Dwarf Fortress
lastmod 2025-08-09created 2020-08-185 edits
Dwarf Fortress is a construction and management simulation and roguelike indie game being developed by Bay12Games. Development began in 2002 and the first alpha version was released in 2006; the game is distributed as freeware and is known to have been made by two developers relying purely on donations. Set in a procedurally generated fantasy world, the main goal of the game is for the player to control a group of dwarves and build a wealthy and successful fortress. The game was highly praised by critics for its complex and emergent nature, but reactions to its steep control difficulty were mixed. It greatly influenced games such as Minecraft and RimWorld, and since 2012 it has been one of the works exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, alongside Pong, Tetris, SimCity 2000, Portal, and others, to show the history of computer games.
Dwarf Fortress uses text-based (code page 437) graphics and is a nonlinear game with no set goals or ending. Before playing, the player must first generate a fantasy world. The terrain of this world, such as continents, oceans, islands, and mountain ranges, is procedurally generated according to the principles of geology, hydrogeology, climatology, and biogeography. The history of each civilization in the world is also simulated in detail, down to the lifetime of each individual member. Through this process, a consistent and plausible world is created. In fortress mode, the main game mode of Dwarf Fortress, the player selects a suitable area in the generated world to establish a successful settlement, i.e., a fortress, fights off threats such as goblin invaders, accumulates wealth, and looks after the dwarves. Each dwarf is modeled down to the level of body parts, organs, and tissues, and has its own unique personality, including a list of likes and dislikes, attributes, values, life goals, personality traits, and memories. The second mode, adventurer mode, is a turn-based roguelike with no set goals, in which the player becomes an adventurer and can freely explore the world, perform quests, and visit fortresses built in fortress mode. The combat system of Dwarf Fortress describes events such as organs being pierced, fingers being severed, and nerves being cut in fine detail. There is no such thing as health represented by a single number; creatures die when they lose functions such as breathing or heartbeat.
Developer Tarn Adams has called Dwarf Fortress his life's work. In 2011 he stated that an official 1.0 version of Dwarf Fortress would not come out within the next 20 years, and that development would continue even after that. Dwarf Fortress still has a cult following and an active online community to this day.
Categories
See also
- Computer Game
- Roguelike
- Minecraft
- Veloren - An open world, open source voxel RPG inspired by Dwarf Fortress and Cube World.