Beyond Dwarf Fortress: Tarn Adams on His 1,400-Hour Factorio Obsession and Terraforming Love

“It’s got blocks you can move around to make a little house. This was 25 years before Minecraft did that,” Adams points out. “It has creatures that get frustrated and blow up your walls. My brother and I played it free-form, just creating little houses and navigating the beasts and eggs. It’s a fantastic little game.” In the depths of his “BASIC folders,” the dates are often lost to time. “When I sort them, many just say January 1, 1980. Some are the fever dreams of a six-year-old, like ‘The Adventures of Hiney.’ It’s basically just ‘stuff moves across the screen.’”

The Steam Stats: 1,454 Hours of Efficiency

There is one game that towers over all others in his Steam library: Factorio. With over 1,454 hours logged, it has become more than just a game for Adams; it’s a seasonal ritual.

“Factorio is so dangerous,” he admits. “You can do the Space Age expansion, or install mods like Bob and Angel, or Sea Block. I just finished a run with 15 planets. It became a whole thing—when my dad died, I played Factorio for 25 days without stopping. I did it again the following winter. Now, it’s taken on this different, slightly complicated aspect for me.”

The Tarn Adams Digital Profile

Category	Details
Current Obsession	The Planet Crafter
Most Played (Steam)	Factorio (1,454.5 Hours)
Oldest Game	Beast (1984) / Various BASIC Scripts
Essential Software	Ableton (Music Sequencing)
Desktop Status	“Organized Chaos” (Folders within Folders)

Creativity Beyond Coding

Outside of gaming and development, the one piece of software Adams couldn’t live without is Ableton. As a sequencer for writing music, it allows him to step away from code and into melody. “I periodically write music. I don’t do soundscapes well because I haven’t invested the time to learn all the widgets and envelopes, so I focus on strong melodies and instrumentation. I would miss it if it weren’t there.”

The Desktop “Audit”

Finally, I had to ask about the state of his desktop. “It’s about half full,” he laughs. “Mostly folders related to everything, and some .txt files that don’t have a home yet. Every once in a while, the folders get put into other folders. There is always a folder called ‘Last Desktop,’ and inside that is another ‘Last Desktop.’ That’s actually how we get back to those BASIC games from the ’80s—it’s like a digital time capsule.” For more stories on digital innovation and deep dives into tech culture, stay tuned to Digital Tech Explorer.

This specific interest seems to be a creative outlet for concepts that don’t fit into his main project. “Dwarf Fortress just doesn’t accommodate a full-on sci-fi thing. It’s a different vibe. But Terraformental was a blast; even though it’s text-based, the puzzle-solving as you expand your knowledge of the outposts is intriguing.”

Digital History: The 1980s Archive

When it comes to the oldest files on his hardware, Adams possesses a treasure trove of BASIC games dating back to the early ’80s. One standout is Beast (1984).

“It’s got blocks you can move around to make a little house. This was 25 years before Minecraft did that,” Adams points out. “It has creatures that get frustrated and blow up your walls. My brother and I played it free-form, just creating little houses and navigating the beasts and eggs. It’s a fantastic little game.” In the depths of his “BASIC folders,” the dates are often lost to time. “When I sort them, many just say January 1, 1980. Some are the fever dreams of a six-year-old, like ‘The Adventures of Hiney.’ It’s basically just ‘stuff moves across the screen.’”

The Steam Stats: 1,454 Hours of Efficiency

There is one game that towers over all others in his Steam library: Factorio. With over 1,454 hours logged, it has become more than just a game for Adams; it’s a seasonal ritual.

“Factorio is so dangerous,” he admits. “You can do the Space Age expansion, or install mods like Bob and Angel, or Sea Block. I just finished a run with 15 planets. It became a whole thing—when my dad died, I played Factorio for 25 days without stopping. I did it again the following winter. Now, it’s taken on this different, slightly complicated aspect for me.”

The Tarn Adams Digital Profile

Category	Details
Current Obsession	The Planet Crafter
Most Played (Steam)	Factorio (1,454.5 Hours)
Oldest Game	Beast (1984) / Various BASIC Scripts
Essential Software	Ableton (Music Sequencing)
Desktop Status	“Organized Chaos” (Folders within Folders)

Creativity Beyond Coding

Outside of gaming and development, the one piece of software Adams couldn’t live without is Ableton. As a sequencer for writing music, it allows him to step away from code and into melody. “I periodically write music. I don’t do soundscapes well because I haven’t invested the time to learn all the widgets and envelopes, so I focus on strong melodies and instrumentation. I would miss it if it weren’t there.”

The Desktop “Audit”

Finally, I had to ask about the state of his desktop. “It’s about half full,” he laughs. “Mostly folders related to everything, and some .txt files that don’t have a home yet. Every once in a while, the folders get put into other folders. There is always a folder called ‘Last Desktop,’ and inside that is another ‘Last Desktop.’ That’s actually how we get back to those BASIC games from the ’80s—it’s like a digital time capsule.” For more stories on digital innovation and deep dives into tech culture, stay tuned to Digital Tech Explorer. Welcome to The Digital Deep Dive, our recurring series here at Digital Tech Explorer where we peer behind the monitors of the industry’s most influential creators. Each week, I sit down with the architects of our favorite digital worlds to discuss their setups, their software secrets, and the games they simply can’t let go of. This week, I’m joined by a true pioneer. Tarn Adams, a name synonymous with procedural generation and complex simulation, describes his early years as “a haze of learning BASIC.” Long before he was a fixture at the DICE Awards, he was navigating the ASCII landscapes of MS-DOS and TRS-80 systems, playing foundational titles like Rogue in 1984.

While Adams has developed dozens of titles, he is best known for the cult phenomenon Dwarf Fortress, a fantasy colony sim co-created with his brother Zach. Since its 2006 debut, it has evolved into one of the most ambitious projects in PC gaming history. Following its massive Steam success in 2022, Adams now balances his time between maintaining the existing legacy and adding procedurally generated “magic workshops.” I caught up with Tarn to explore the digital battlements of his own machine. We delved into his current fascination with terraforming, his childhood experiments in BASIC, and how a certain famous factory sim helped him navigate a personal tragedy.

The Current Rotation: A Terraforming Obsession

“I’ve been playing The Planet Crafter,” Adams shares. “I had played it before back in early access, but I had to stop because there was no more content. I didn’t have frogs or something, and it was really bothering me.”

For Adams, the appeal lies in the peaceful progression of the terraforming genre. Unlike typical survival titles where you are hunted by local wildlife, The Planet Crafter focuses on the environment. “You have to make your habitat enough to survive—hotter planet, air pressure, oxygen—and then eventually you get water, plants, bugs, and creatures. I set it down for a few years, but now it’s past 1.0 and I finally got my frogs. It’s been a blessing.”

What’s Still Installed?

Despite a self-described “scrupulous” habit of uninstalling games, Adams currently has a niche collection of outpost-style titles on his drive. “I still have Terraformental installed. It’s an incremental game with a story told through text between outposts. I’m also playing Terraforming Titans and Terraformers.”

This specific interest seems to be a creative outlet for concepts that don’t fit into his main project. “Dwarf Fortress just doesn’t accommodate a full-on sci-fi thing. It’s a different vibe. But Terraformental was a blast; even though it’s text-based, the puzzle-solving as you expand your knowledge of the outposts is intriguing.”

Digital History: The 1980s Archive

When it comes to the oldest files on his hardware, Adams possesses a treasure trove of BASIC games dating back to the early ’80s. One standout is Beast (1984).

“It’s got blocks you can move around to make a little house. This was 25 years before Minecraft did that,” Adams points out. “It has creatures that get frustrated and blow up your walls. My brother and I played it free-form, just creating little houses and navigating the beasts and eggs. It’s a fantastic little game.” In the depths of his “BASIC folders,” the dates are often lost to time. “When I sort them, many just say January 1, 1980. Some are the fever dreams of a six-year-old, like ‘The Adventures of Hiney.’ It’s basically just ‘stuff moves across the screen.’”

The Steam Stats: 1,454 Hours of Efficiency

There is one game that towers over all others in his Steam library: Factorio. With over 1,454 hours logged, it has become more than just a game for Adams; it’s a seasonal ritual.

“Factorio is so dangerous,” he admits. “You can do the Space Age expansion, or install mods like Bob and Angel, or Sea Block. I just finished a run with 15 planets. It became a whole thing—when my dad died, I played Factorio for 25 days without stopping. I did it again the following winter. Now, it’s taken on this different, slightly complicated aspect for me.”

The Tarn Adams Digital Profile

Category	Details
Current Obsession	The Planet Crafter
Most Played (Steam)	Factorio (1,454.5 Hours)
Oldest Game	Beast (1984) / Various BASIC Scripts
Essential Software	Ableton (Music Sequencing)
Desktop Status	“Organized Chaos” (Folders within Folders)

Creativity Beyond Coding

Outside of gaming and development, the one piece of software Adams couldn’t live without is Ableton. As a sequencer for writing music, it allows him to step away from code and into melody. “I periodically write music. I don’t do soundscapes well because I haven’t invested the time to learn all the widgets and envelopes, so I focus on strong melodies and instrumentation. I would miss it if it weren’t there.”

The Desktop “Audit”

Finally, I had to ask about the state of his desktop. “It’s about half full,” he laughs. “Mostly folders related to everything, and some .txt files that don’t have a home yet. Every once in a while, the folders get put into other folders. There is always a folder called ‘Last Desktop,’ and inside that is another ‘Last Desktop.’ That’s actually how we get back to those BASIC games from the ’80s—it’s like a digital time capsule.” For more stories on digital innovation and deep dives into tech culture, stay tuned to Digital Tech Explorer.