Dwarf Fortress

Gameplay

Overview and game modes

Dwarf Fortress has three primary game modes which take place in worlds created by the player, where most of the elements are randomly generated.

Fortress mode, a construction and management simulation of a colony of dwarves. There are no objectives, with the player being free to decide how to go about managing the colony and making them interact with the environment, thus making it an open-ended and sandbox-style game. Since there is no way to win, it only ends when the entire colony is defeated by the various possible threats, or the player decides to abandon or retire the fortress.

Adventure mode, a turn-based, open-ended roguelike where the player starts off as an adventurer.

Legends mode, in which players can view maps, histories of each civilization and any figure who has lived or died in the generated world. Any notable achievement made by the player in any of the two game modes is recorded and is viewable in Legends mode.

An object testing arena is present, where players can simulate battles between selected units in various conditions. It is also used for testing mods.

The world is represented by letters, numbers, box-drawing characters and symbols in sixteen different colors. For example, a dwarf is represented by the character ☺, a cat is a dark gray c, a dog is a brown d, and a giant spider is a light gray S. The tile-based graphics use code page 437 characters as tiles, giving it the appearance of a text-based game. The paid edition replaces the characters with pixel art sprites and includes an option to switch between the new and old visuals in the settings menu.

World generation

The first step in Dwarf Fortress is generating a playable world; only one game can be played per world at a time. The player can adjust certain parameters governing size, savagery, mineral occurrences and the length of history. The map shows symbols representing roads, hills, towns and cities of the various civilizations, and it changes as the generation progresses.

The process involves procedurally generated basic elements like elevation, rainfall, mineral distribution, drainage and temperature. For example, a high-rainfall and low-drainage area would make a swamp. Areas are thus categorized into biomes, which also have two variables: savagery and alignment. They have their own specific type of plant and animal populations. The next phase is erosion—which the drainage simulates. Rivers are created by tracing their paths from the mountains (which get eroded) to their ends which are usually oceans, though some form lakes. The salinity field defines oceans, mangroves or alluvial plains. Names are generated for the biomes and rivers. The names depend on the area's good/evil variable (the alignment) and though in English, they are originally in one of the four in-game languages of dwarves, elves, humans and goblins; these are the four main races in any generated world.

After a few minutes, the world is populated and its history develops for the number of in-game years selected in the history parameter. Civilizations, races and religions spread and wars occur, with the "population" and "deaths" counters increasing. The ticker stops at the designated "years" value, at which point the world can be saved for use in any game mode. Should the player choose to retire a fortress or adventure mode character, or should they be defeated, this world will persist and will become available for further games.

Fortress mode

When Fortress mode is selected, the player is given the option to choose the embark location in the world. The player can consider the environment, elevations, biome, soil types and mineral concentrations which can pose significant challenges to the development or survival of the fortress. Customizing the colony's supplies, domestic animals and skills are available, but each dwarf's mental and physical attributes are randomly generated. The game describes in detail each dwarf's physical appearance, like hair and facial features. The mental abilities, individual preferences and desires are also randomly generated. Each dwarf's relationships with others and the deities they worship can be viewed.

The player embarks with the expedition team (seven dwarves, their livestock and supplies), and does not have direct control over them. In order to construct and operate the fortress, the player has to designate specific tasks to be performed and the dwarves will go about it. They can be assigned any labors, but their work still depends on their relative skill with it, which can increase as they perform said task. Some task categories are stone-working, woodworking, metalworking, farming, and crafting; there are further combat-related skills. They are categorized further, such as leatherworking, butchery, clothesmaking, gem cutting, glassmaking, and pottery. Activities take place in workshops which need to be constructed; for example, stills for brewing alcohol. The metal industry has a very important role because it produces weapons and armor for the military, trap components for defense, and high-value furniture and decorations.

The player initially can see a top-down view of the surface-level of the fortress site; each layer of a z-axis level can be viewed when the player changes it. An entire underground level would be seen as its entire section of terrain while a mountain at the surface level would have only its section visible with the remaining surface landscape. Thus, for digging, the player can designate, for every z-level starting from the surface, staircases to be carved, and, at the final designated level, end the staircase by having it dug into a room.

The geology in Dwarf Fortress is fairly accurate. Rocks like olivine and gabbro can be dug up. The topmost layer usually consists of sand, clay or plain soil—this can be used for underground farming. Deeper levels will be layers of rock; minerals appear in layers or clusters around the right depth. Gems like tourmalines appear in rare clusters. Water is simulated like falling sand; every tile can contain up to seven levels of it. A tile having one level of water is the lowest, while a tile with seven is full. There is a system for simulating temperature and heat. Fires can spread and burn dwarves and furniture. There are four basic seasons in an in-game year: spring, summer, autumn and winter.

Adventurer mode

Adventurer is the secondary game mode in Dwarf Fortress. Unlike Fortress mode, Adventurer mode has the player control a single character. In Adventurer mode, character creation works similar to other role-playing games, with the player choosing the name, gender, race and personality of the character. Players also select from a choice of various skills and attributes, such as strength and agility. Like in Fortress mode, these skills further improve normally through exercised use unlike regular experience. They play in the same generated worlds, and these worlds continue to develop and advance while time passes as in Fortress mode. The character starts off in a town of their choosing, depending on the character's chosen civilization, and can interact with the various non-playable characters (NPCs). NPCs can speak about the surrounding areas or offer to follow and help the player. Quests are given via a "rumor" system, where rumors can spread among the NPCs, or players can decide to serve a leader and attain more traditional quests from them via an "Agreement". Characters can also write poems, books and music compositions, based on procedurally generated forms and styles. The player can choose to form a site and build using materials they collect. Players can use the quick travel mode to quickly travel between geographical regions.

Like regular characters in Fortress mode, characters have thirst, hunger and exhaustion levels. To survive, they must eat, drink and sleep. They need to take shelter at night when evil creatures like bogeymen come out. In addition to the regular combat mechanism, in this mode, the player can also choose which body parts to strike. A player can visit their retired or ruined fortresses made in Fortress mode. Instead of quitting, the character can be retired, and depending on the player's achievements, their life events will be documented in the Legends mode among the historical figures.

Legends mode

Legends is the third way of interacting with a generated world, a listing of the events of historical figures, sites such as towns or fortresses, regions and civilizations. Legends also includes a "historical map" tool in which players can examine conflicts and other activities between civilizations. These generally take the form of sentences describing the actions of the characters, as well as notable completed events. Some historical entries also include notable kills, megabeasts, and allies and enemies within the game world. The character referenced in these details generally have their own historical entries alongside.

At any time, the player can create an XML dump in which players can examine history outside of the game. Similarly, players can export detailed maps that show world details such as biome boundaries, rainfall and drainage. These XML files and map images can be used in third-party software to view the generated world and its history in a more user-friendly and comprehensive interface.

History

Early development (2002–2006)

One of Tarn and Zach Adams' early works was a text based adventure game called dragslay, written in the BASIC language and influenced by Dungeons & Dragons. This was the brothers' first fantasy project. In high school, Tarn Adams taught himself the C programming language and developed it further. dragslay would later have an important influence on Dwarf Fortress. Adams explained his interest in fantasy games, that he had grown up "surrounded by that sort of thing ... along with generic sci-fi, generic fantasy is part of our heritage." Years later, before entering graduate school in mathematics, Adams began working on a project he called Slaves to Armok: God of Blood. It was named after a deity in dragslay, originally named for a variable "arm_ok"—which counted the limbs the player still had attached. This new project was a two-dimensional (later to have 3D graphics) isometric fantasy role-playing game in which the player encountered and fought goblins.

Adams took some time off Armok to work on small side-projects, and another one which would inspire Dwarf Fortress was Mutant Miner. It was turn-based, loosely inspired by a game called Miner VGA. Mutant Miner involved the player digging underneath buildings, searching for ores, fighting monsters, and carrying radioactive "goo" back to the surface to grow extra limbs and gain other abilities. Adams was dissatisfied with only having a single miner, and the game began to lag because it was turn-based. Adams said:

[I]nstead of rewriting the game, I thought, well maybe it should be dwarves instead. And it should be real-time to combat the [lag] problem. Now, you'd be digging out minerals in a mountain, combating threats inside, and making little workshops. Then I thought, well, how should the high score list work? We really like to keep records of plays. Not just high score lists, but expansive logs. So we'll often try to think of ways to play with the idea. This time, the idea was to let your adventurer come into the fortress after you lose and find the goblets you've made, and journals it generates.

First release (2006)

Adams began working on Dwarf Fortress in October 2002, estimating that the project would take two months, but suspended development soon after, in order to finish his previous work, Armok. He explained that it began like the 1982 arcade game Dig Dug. The Adams brothers started the Bay 12 Games company, launching its website and releasing their games online. Armok became harder to maintain due to him focusing on adding features to Dwarf Fortress instead, in addition to its inferior code and 3D graphics. By 2004, Adams announced on his website that he would be switching his main project to Dwarf Fortress after he struggled to continue working on it. Adams explained that it would be a simulation game with dwarves but kept Adventurer mode as a surprise feature, which was revealed during its release. At that time, his fan base consisted of a few dozen people and more came in when he made this announcement. He put up a PayPal button after a request from a fan; similarly, a subscriber system was added later. In the next five months, they made around $300, which brought in only enough to cover the site's $20 hosting cost. He dubbed the game Slaves to Armok, God of Blood II: Dwarf Fortress; Adams explained that it was a sequel because it continued to work toward many of Armok's development goals but said its cumbersome name was mostly "for kicks".

Adams decided to focus on the game's development full-time during his first year of his math post-doctorate at Texas A&M in 2006. The university offered him $50,000 if he would stay another year. Adams agreed and commented on this, "I woke up the morning after I gave notice, like, I can actually make this work." Later, Adams expected he would use his $15,000 savings for a year and then have to get a job in order to support himself because the game had not been released yet. Development continued until August 8, 2006, when the first alpha version (version 0.21.93.19a) was released. Donations reached $800–1,000 in the following months, an average that increased gradually until they were financially stable. He then decided to solely rely on donations.

Development (2007–present)

According to Adams, Dwarf Fortress is written in an "unsanctioned messy combination" of C and C++ using a free edition of Microsoft Visual Studio as the IDE. Adams did not use the 3D graphics which Armok had since its development was hampered because of it. He cited the ease in development of features like fluid simulation, copyright issues with the art and more unhindered possibilities as further reasons for not using it. Being used to the text-based graphics in roguelikes, he did not want graphical tilesets. The story-generation originated first from Armok, although present to some extent in dragslay. Tarn and Zach would write different chapters of events they would like to see, mix it together and try to implement it. Most of this story writing is managed by Zach, who has a role in the game's development; he graduated in ancient history, and books like The Twelve Caesars and the writings of Assyrian kings influenced the game.

Hack, Starflight and the Ultima series were Adams' main influences. The 1985 roguelike Hack inspired Adams because of its randomly generated levels, deceased character persistence and detailed mechanics. Adams cited Ultima series as the inspiration for his generated worlds. The body part and wound system was inspired by 1990 role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020. He prefers modeling on individual elements, rather than entire systems, for better simulations with the outcomes being under his control. He said midpoint displacement generates the elevation of the world and its initial basic elements use fractals, which give it an overall natural look. He further explained that he made an algorithm to simulate rain shadows which occur in areas at the side of mountain deserts. For the distinct personalities of each unit, he took it from NEO PI-R test of which he admitted knowing little about. The feature of carps eating dwarves was unexpected when the game was released. He had written them having the same size and carps were designed to be carnivorous. A tough part of the game for him to implement was the A* search algorithm for in-game character's pathfinding which, depending on their numbers and complexity of the path, can cause a heavy load on a computer. Adams composed the game's flamenco-inspired music.

A z-axis was introduced in the 2007 release because he felt the limitations with a single plane increasing; the feature of making various constructions like walls was also added at this time. In the earlier version, players could dig only into a mountainside and not underground because of having only one "z-level", thus it was considered "2D". This was significantly easier to maintain due to the limited playable area. Adams commented that this major change was further difficult to implement because of considering details like fluid mechanics and cave-ins. Vampiric and lycanthropic infections with necromancers and undead were added in 2012.

Steam and Itch.io release (2022)

In March 2019, the Adams brothers announced they would be releasing a paid edition of Dwarf Fortress, featuring a new graphical tileset and music through Steam and Itch.io, published by Kitfox Games. Adams stated this would not affect the ongoing free version of Dwarf Fortress, but due to family situations at the time and the waning income from Patreon, they wanted to find another way to monetize the game. The Steam edition includes support for Steam Workshop, which allows users to provide modifications to the game. It was released on December 6, 2022.

Kitfox Games enlisted the help of an economist to perform an analysis of the game's projected sales, using the number of wishlists and sales data of games Kitfox had previously published as a reference. The initial estimate was that Dwarf Fortress would sell around 160,000 units within two months, but that goal was exceeded within the first day. The game was the best-selling title on Steam upon release. One Steam user expressed incredulity at the amount of positive reviews the game garnered in such a short amount of time, and took to the Steam forums to ask if people had "been playing free DF for 25 years [sic] and just waiting for an opportunity to pay $30?", to which over 3,000 people replied "Yes".

Shortly after the release, the Adams brothers announced they had brought a third person onto the Dwarf Fortress team, a community member named Putnam, to help with development along with a community manager. In February 2023, they revealed on the Bay 12 forums that revenue from the game in January 2023 was over $7.2 million, an over 400-fold increase from the pre-Steam income of around $15,000 monthly.

Further updates

As of November 2025, the latest update was version 53.02, with it completing 23 years in development despite being an alpha version. Starting from version 50.01, which released on December 6, 2022, the developers opted for a new versioning scheme without the leading "0." present in all previous versions of Dwarf Fortress. Adams and his brother have a to-do list of features the game should have before version 1.0 and the version number is the percentage progress of its completion. He says he has been able to maintain focus by shifting his attention to different aspects of the game, given its large coverage. While regular game development aim to perfect their work for release, he considers that a drawback since he continues exploring and learning while adding new features. Wired and Rock Paper Shotgun called some of its bug fixes unintentional and funny, with PC Gamer saying it makes an entertaining RSS feed to subscribe to. Adams has two favorite bugs. One is about a farmer dwarf planting his own bed, and the other involves a dwarven executioner, with broken arms, thus unable to use his hammer, delivering punishments by biting his victims and tearing off their limbs, keeping one in his mouth for years.

Adams considers Dwarf Fortress his life's work, and has stated in 2011 that he does not expect version 1.0 to be released for at least another twenty years, and even after that, he would still continue to update it. Adams calls his game an open-ended "story generator". The game's code base is proprietary, and Adams has stated he has no plans to release it into the open-source domain, citing the risk of financial losses. He explained he would consider releasing its source if he could not maintain it anymore, seeing different game developers taking it up. He says that he does not mind any modifications as long as he is not put at financial risk.

Adams describes version 1.0 having an Adventurer mode that would be a regular role-playing game, with changing plots and ordering subordinates to perform various tasks. Fortress mode would have a closer relationship with the outside generated world through war, trade and diplomacy. The world being bigger, he envisions the game to have many more features like magic, a tutorial, and a better interface. According to him, a tutorial is a burden because of the additional need of updating it and interface improvement is not a major priority till then—citing numerous existing fan-made applications for improving the game's interface. He said of version 1.0, "sitting down with a fresh DF world would be like sitting down to read a middling fantasy author you haven't read before, but with all the extras that being a video game provides, including the ability to write your own sequels." Modern in-game technologies and 3D graphics were fan requests Adams said he would never implement, yet showing ambivalence about the latter if the task was easy enough.

Reception

The game received attention mainly because of its emergent gameplay, ASCII arts, complexity, poor interface and difficulty. Many reviewers described the game as unusually difficult to learn. It has been compared to other simulation games like SimCity and The Sims, Dungeon Keeper, and roguelike games like NetHack. However, reviewers praised Adams' independence and attention to detail. Gamasutra said, "There have been few indie gaming success stories as big as Dwarf Fortress." Wired magazine, following one of its updates, described it as an "obtuse, wildly ambitious work-in-progress [that] mashes the brutal dungeon crawling of roguelikes with the detail-oriented creativity of city-building sims."

Dwarf Fortress was praised for its depth and complexity. Jonah Weiner from The New York Times stated, "Many simulation games offer players a bag of building blocks, but few dangle a bag as deep, or blocks as small and intricately interlocking, as Dwarf Fortress." PC Gamer's Steve Hogarty commented, "Dwarf Fortress's reluctance to expend even a joule of energy in prettying itself results in astonishing hidden complexity." Regarding the open-ended nature and emergent gameplay, Rock Paper Shotgun's Graham Smith found that with its procedurally generated world and characters simulated "down to the most minute detail", the game's results are "often hilarious, occasionally tragic, and always surprising." Mike Rose from Gamasutra said, "... to an outsider looking in on this game so many years into development, with such a wide scope of features and potential play styles, it's fair to say that getting into Dwarf Fortress is perhaps one of the most daunting tasks the video game industry as a whole can provide."

The lack of graphics, poor interface and controls were seen as the reasons for the game's difficulty. However, the reviewers also noted most of it having a role in gameplay and the argument that the ASCII graphics forces players to use their own imagination, making it more engaging. Weiner wrote, "[the game] may not look real, but once you're hooked, it feels vast, enveloping, alive. A micro-manager's dream, the game gleefully blurs the distinction between painstaking labor and creative thrill." Quintin Smith from Rock, Paper, Shotgun said, "The interface has a tough job to do, bless it, but getting it to do what you want is like teaching a beetle to cook." Ars Technica's Casey Johnston highlighted the difficulty in performing basic actions and felt that tinkering or experimenting ended up being unproductive; she compared it to "trying to build a skyscraper by banging two rocks together". She pointed out the lack of in-game tutorial and said how players can learn by themselves in other games, which are also open-ended or have intuitive mechanics, but in Dwarf Fortress, there is no autonomy "even after hours" of gameplay.

Community

Dwarf Fortress has attracted a significant cult following. The game's difficulty, with most fortresses eventually succumbing to various forms of defeat, led to its unofficial slogan "Losing is fun!" Adams has said that the slogan was originally a throw-away joke from the game manual, and is meant to create comfort with the concept of permadeath. The slogan 'strike the earth' is used in marketing and community content. Tarn and Zach Adams answer questions from players on the game's official podcast, "Dwarf Fortress Talk". Donors receive personalized crayon drawings or short stories from Tarn Adams, and their names are displayed on a "Champions' List" online. In addition to cash donations, Adams said he has received many in-kind donations. For example, volunteers handle the bug tracking system.

Players and members of the community have often written creative interpretations of game events. They have made diaries, short videos, comics and audio depicting their stories whether it involved success or defeat. Besides testing the game, sharing it with others and supporting it through donations, they make suggestions, help newcomers, share stories, and information in the Bay 12 Games forums. They maintain the dedicated wiki; there are also fan-organized podcasts and meet-ups. In 2006, a saga called Boatmurdered, where fans passed around a single fortress and each played the game and saved it before sending it to another, was portrayed in detail from the start to its destructive end. This spread around gaming sites and boosted the game's popularity. There have been tutorials on YouTube with one being a 15-part series, and another 12-part written series called "The Complete and Utter Newby Tutorial for Dwarf Fortress". An illustrated guide to the game, called Getting Started with Dwarf Fortress: Learn to play the most complex video game ever made was released by technology publisher O'Reilly Media in 2012 written by Peter Tyson. Containing 240 pages, it has a foreword from Adams.

On the game's community, Adams said, "They are the reason I've been able to make the step from hobbyist to full-time developer. I'm lucky to be able to run with whatever ideas we have and try new things." On players sending him forum posts or emails detailing their stories or events that happened during the game, Adams said, "It's really gratifying, because it's one of the things we set out to do is to get people to write these narratives about their game." Adams has admitted that some feats of the community surprised even him. Adams stated that the most impressive thing he had ever seen done with the game was when a player managed to create a Turing-complete 8-bit computer powered by dwarves.

Legacy

The game influenced Minecraft, which reviewers considered a more user-friendly version of Dwarf Fortress. Adams says he is thankful for the Minecraft developers citing Dwarf Fortress because that drew more players to his game.

RimWorld developer Tynan Sylvester said Dwarf Fortress "amazed me because of the stories people wrote from it. I read generated tales like Boatmurdered and Gemclod and was fascinated by how the player and game could work together to create a narrative that actually worked. I wanted to push that even further – and to do it in a way that's approachable, and without falling into some of the design traps that have, in my opinion, marred Dwarf Fortress."

Upon the game's Steam release, many indie game developers came out to praise Dwarf Fortress and cite its influence on their own games, including the developers of Terraria, Caves of Qud, Prison Architect, and Project Zomboid. Homages to Dwarf Fortress appear in World of Warcraft.

In March 2012, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City exhibited Dwarf Fortress among other games selected to depict the history of video gaming. As new updates are made available, the Museum of Modern Art instantly downloads them and archives them in their server. Curator of the exhibition, Paola Antonelli, said she was amazed by the combination of "beautiful aesthetics" and "mind-boggling" complexity in the game. In July 2014, the game won a poll conducted by Turtle Beach as the community's most "Beautiful Game"; games were nominated by fans posting videos, images or text, and a list was compiled by the community which also contained The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Far Cry 3 and The Last of Us. Jay Ma, one of the developers of FTL: Faster Than Light, commented on its use of ASCII arts, "Part of the reason Dwarf Fortress can include a breadth of mechanics unseen in other games is because complex mechanics are expressed in the most simple of visual forms."

Game designer Craig Ellsworth commended Dwarf Fortress for having a uniquely long "staying power". According to Ellsworth, it will not be replaced by any other more advanced game of its genre: "There is simply no such thing as a flashier Dwarf Fortress, and there can't be, by definition." He predicted that the game's popularity "will reach its apex" at its final release.

Use in academia

The game has been the subject of several academic papers investigating a range of fields. These include studies on artificial intelligence, computer game landscapes and computer game pedagogy.