Dwarf Fortress

A labour of love in the making since 2002, i intend on supporting this game for the rest of the devs natural and unnatural lives.

☼«☼TIPS FROM MY EXPERIENCE☼»☼ - The game speed is tied to the Game FPS option (default 50). I learned this after 100+ hours playing at 144 fps. - Creating a Venice style water fortress is a quick way to reduce your fps to about 10. - Children love starving to death after climbing trees. - Rock coffers and glass boxes are the same as wooden chests. - Reloading saves to prevent disasters legitimately makes the game way less fun. ☼«☼STORY TIME☼»☼ - A Giant visited my fortress very early on - Everyone inside and lock the doors - One child and her dog left outside - Child explodes the Giants head with a single punch - Nickname the child "David." David values martial prowess - Plan to make David Captain of the Guard when she grows up - David kills members of the Guard one by one - By the time David is an adult she's killed 10+ members of the guard - Doesn't matter. David is an unstoppable one woman army clad in steel armor - Goblin Parley. No problem, David's got this. Send her outside - New ceiling being constructed collapses and crushes David on her way out. - Backup fighters have no training because David kills everyone with experience - Try to defend anyway - Recruits die immediately - Watch goblins kill all my Dwarfs - I lost my fort to a psychopath and a workplace accident 10/10 This game is overwhelming at first. Give it some time and it gives a whole lot back.

Fastest 10 hours I have ever spent in a game Normally 10 hours means some one plays a game over a longer period of time, which makes sense but not this one somehow I bought this game the day before yesterday at the time I have posted this review How? Where did all those time go? And why must I not disturb this child while he is entranced? What is he doing in the workshop? What is he making? Said the Asian man calmly while leering at the dwarven child from outside the screen

I've been a huge fan of Dwarf Fortress before it came to steam, and was just an ACSII character game. I prefer fortress mode, so that is what this review is focused on. That being said, while I like the game, it has issues. I love building my dwarven fortress, dealing with each dwarves intricacies, fighting off invasions, digging deeper for valuable ore, and crafting weapons, armor and furniture. The industries are diverse, and the metals/stone/wood options are complex (making it very realistic, in that aspect). Enemies and visitors are cool, and can be looted for ALL their items. Also, the game has a large modding community making things more interesting (and addresses some concerns with the game). My biggest issues with the game are the same issues that I had with the old ACSII game.... First, there is a large learning curve. You need to figure out the tricks to build a successful fortress, and that takes time. Finding a good world and build location is key, and its not clear how to do it (for a beginner). The worldbuilder is very complex (most people opt for the very simple version) -- It needs to be streamlined, and not always "fail" if conditions aren't met. Plus, learning how to build industries isn't always straightforward... if you want to make rope, you need certain plant fibers (i.e. hemp, rope reed) ... and the only way to know that is to look online. The "Management" tab makes things easier, but it's an "advanced" feature that takes time for newbies to learn ... and even then, as someone familiar with it, things aren't always clear. Sometimes you want to build a stockpile for a specific item... but can't find the item (i.e. empty barrels or bins? No idea; soap is under bars (with the metal bars); hives, minecarts, coffins, and other items are all grouped under tools .... which is confusing and unclear, and makes it difficult to separate each of those items). Dwarves drop their stuff all over the fortress, leaving socks, shoes, weapons and armor all around (adding to the clutter and slowing up the game). Note: You can build rooms for your dwarves with cabinets and chest, but they rarely use them ... you can build garbage dumps, but unless something is manually tagged for dumping, they wont dump items ... and for some reason, your soldiers drop all their armor and equipment whenever they stop training/fighting ... leaving them in the middle of dark caverns or outside your fortress (only to try and retrieve them during an attack!). Also, there are bugs ... plenty of bugs. Sometimes, a dwarf will be assigned to a workshop, but will stop going there. Your lumberjacks will stop working ... it might be because they don't have any axes (because they are being used by your soldiers), but it could also be a bug. Also, when your base has alot of dwarves, or you dig deep and have alot of underground enemies, or your fortress is cluttered with dropped items and refuse ... the game slows to a CRAWL (10 fps). This is my biggest gripe. I spend all this time building a great fortress, and want to dig really really deep ... but the game starts to move SOOO slowly that you just get so frustrated and stop playing. There are TRICKS to speed it up for a bit (i.e. cheating with DwarfHack to kill unseen invaders, cleaning the map), but they are often temporary. THAT is my biggest issue, and I can't come back til that's fixed. So, until they fix these issues, I'm out.... I hope fix these issues and I can edit the review.

people usually perceive the public visage of an esoteric ancient ascii game as something weird and incomprehensible but it's worth realizing that behind all that public assumption actually hides the wonderfully up-to-date grandfather of the entire colony sim genre

Every time I start a new embark I wonder if Snow White will show up. 😉😄 Srsly tho... I really enjoy the game although it does have some minor annoyances, (zone resizing buttons not all in the same place, categorization of some items just don't make sense, predictable timing of invaders/raids, doesn't remember the window position when last closed). The game settings are rather in depth, allowing for a wide range of game-play customization, from super easy to super !!FUN!!. It also has a full range of keybind settings. With over 900 hours in the game, I've yet to "dig too deeply" and it was only recently that my minors received praise for finding "candy". Alas, the candy was covered by the magma sea. The Brothers Adams have, IMHO, made a ☼game☼ worth buying. If you buy no other game this year, buy Dwarf Fortress. If you enjoy this style of game, you won't regret the purchase.

Possibly the coolest game ever, so complex and deep, and endless replay value. Definitely one of the best purchases in terms of video games, totally worth it.

There's a lot going on in here, with not a lot of in-game help. So, it can be intimidating starting out. But, after following a walk-through or two, and referring to the wiki often, it is a lot of fun!

It's one of the greatest games of all time, 20 years of blood and sweat and tears put into an approachable package. With deep systems and even deeper caverns, I am still finding stuff out about this game, incredibly specific details that in any other game would be an afterthought, or not considered at all! Dwarf fingernails grow! It's never come up for me but maybe I just haven't looked hard enough!

The only thing i can think about when playing was "there's no SFX in this game". Dwarfs digging? Silence. Clicking buttons? Silence. Creatures walking? Silence. Alerts? Silence. After 140 hour of Rimworld binge, Dwarf Fortress feels so unsatisfying to play, as if there's absolutely nothing going on. I want to give out orders of sowing and tree cutting and be able to perceive dwarfs doing these actions. I've heard so many good things about this game's depth, but i just cannot immerse myself in it at all.

This game rules and is better in almost every way than Rimworld. Don't listen to people saying its very complicated. Its not any more complicated than Rimworld - may even be more approachable.

TLDR: Similar to Rimworld, but with a bad UI, Also: weak wiki. This is a great and horrible game. Bad Stuff First: It has a horrible user interface. Unintuitive, user unfriendly. LONG search lists that are neither alphabetical nor by any category that I can see. And when they are alphabetical, Cut Diamonds and Rough Diamonds are under C and R respectively, instead of putting them both under D for diamond! I /facepalm myself about every 5 minutes, this Windows98-level UI is so unforgivably bad. Can't even highlight and press backspace to get rid of stuff you already typed into a search bar. Slowly backspace one letter at a time only! When you pull up the info screen on one of your military squads, it lists who your dwarves are, but if you want to see any info on them, sorry, you can't get there from here. Need to remember their names and then go to the dwarf info screen and look them up there. When you want to look at a deeper level of the map, move the mousewheel towards you. When you want to zoom deeper into one specific level, press ctrl and move the mousewheel again, but in the OPPOSITE direction (/facepalm)! Logic rules are inconsistent and arbitrary. Fonts are hard to read, items go by different names in different situations, etc. Can't click on stuff you see to find out info on that thing. You will spend so much time trying to figure out HOW to do stuff! OK, so if I want this dude to go there, I first need to create a military squad of one, assign him as the leader, wait, where is the menu to do that, then create a zone called a "burrow," wait, where do I do that, then click on.. oh wait, this time it is right click? Let me check the wiki. Hmm, wiki wants to tell me jokes and talk about how the game used to work, how it is designed to work and why it doesn't work before telling me what to do... !!!!! If you're going to build the deepest game in the world, you MUST give your players an easy way to navigate that complexity! This game does a mediocre job of that, at best. On the PaSS/FAIL grading system, I give the UI a grade of FAIL. Then again, it does create an interesting challenge. I love complicated games, and mastering the controls of a hard-to-control beast can be satisfying. This game is totally right for some people, but understand exactly what you are signing on to before you buy! After 50 hours, half of that time has been on pause while reading the wiki (which is equally confounding, confusing and frustrating as the game itself) or searching Google/Reddit trying to figure out how to DO something. Nothing is intuitive. Fortunately, devs are still working on it. Good soundtrack. It truly has the potential to be one of the greatest games ever, but after 20 years of development, that ain't saying much! So I can't recommend the game in its current form, but if it ever gets a professionally-polished modern UI, look out! Currently more headaches than fun.

- opens a tavern to attract adventurers - learns about a goblin outpost who are aggressive towards my dwarven kingdom - Prepares fortification to defend against enemy goblins - enemy goblins find my fort and decide to siege it - i raise my bridge and prepare my archer squads for a long siege - as im raising the bridge to cut the goblins off from my fortress a legendary sword fighter goes running towards the bridge - he jumps the bridge as it closes behind him - he goes full sprint towards enemy goblin army of like 40 goblins - he enters a martial trance and proceeds to absolutely obliterate every single goblin in the enemy army by himself - i allow him to stay in my fort and make golden statues and a hall of heroes in his honor. greatest game ever

So much fun. I’m a huge fantasy world lover and this scratches every itch I’d have for a fantasy civ builder/simulator. SO MUCH DETAIL in the entire game. I just learned combat works with body parts and their individual tendons and bone etc, instead of a simple HP bar. It’s been out a while so you’d expect detail but u can tell there’s a ton of love that went into the game based on how in depth it is.

Loaded into the game with no idea what to do, but was very excited to get started. First embark I didn't know what I was doing and apparently picked a bad spot. I had been told rivers were a good place to embark, since you can use them for power and wells. As soon as I hit the play button, my doctor was ripped apart by a giant alligator (came right out of the river, who'da thunk?), which then proceeded to kill all of the remaining dwarves in very rapid succession. It really is a shame I wasn't recording, because it felt like a speedrun record. If you told me my first embark would last less than 30 seconds, I would not have believed you. Needless to say I now have over 200 hours and counting. Well played, DF...well played indeed.

Such a wonderfully deep game that gives you endless hours of learning and creativity. The music is immersive and one of the few games i play without muting it. It took me 100 hours of play to learn how to survive longer than a few years and I havent even scratched the surface of whats possible.

Dwarf Fortress Is a game that can be played forever I have with a 100+ hours in the game have still yet to do a lot that the game has to offer. If you are wounding weather you should buy this game don't be afraid of the games difficulty unlike other games where you can win and you can lose dwarf fortress is all about having fun losing (losing is fun). Some of the most fun I have had in this game is when things went horribly wrong. Some examples are when my newly formed milita charged a bunch of goblins with whatever weapons where lying around. We won that battle but the point is that things wont go right but that the fun of the game. So go out there buy this game, and Lose

Dwarf Fortress is a masterpiece crafted over decades. One that will continue to be refined and improved for many more with luck. I have spent more time thinking about Dwarf Fortress than any other game I know. The devs are a paragon of ethics in the game dev community. I would compare its influence on video games to Moby Dicks impact in the world of literature. The community and devs are awe inspiring in their creativity and devotion. However I must concede that most people won't find it all that fun to actually play. But if it does appeal to you I promise it will not be a waste of time or effort to immerse yourself in its endless potential for FUN.

It's great fun to build a well thought-out fortress and expand it more and more.

"despicable greedy miner dies after ape demon bashes his head in with a wool sock", "entire outpost frozen stiff reliving past trauma until they all die of starvation" and other thought provoking emergent narratives

Two steps forward, One step back. Dwarf Fortress is perhaps one of the greatest games of all time. You 100% cannot go wrong with it. But, because it is very buggy, there are some severe problems with it. However, my main issue is that there have been some paradoxical steps backwards comparing even Dwarf Fortress Premium to Classic. The reduction in micromanaging in the premium graphical version is a serious problem. I can't specify the material of mechanism used to link levers, and can't specify the material of bolts assigned to military squads. What this amounts to is a mismatch between the capabilities of premium and classic that just seem slightly paradoxical. If premium is a strict upgrade, why have some functionalities that existed prior been pared back?

A much-more-playable version of a classic, admittedly with a bit of a learning curve.

This game is not an easy one. You'll have to look for guides on youtube, and read tutorials, but once you grasp the basics - it's a very interesting and relaxing game with endless generation of funny stories. [i]In honor of Dastot, my cook, who was a money generator for my fortress because he became such a legendary cook that barrels with just 6 of his dishes were worth as much as a legendary spear o7[/i]

I've only just started playing this game and even though I'm still figuring everything out (thank god for YouTube guides for pretty much everything in the game) I'm having lots of fun and can see myself playing for a long time. My only complaint is that the information in the game seems very lacking. I'm constantly struggling to understand what stuff does and how, while figuring it out is part of the fun a little bit more information would go along way. If you like games like rimworld then you will almost definitely enjoy this game.

Please consider adding Korean language support! Dwarf Fortress is a legendary game, and I truly admire the depth and creativity it offers. However, for many Korean players, the language barrier makes it difficult to fully enjoy and understand the game’s complex systems. Adding official Korean language support would open the gates for a whole new community of fans who are eager to dive into the world of Dwarf Fortress. We would be deeply grateful if you could consider this in the future. Thank you for your amazing work and continued support of the game!

I'll just check in on my dwarfs and see how they're doing before I head to sleep. ... ...why is it light outside? 10/10 would forget to sleep again.

This game is autism crack. If you are autistic and you have any sort of life outside of this game, you will ONLY think about this game and the contraptions you can create in lieu of tedious clicking. Turn on a good dwarf music playlist and play for 12 straight hours.

Dwarf Fortress comes with a serious learning curve. I remember hearing of it way before the steam release as some legendary ascii game hidden somewhere on the web. It was a shock when it found it's way on steam with friendly ui and sprites. Dwarf Fortress is the life work of the development team and that's how the game plays. We owe a debt of gratitude to the publishing team for helping them get it on the store front with a graphical overhaul.

it's a cool ass game, my reccomendation is to make sure you've got a real mouse because trying to play this game on a mousepad is a great way to get rid of your finger prints

Damn the more those little dudes move the more dopamine I get. Your first lose will sting so bad you won't play for a month, each time it stings less. There is no winning, only FUN.

Embark with social skills and planter over trainable ones. Also a lot of lignite, one charcoal (don't waste) and enough copper nuggets to arm and armor 4 dwarves ~50. Also nest boxes and breeding pairs of peacock (forbid eggs) and lama. Enjoy your fort! 10 / 10 ~ Givin real life. Type shit until suddenly its not fam.

The best colony building game ever. Insanely rich with features.

This game opend a whole new depth of gaming to me. I mean i still suck at dwarf fortress and i just play it as an idle game. but trough it i started caring for new aspects of gaming.

Even while differing from the classic ASCII game, it's still beautiful labor of love That's fun to play and one that's hard for me to put down. That being said, it's not for everyone. If you're not into complicated colony sims, Fortress Mode is not for you. You may like Adventure Mode, but it can also be overwhelming to new players and is a feature still in beta.

Spent ages in adventure mode getting to the point where i was confident in raiding a vault only to find out the slab never spawned/disappeared when i retired my fort. 10/10 going to do it again

Literally one of my favourite games ever The Steam version is a bit easier to learn than the original, but be open to failure. A lot. That's part of the fun

Dwarf Fortress makes me feel paternal in ways I could have NEVER could have imagined, these little Dwarfs and their little lives, i want to love them, i want to kiss them

Super addicting. Played from like 8 to 4 AM first day. I really like COQ so I tried this. I think this is less break your keyboard and just good ol relaxing fun.

good game pretty graphics, the free df is awesome as well i got this one cause my eye site was bad and would reccomend just buying it while its on sale if you enjoy the free df. it has cool graphics and i enjoy playing with mods when i get bored

This number just represents the number of hours i spend on steam, i have way more on the regular releases. I still prefer the regular version but the Steam Edition is in a state in which i can recommend it to newcomers. I still strongly suggest to also get DF hack so you can fix bugs and have really important quality of life improvements like an alert System. Its pretty annoying to loose dwarfs because they wont stay inside when there is 300 Goblins outside or when your Marksmen run at the enemies to hit them with your crossbows instead of shooting them

Hard game but losing is fun. Install DFHack for best experience.

This game is deep, and difficult to learn, but fun as hell. Soon you too will learn the meaning of fun to lose.

It's DF but with better graphics and UI. What's not to like?

You get some dorfs, and you make a fortress. No false advertising.

If you're looking for randomness, creativity, depth (quite literal as well), tactics and hilarious occurrences within a fantasy setting then you'd probably want to give this a try.

Nah i have to do research to play this game. Watching someone play it very good experience. Me playing it not so much. It's kinda too deep for me and i have neither the time nor the will to learn everything to enjoy it. If you are a casual i don't think you will like it.

I've played this a lot since lock down since it's complicated, sometimes incredibly bizarre, and had some game play that has been very engaging. My favorite thing so far is watching a goose take down a forbidden beast. It's like a minecraft combined with sea-monkeys where you manage a group of drunk idiots so they can survive. However, the updated were-beast mechanic is basically a killer for enjoyment as it's an instant game over. Even if they are disabled, they will come. If it's from the merchant, or a visitor, or even a dwarf having a tantrum that will sometimes get cursed with it...and it's a quick descent. Any other event is fun to plan for and deal with. All others seem to happen surprisingly rarely with recent updates, but were-creatures have become a certainty by year 5.

At the end of the day, as much as we all want to like the game, it's undeniable that it's a poorly made game by incompetent developers. The thing simply doesn't work. There are obvious bugs that have been tracked for over a decade that are still there. There is nothing remotely resembling a sense of internal balance. Many of the game's core features simply don't work and we've all just gotten used to it. Almost every feature in the game has clearly been abandoned in a half finished state. Most of the stories you've heard about the game's deep simulations are simply made up wholesale from people's imaginations - the game isn't nearly as complex as the developers try to make it seem. There's no real difficulty, it's just a matter of learning how to avoid interacting with certain broken aspects of the game. There are many features that must simply be turned off in order for the game to function. You'll almost never lose a fort to a fun and satisfying challenge, it will basically always be to something stupid that makes no sense. Most people who actually play the game rely heavily on a third party tool to add missing features. Ultimately, the only reason anyone bothers with this game is because for some reason no one else has bothered to make a real version.

The game of all games. Not much more to add. Weaponize your neurodiversity!

It's dwarf fortress but with an easy to use UI. If you wanted to play DF but were intimidated by the controls, here you go.