
Dwarf Fortress is an exceptional RPG/Strategy that raises the bar for the genre.
93
Verdict
95%
Steam
84
IGDB
Verdict score based on confidence-adjusted Steam reviews?
Very Positive on Steam (95% positive from 31K reviews)
Critically acclaimed (84/100 critic average)
Standout indie gem
No significant drawbacks reported
Dwarf Fortress is a construction and management simulation and roguelike indie video game created by Bay 12 Games. Available as freeware and in development since 2002, its first alpha version was released in 2006 and received attention for being a two-member project surviving solely on donations.

Runs well on modern hardware.
Last updated 2d ago
Dwarf Fortress really exists to fulfill a very specific playstyle, and fights you every step of the way doing anything else. As an example, I spend 19 in-game years defending against an endless horde of goblins in the hopes of wearing down their forces and one day retaliate, only to discover that invaders are spawned independently of their origin civilizations, and no amount of careful trap hallways or military might would stop them. The fort fell when my only allies invaded me without warning, all because I had forgotten to trade one year. In another game, I retired a happy and healthy fortress, only to stop by in adventurer mode to find it in ruins, with monsters roaming the halls. This was because I had sealed the cavern layer instead of fighting the endless stream of forgotten beasts within, which the game took to mean the fort had fallen to them. In yet another adventurer run, I found that a nearby goblin civilization had abducted several hundred children. After lots of careful planning, I stormed their fortress, defeated their leader, and freed them. Checking in legends mode later, the game didn't count any of that except for the death of their leader, and none of those children made it home despite my personal escort. As it stands, Dwarf Fortress is plagued by a lot of small issues that stack up over time to make the entire experience demoralizing. The adage "losing is fun" is a playstyle that has defined the community for many years, but I've lost many careful and interesting plans, and have found it to be less than exciting. Perhaps the game can be for you, but I don't think it's what I was looking for. I might come back one day, but not for a while.
I keep returning to this game because on paper it is the greatest game ever made. But single everytime I leave because the inconsistencies break the immersion and leave me frustrated. This game have a complete economy in detail, with dozens and dozens of different kind of rocks and materials, different types of manifacture to make what you need. But a single 3x3 farm can feed 50 dwarves. This game simulate and tracks ever single digit of every dwarf, and every single thought and preference. But an angry baby can (and will) punch multiple adults to death, and nobody will say or do anything. This game generate keeps track of every single living thing on the world. But a lake of magma won't heat up adjacent frozen water. This game calculate the hardness of materials, the weight and elasticity of every material to calculate the impact and damage of combat and incidents. But a whip cut steel armors in half.
Reviewing this game has felt a bit redundant. Its achievements seem to speak for themselves. But throwing my words onto the pile... In this game, you play as a particular community of dwarves. You decide how they build, how they strategise, how they manage natural resources. They labour, brawl, create art, study the world around them, and consume truly staggering amounts of booze. You respond to events outside your control. The outside world asserts itself. With the passage of time, it's very likely that your fortress will fall. And then you return to the world screen to ponder the vicissitudes of fate and choose your next move. How does the civilisation that community belonged to respond to the loss of their fort? Do they attempt to reclaim it? Pick a more strategic location and plot revenge? Move elsewhere and forget? Or does god (i.e., you) give up on them entirely and choose a different civilisation to patronise? Over millennia fortresses and civilisations rise and fall, stories emerge and are lost, famous heroes achieve marvellous deeds and sink into obscurity. You get to shape that process - to an extent. Dwarfs have their own personalities and are also impacted by events and conditions. If you forget to set up a cloth industry, for example, there will eventually be some dwarfs without serviceable clothes: are they made bitter by the indignity? Do they learn to laugh at themselves and see the absurdity of the dwarven condition? Do they come to certain intellectual conclusions about the nature of respectability and whether or not the pursuit of it is a worthwhile aim? Unlike other games in this genre, it is easy to become invested in individual dwarfs, because they feel like genuinely complex and unpredictable characters. Sooner or later one of them will surprise you. Having said that, this game is possibly not going to suit players who are looking for a cheap dopamine hit. To get the most out of it, I think you have to play creatively, not just react to the scenarios that the game creates for you. A community worships a god of death: how is that death cult aspect going to affect the development of their fort? A civilisation worships a god of the weather: maybe it would be fun to build a giant observatory...? Someone creates a certain artefact: how does this development affect the general cultural trajectory of the community? Your fortress falls: what sort of impact is this going to have on the history of the world you've created? How does it affect the balance of power, etc. Quite regularly there are complaints and lamentations from players whose play-style strikes me as highly passive. The richness of the world that has been created is orders of magnitude greater than that offered by any competing game. The developers have dreamt of this world for decades and problem-solved endlessly and inventively in their attempt to realise this vision. The replayability is endless. That doesn't mean it will suit every player. But I do absolutely recommend that you give it a poke to see whether it might suit you. Please keep in mind that if you purchase this game you are doing so to support the developers and/or to access sprites and the in-development adventure mode! You can download the ASCII version of the game itself for free on the Bay12 website, where you can also find comparatively sane discussion forums. The ASCII art version, by the way, is spectacular and can be enabled in game settings...
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Data sourced from RAWG, Steam, IGDB, CheapShark, Wikipedia, HLTB, and GX Corner. Sources: rawg, steam, cheapshark, igdb, wikipedia.
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