Two of the pieces of media that I love most in this world are colony management game Dwarf Fortress and John Carpenter’s The Thing, the 1982 sci-fi horror movie about an underground base in Antarctica in which Kurt Russell learns about the true value of friendship. Now, a saintly modder has brought those two blessed properties together with a Dwarf Fortress mod called The Parasyte-Thing.
As you might have guessed from the title, the mod is inspired by The Thing and Parasyte, a horror manga series that also features tiny alien organisms entering and taking over humans’ bodies with gruesome results. Combine Dwarf Fortress’s threats of necromancers, vampires, and werebeasts into one unpredictable, contagious enemy, and you’ve got Parasyte-Thing.
With the mod enabled, you’ll encounter parasyte things on the surface at random – modder GhostPutty says they show up the way titans do, but usually are the result of bites from infected vermin in frozen biomes or the third cavern layer.
When that happens, you’re going to have problems – this is known in the Dwarf Fortress community as ‘FUN,’ always in capital letters. GhostPutty worked on the mod with LJneko, who created the extremely red and gross artwork for when the FUN really gets going: there are lumbering beasts with teeth growing places where teeth shouldn’t be, dwarves splitting open to reveal toothy alien maws, and plant-like structures (also with teeth).
GhostPutty says there are some recipes to use to either stop the beast’s spread or possibly attract them – players can discover that on their own, we suppose.
You can find Parasyte-Thing on the Steam Workshop for Dwarf Fortress, and to use it, simply click the green subscribe button. Fire up Dwarf Fortress and enable the Parasyte-Thing mod during world generation, and you’ll be ready to embark on what’s sure to be a very tense expedition.
Check out our picks for the best horror games on PC if you enjoy being scared or grossed out at your desk.