Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress (previously titled Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: 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.
Not to be confused with dwarf forest.Dwarf Fortress
Bay 12 Games
- Bay 12 Games
- Kitfox Games (Steam, Itch.io)
- Tarn Adams
- Zach Adams
- Public Alpha (v0.21.93.19a)
- August 8, 2006
- Steam, Itch.io
- December 6, 2022
Originally displayed using ASCII graphics, the game is set in a detailed, procedurally generated fantasy world with randomized creatures, NPCs, and history. Players can control a colony of dwarves in a fortress or explore the world as a player character. Its mechanics have been lauded for their depth and complexity.
Prior to Dwarf Fortress, Tarn Adams was working on a project called Slaves to Armok: God of Blood which was a role-playing game. By 2004, Adams decided to shift from the original Armok to Dwarf Fortress after the former became difficult to maintain. Adams calls it his life's work and said in 2011 that version 1.0 will not be ready for at least another 20 years, and even after that he would continue to work on it. A paid edition with graphical tiles and a new soundtrack was published by Kitfox Games and released to Steam and Itch.io in 2022.
Critics praised its complex and emergent gameplay but had mixed reactions to its difficulty. The game influenced Minecraft, RimWorld, and others, and was selected among other games to be featured in the Museum of Modern Art to show the history of video gaming in 2012. The game has a cult following and an active online community. As there are no win conditions, every fortress, no matter how successful, will eventually fall; this has prompted the community motto: "Losing is Fun!"
Community[edit]
Dwarf Fortress has attracted a significant cult following.[1][85][86] The game's difficulty, with most fortresses eventually succumbing to various forms of defeat, led to its unofficial slogan "Losing is fun!"[42][52] 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.[14] 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".[65] 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.[40]
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.[19] 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.[48] 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.[4][87][88] 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".[89][90] 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 and is updated along with the game's development.[91]
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."[48] 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."[53] Adams has admitted that some feats of the community surprised even him.[48] 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.[92]
Third-party utilities and mods like "Dwarf Therapist" help players manage toggling labors and skills.[18][22] The utility "Stonesense", based on the "DFHack" library, can render the game in a 3D isometric view.[1] The "DF to Minecraft" utility allows players to view their Dwarf Fortress maps by converting them into Minecraft structures.[71] Adams has acknowledged the role of the community in supporting development and endorsed third-party tools, visualizers and interface code; indeed, he has said that he admires third-party developers who create tools for Dwarf Fortress in spite of the fact that the game is closed-source.[47]
On June 11, 2016, an event called Dwarfmoot was held at Mox Boarding House in Bellevue, Washington, to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the game's release. It was organized by video game developer Kinnon Stephens. The Adams brothers attended and though he was unable to attend in person, Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering provided a pre-recorded introduction.[7]
