The Dwarfiest Dwarves Who Ever Dwarfed, Now Accessible to Non-Zealots

Dwarf Fortress is the quintessential fortress management game. A two-person indie project first released in 2006, it was notorious for its intensely detailed simulation, wacky emergent behaviors, hilarious patch notes, and (very notably) its lack of graphics. In an era where cinematic trailers were a thing and in-game graphics were growing ever more realistic, Dwarf Fortress used an ASCII code that made the game look like trying to decode the Matrix.

But back in 2022, less than a year after I last blogged about the game, Team 12 finally released the game on Steam with a passable UI, including graphics. And no creator has earned the right to charge for a labor-of-love project, after giving it away for nearly two decades, than them.

Since the latest updates, I feel less bad about bringing up the game with more casual gamers, now that it looks like a game and not an error log on an acid trip. Don’t get me wrong; it’s still a punishingly difficult game to learn, but it least you see dwarves running around workshops and lava pits and not weird symbols.

And now that it is more engaging, I do recommend giving it a try if you’re feeling dwarfy. If you do, once you get down the basics of keeping your dwarves from starving or dying to wild boars, take a moment to pry into their lives.

The game runs on a deeper level that you can see at a glance.

Open a combat log to see why your fisherman is hopping around on a crutch these days.

Examine a piece of artwork to discover that a new sculpture is dedicated to immortalizing the time his least favorite co-worker puked at the sight of a dead goblin.

Play crime-scene investigator when a dead body shows up under a waterfall, eventually concluding that the deceased was sparring with the militia and dodged right over the edge.

Sort your dwarves by grumpiness and learn that your most disgruntled worker is a carpenter who hates the sight of the most common tree in your region.

One of my personal favorites was when a mythical beast breached my ill-defended fortress from below, only to meet its demise at the hands of an unarmed child who tore its head clean off. When you allow your kids to do chores, one of the major ones is hauling boulders out of the mines, and that results in strong kids.

Recently, I had a dwarf taken over by a strange mood (an in-game mania to make a magnificent artifact). His grand project resulted in a shirt made out of donkey leather bearing a picture of a much more useful artifact on it. Basically, it was fan merch.

The game is crazy. It’s hilarious at times. It’s rewardingly hard.

And now, in 2025, you can experience it without a secret decoder ring or 3rd party addons.

P.S.: Dig too greedily. Dig too deep. It’s only a game, and LOSING IS !!FUN!!