Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world. The world is randomly generated with distinct civilizations spanning over 1000 years of detailed history, dozens of towns, hundreds of caves and regions with various wildlife. Command your dwarves as they search for wealth in the mountain. Play an adventurer and explore, quest for glory or seek vengeance. Extended ASCII character set rendered in 16 colors (including black) as well as 8 background colors (including black). Although Dwarf Fortress is still in a work in progress, many features have already been implemented. Please post all support issues in the forums for the game.
This game is a dream.
A beautiful dream about opportunities and possibilities. But its beauty isn't defined by fancy visual effect nor endless spectrums of colors. Loving Dwarf Fortress reminds of ones purest love towards a human, aimed at whats inside rather than the outter visage.
DF is saddly a love it or hate it kind of game. Its complicated and tricky, many times confronting the player with situations that require sacrifices, easilly slipping out of control into the famous "tantrum spirrals".
Many will be uneager to play a game with such basic graphics.
Many won't be willing to tame the games mechanics, steep learning curves.
Finally many shall wave goodbye after confronted with challanges of a great magnitude that might even cause a veteran's player head to ache.
Those all quitters will miss out big time. Yes, quitters - becouse DF is a game for commited gamers, that are willing to learn the tools of trade that the dwarven empire uses for building outposts, mountianhomes. Theres a lot of "FUN" in it.
And if you are one of those people that trust this game time and effort... Let me tell you, Dwarf Fortress takes grip of real time strategical/economical gameplay soo hard, it makes maaaaany games released nowaydays look like they are supposed to be ported to cellphones, simplicity wise.
And ofcourse, aside the management side that is Fortress Mode, one may concentrate on a single characters tale in Adventure Mode, using the same ammount of engine provided possibilities in a RPG fashion. Lots of fun for everyone.
Go ahead. Try it.
If you don't like it, too bad. But if you do?
Give your wife and kids a plane ticket to a nice vacation spot for a month, becouse there will be hardly time for anything else than tending to your bearded subordinates.
Might consider 2 months, seeing how much the vibrant modding scene changes the game keeping the basic feel. The options, are endless.
Reader, let us cut through some ********.
I don't want to say something cliche. I don't want to say "Dwarf Fortress is the future of gaming", or talk about the complexity of the game as if raw complexity is a good thing. I quite simply want to say that Dwarf Fortress is fun.
Now, it's not thrilling -- not most of the time. Most of the time you're figuring out how to build a cistern to hold water for your well, or managing the crop rotation for your farms, or possibly designing a secure entrance for your fortress. Most of the time, this game is a game of building and construction, of labor management and alcohol. (Don't forget about the alcohol.) No, this game isn't a game that generates its fun from action-packed combat -- though it has some -- or from cinematic cutscenes.
This game is a game of a million stories.
In this game, you will witness a humble cheesemaker pick up an axe in a time of dire crisis, dying at the entrance to the fortress -- his fortress -- to save the girl he has fallen desperately in love with. You will witness a gemcrafter, struck blind by a goblin's spear when he was just a child, be possessed by spirits from beyond this world and craft an artifact as beautiful as any that has ever existed. You will witness a battle-scarred veteran whose emotions have long since died snap like a twig and reap a dozen of his fellow dwarves as if they were wheat before a scythe.
You will see more stories than you will ever realize unfold in front of your eyes, more lives and events than you could possibly know. You will play a game that seems less like a game than it is a world of its own -- a world of dwarves and goblins, of monsters and gold, of stone and pick and mountain.
And alcohol.
(LOTS of alcohol.)
THE game you need to try. Even if it's SO hard to learn...
By far, this is THE most comprehensive parametric world simulation game spiced up with unsurpassed level of detail...
Dwarf Fortress redefines concept of "loosing in a game into epic adventure towards certain doom which is always fun in a different way.
This game.... this game.... is amazing. Its one of the most in depth games i have ever played. I like this game for its gameplay, however, not how it looks because I will admit, this games graphics are the terrible, and its learning curve is like running into a wall, but all that does is weed out the immatient and the people with no imagination. I would definatly rather love a game for its gameplay rather then how it looks, as the possibilities in this game are endless, you can, if you wanted, kill someone with thier own finger that you bit off.
In this game, there is no "HP" or "Armour" or "Mana" or "Levels", if you get hit in the eye with an arrow, even by an idiot, its going into your brain your going down. If you get hit in the arm with a sword, and it misses you armour, your arm is coming off, no matter who attacked you. If you get stabbed, if its a legendary or a peasent, your still very hurt. Its just so realistic, and it feels so good.
Just to give a taste of the complexity of this game, every world generates its own history, with different legends, historical figures, sites, just like a real world. These worlds all feel and are different in their own way. In most other game with "randomly generated worlds", the worlds may be endless and random, but it still all feels the same. In DF, each world in unique, and will activly change as you play.
Not to mention that many, many other very populer games are heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress, an example being Minecraft, and Towns. As much as the imature Minecraft community would like to deny, Minecraft and every game "based" off minecraft would never have come to be without this game.
And, for all those whiners, that whine about the graphics, if this game had any batter graphics then it has now, even baisic flash stuff, your computer would probobly exlode into 1000 pieces, even the most advenced computer you can buy.
Excellent, very complicated roguelike game with impossibly deep world. Has a problematic controls that require some time to accustom, yet after some time, one will have no problem with controlling all dwarves.
Of course, you don't need to play in ASCII, there are many neat graphic packages that make game a little less raw.
Game has both - strategy and ADOM-like roguelike mode, so anyone will have what likes.
And for final, a quote about gameplay...
"I caught a vampire too. A fisher-dwarf accused the expedition leader, who I knew was innocent of course. So I had my sheriff drag the fisher-dwarf to the dungeon. I had no hammer, so he had to wait to be executed while we forged one. After 50 hammer strikes I knew I was right, because he lived."
This game is so utterly awesome and deep. It is never the same, and always getting better and better!
Worth every hour sunk into the steep learning curve.
Probably the best sandbox game (to not say game) ever created !
This game is EXTREMELY detailed and amazing. It's the only game I know where you can cut off a giants arm and beat him to death with it! I would also suggest the lazy newb pack for people who are new to Dwarf Fortress.