features a variety of biomes, and because you are also trying to uncover the secrets of the past, particularly the history of your own family.

The game is also about survival – you’ll need to locate and harvest the resources of each island in order to its dangers. One of the most important of those resources is mana, since that’s what powers your mech and many of the structures in your colonies. And since there are many different biomes, you’ll need to adjust your playstyle to fit the environment as well as learn how to deal with new types of enemies.

Lastly, the game is also a base-builder. Your goal on each island is to establish a colony and ensure that it is safe enough for more airships to arrive bearing dwarven colonists. This will involve building the right mix of production and housing structures along with the defenses to protect them.

Starting a new colony

First Dwarf features a colorful, animated art style that is reminiscent of the style of World of Warcraft. The cutscenes are fully animated, as you can see in the introduction sequence:

A decision has yet to be made on whether or not the game will have an early access period, but you can wishlist the game now on either Steam, Epic Games or GOG. Console editions of the game – PlayStation 5, Switch, and Xbox Series XS – have been announced, but no release date has been set and there doesn’t appear to be a page for the game on the console online stores.