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Game
Game2022
Dwarf Fortress
Developer Bay 12 Games
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. Originally displayed using ASCII arts, the… From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
473 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Lemmy, Mastodon) · newest Nov 5, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
88
LovedLoved
273 positive · 39 negative
95% range 83–91%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 273 | 39 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 46 | 6 | 70 |
| Lemmy * | 2 | 0 | 21 |
| Mastodon * | 5 | 0 | 11 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
24,702 of 26,060 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
86% recommend · 232 yes, 37 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 269 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (29,914 of 31,577 positive).
Players praise Dwarf Fortress for its unmatched depth and emergent storytelling. [1][2][3] Many note the steep learning curve and poor tutorial as major barriers. [4][5][6] Some reviewers find the simulation's inconsistencies and lack of clear goals frustrating. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [7]
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 …
- [1]
Went in expecting a city builder, something like Rimworld or my entry into this style, Prison architect. What I got was one of the most wonderfully detailed and rich experiences I've had in any video game. Its a history builder, a game that teaches you to let go, accept failure and continue on.
- [10]
I hate when someone recommends something by saying, "You just got to play 100 hours THEN it's fun." Despite Dwarf Fortress's seemingly infinite complexity, I'm glad to report this is not one of those games. I became interested in Dwarf Fortress years ago. After hearing legendary stories like Boat Murdered, a train wreck of a fortress that's well preserved on the internet, but I never picked it up. It seemed too hard …
- [4]
This game is in dire need of a really good tutorial. for half a year I've been installing df, trying to understand it, and then unistalling again sadly. but ill keep fighting till i die. and eventually (i hope) i will enjoy this masterpiece.
- [2]
There isn't much to say about DF that hasn't already been said. It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ masterpiece of software. It doesn't look like much but I guarantee you, you'll look past the funky 2d art pixels and really appreciate the depth of the world simulation. DF has some of the most memorable events in any game you'll come across in history. Bar None. What other game randomly creates the following scenario? Ragnar mines deep …
Summarised from 34 of the 399 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 11, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Players who liked Dwarf Fortress talk about incredibly deep world simulation and emergent stories; those who didn't talk about poor tutorial and unintuitive interface. Which matters more to you?
Critics, per Wikipedia
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…
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 473 · most liked firstDwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI and layoff-happy CEOs: 'Everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis'.
neutral · AI labelView post →Anyway new topic. For no particular reason, what's your favorite game where sandbox-style play generates stories for you to tell your friends? Thinking of everything from Dwarf Fortress, to Project Zomboid, to Kerbal, to CK2, to Darkest Dungeon, or even the old X-COM 2 streams Rob and I did.
neutral · AI labelView post →it's October 30th. I am 12 years old. I'm eagerly awaiting the next Dwarf Fortress update. it's October 30th. I am 20 years old. I'm eagerly awaiting the next Dwarf Fortress update. It's October 30th. I am 31 years old. I'm eagerly awaiting the next Dwarf Fortress update. The game is intricate, punishingly difficult, and a touchstone of human passion as well as one of the defining pillars of my own personal belief in free software. Playing Dwarf Fortress will give you clear skin, a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dwarf Fortress is a video game that you can play
neutral · AI labelView post →Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI and layoff-happy CEOs: 'Everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis'. cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51390910
neutral · AI labelView post →Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI and layoff-happy CEOs: 'Everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis'.
neutral · AI labelView post →Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress, has over 1,400 hours in Factorio and is currently obsessed with terraforming games: 'Dwarf Fortress just doesn't accommodate a full-on sci-fi thing'. Bay 12 Games' co-founder talks playing The Planet Crafter, Beast, and more than 40 years of saved desktops.
neutral · AI labelView post →I love game development (Alt text: BABIES ARE BORN WORSHIPPING UNKNOWN GODS - Dwarf Fortress, bug report #13172)
neutral · AI labelView post →🚨NEW DOC ALERT🕹️ In the second episode of our Dwarf Fortress series we tell the story of how this free ASCII game survived 16 years of development thanks to a remarkable community. And the circumstances which pushed the creators to commercialize it. youtube.com/watch?v=PiNe...
neutral · AI labelView post →Our Dwarf Fortress series continues with the story of what happened before and after the Steam release. From all the work that went into the commercial version of the game. To how the lives of Zach, Tarn and their families, changed forever after launch. WATCH HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX65...
neutral · AI labelView post →Went in expecting a city builder, something like Rimworld or my entry into this style, Prison architect. What I got was one of the most wonderfully detailed and rich experiences I've had in any video game. Its a history builder, a game that teaches you to let go, accept failure and continue on.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →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,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought this game upon its Steam debut in late 2022 and then married the man who showed me the ropes. Still playing (and still married!) I do not know if this would be a prescription for other singles, but it worked for us! We particularly enjoy the emergent storytelling and the emotional rollercoaster ride that is watching the rise and fall of our dwarven civilizations. I love this game! Big thanks to Bay 12 for their part in my happy matrimony.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Our Dwarf Fortress series continues with a look into the 16 year freeware era of the game, the community that grew around it, and the real life circumstances that pushed the brothers to create a commercial version. WATCH HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiNe...
neutral · AI labelView post →Finally going over the patch notes for Nethack 5.0 and being starkly reminded that, as hilarious as Dwarf Fortress patch notes often are, a game that's been in development for 20 years has nothing on game that's been in development for 40 as far as sheer batshittery goes.
neutral · AI labelView post →Since I’ve reached the 2,000-hour mark, I thought I should write a review. This is going to leave a few people scratching their heads: “He has 2,000 hours but doesn’t recommend the game?” There are six main problems I have with the game, which I would struggle to explain to someone new as to why they are still present after over 20 years of development as a passion project funded by fans, and 4 years on Steam as a company. It’s very much one of those games that a few people will love despite…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Every time people ask me what my favorite game is I tell them Dwarf Fortress, a game made by two guys over a period of decades as kind of an art project and in this moment I am thinking about Tarn and Zach
positive · AI labelView post →There isn't much to say about DF that hasn't already been said. It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ masterpiece of software. It doesn't look like much but I guarantee you, you'll look past the funky 2d art pixels and really appreciate the depth of the world simulation. DF has some of the most memorable events in any game you'll come across in history. Bar None. What other game randomly creates the following scenario? Ragnar mines deep into a mountain to provide shelter for his peoples. After mining,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →between Dwarf Fortress, Rings of Power and my DnD game I am absolutely insanely dwarfbrained right now!!!! I simply can't get enough!!!! How come we're overflowing with elf sex comics and I can't find any dwarf sex comics!!!!!
neutral · AI labelView post →This deep-dive video into a legendary session of the game Dwarf Fortress is great but at the end of 70 minutes of storytelling I still have not even a basic idea of how the game Dwarf Fortress works or is played, every screengrab is pure gibberish www.youtube.com/watch?v=nI1U...
neutral · AI labelView post →I hate when someone recommends something by saying, "You just got to play 100 hours THEN it's fun." Despite Dwarf Fortress's seemingly infinite complexity, I'm glad to report this is not one of those games. I became interested in Dwarf Fortress years ago. After hearing legendary stories like Boat Murdered, a train wreck of a fortress that's well preserved on the internet, but I never picked it up. It seemed too hard & the text based graphics were difficult to decipher. After the steam release…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dwarf Fortress is still an amazing game www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/dw...
neutral · AI labelView post →A night creature from the game Dwarf Fortress. It's description reads: "A large hairy humanoid. It has four long, spiral horns and it stamps the ground and snorts. Its silver hair is patchy. Now you will know why you fear the night." #dwarffortress #monster #drawing
neutral · AI labelView post →While we can agree that DF is gaming history at this point, there are multiple things to consider before blindly recommending the game. Most of the attractiveness are the supposed "living worlds that react to your actions". You might have seen the countless youtube videos glazing the depth and thought that "the economy of my old forts will impact how the world develops, or the richness of certain ores will cause diplomacy to shift to account for it". This depth is however, overblown to an…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dwarf Fortress is a perfect video game
positive · AI labelView post →I'm somewhat stressing out from my game taking 1-1.5 years more to make than initially planned, and then I occasionally stumble upon some new release which was 8 years in the making, and then I read a blog post about a game started 14 years ago ...and then there's Dwarf Fortress
neutral · AI labelView post →Dwarf Fortress is a great simulation. To think of it as a game though is hard, since your goal in games is to win. Dwarf Fortress does not need for you to win for the game to be good. This is a problem I struggle with, however, as even a minor loss, like a miner lost, causes me to consider starting a new save. Though as I continue playing the game I begin to learn to consider this as less of a game and more of a fantasy world playground simulator, it is in fact a world that doesn't care if I,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →- Tarn is taken by a fey mood! - Tarn screams “I must have a C++ compiler!” - Tarn works furiously! - Tarn Adams, game designer, has created Dwarf Fortress, a video game! - This is a video game. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It menaces with spikes of incomprehensible UI.
neutral · AI labelView post →Have you MET an animal in Dwarf Fortress? This is the most believable thing this game has ever done.
positive · AI labelView post →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.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dwarf Fortress has been out for 20 years. For three quarters of those twenty years, I have been playing Dwarf Fortress. Not consistently, sometimes going years on without playing it, but I've been there. I have a lot of opinions from thousands of hours of gameplay, and I've bought the game four times now, thrice sending money directly to Bay 12 as a donation. I'm proudly on the wall of champions, and I don't regret that purchase. Here's the TL;DR. Dwarf Fortress is a massive game with a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dwarf Fortress hit a huge new milestone on Steam, Noclip documentary now completed #DwarfFortress #Gaming #Linux #PCGaming
neutral · AI labelView post →This month on the Noclip Patron Show we show clips of our docs on Disco Elysium, Dwarf Fortress and an upcoming series exploring specific aspects of game dev. Also, the mythical Hades Blu Ray returns... www.patreon.com/posts/disco-...
neutral · AI labelView post →I've told this story a few times over the years.... If anyone ever asks why I love this game as much as I do, why I've play this game with unintelligible ASCII glyphs for over 19 years. This is from around 2010. I have forgotten many details, but the tragic story of this Dwarf still lives with me. One time, one of my fort's Founders, the main legendary militia Dwarf, got in a fight with a Forgotten Beast with necrotic blood. She won.... But the fort lost. A single spatter of the Beast's…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You will like our indie game if you played these games: 🗡 Kenshi ⛏ Dwarf Fortress 🏡 The Sims 💰 The Guild
neutral · AI labelView post →This game is in dire need of a really good tutorial. for half a year I've been installing df, trying to understand it, and then unistalling again sadly. but ill keep fighting till i die. and eventually (i hope) i will enjoy this masterpiece.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My favorite review of this game reads "Going from playing Rimworld to playing Dwarf Fortress is like going from reading about Cthulhu to meeting him in person." It is not a difficult game. Its reputation as brutally unforgiving is unearned. It's not action-packed. And it's not a masterwork of storytelling. What it is is a maze. A fascinating ancient crumbling labyrinth, still in use! Still added to. Strange old janky mechanics, strange new janky mechanics, weird side mechanics, deeply…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the definition of a Labour of Love! Development started in 2002, it was first publicly released in 2006, and it remains actively developed, with no end in sight. Generate vast, procedurally created worlds complete with detailed histories, civilizations, and ecosystems, then manage a group of dwarves to construct and defend an underground fortress against threats like sieges, monsters, and environmental hazards Dwarf Fortress emphasises complex simulation mechanics, including…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Last week I tried to stream a new Dwarf Fortress in the hit indie game Dwarf Fortress but my mom's internet wasn't having it. Now that I'm back home, I've got a hankerin to fire up Dwarf Fortress and make a brand new Dwarf Fortress
neutral · AI labelView post →Just started playing Dwarf Fortress again. I never got very far in this game but I think I may do better this time…
neutral · AI labelView post →Dwarf Fortress is a comedy game
positive · AI labelView post →This game encourages you to fantasize about drowning goblins in lava inside a rube-goldberg-esque contraption that requires at least a passing knowledge of Pascal's law.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The most disappointing experience among all games I played. It was so hyped up I really believed that this game could be good regardless all inconveniences, but, alas, it cannot. You will have to open wiki or online disscussions to resolve every damn thing every 2 minutes because there is so little number of explanations ingame and it is extremely counterintuitive. Add a lot of bugs that still exist after 20 years of development or something (or 4 of steam I suppose). But its okay, it is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Popular indie game Dwarf Fortress is receiving a movie adaptation with Jake Gyllenhaal cast as @./ (Soure: tinyurl.com/3b985j8f)
neutral · AI labelView post →So a mom game isn't just a game about building, it's *specifically* about building environments with agents who might behave in unexpected ways and being prepared for the good or the bad. Mom games are Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, RimWorld, even Impressions city-builders
neutral · AI labelView post →This is, hands down, one of the best games you can play right now. There is absolutely nothing that exists which is remotely like Dwarf Fortress. This game will expand what you think a game can be, and even then, I'm underselling it. The sheer unfiltered depth of this game is breathtaking. I am 348 hours deep into it, and it feels like I've just started. This game was the direct inspiration for Minecraft, Rimworld, Factorio, among many other gaming giants, and while all these games bring…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →operant conditioning my fuckbuddy to get hard every time I play Dwarf Fortress by referring to both the game and my cunt as "tantrum hole"
neutral · AI labelView post →Tarn Adams, co-creator of Dwarf Fortress, has over 1,400 hours in Factorio and is currently obsessed with terraforming games: 'Dwarf Fortress just doesn't accommodate a full-on sci-fi thing'. Bay 12 Games' co-founder talks playing The Planet Crafter, Beast, and more than 40 years of saved desktops.
neutral · AI labelView post →A game that I know is really good but stupidly unintuitive and really is in need of a better in-game tutorial. Probably on my third attempt at trying to get into the game but get filtered. Maybe I've been spoiled by Rimworld which is significantly easier to learn and look at.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to give this game a try after playing Rimworld and I just can't figure out to do stuff here. The new player experience is horrible. I guess the game has a loyal fanbase, but as a new player it is not for me.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I hate this stupid game. After successfully defending my fort from wereanteaters (like werewolves, but anteaters), I took my injured dwarves to the clinic and tended to their wounds. They transformed into wereanteaters themselves due to their infection and destroyed my base from the inside-out. Everybody freaking died.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dwarf Fortress is less a game you play than a complicated machine you gradually learn to interfere with. At first, the difficulty mostly comes from the interface and from not knowing which of the games many systems you have accidentally neglected. You will spend twenty minutes figuring out how to perform an apparently simple task, confidently unpause the game, and discover that half your fortress is dying because you misunderstood something three hours earlier. At some point something clicks…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There is nothing else like it. This game is beautiful and it belongs in a museum.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want to love this game I really do. It is a great game, but there are just so many bugs it makes it almost unplayable on a fortress long term. There are bugs that have been in the bug tracker for 13 years and have still not been fixed. I have listed the bug numbers form the bug tracker and almost all of them are ancient. Here are my issues with the game: * Clothes management is a huge pain. You cannot set a condition in the work order so they do not count worn out clothing. So the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Dwarf Fortress' creator says the industry's in shambles over AI and layoff-happy CEOs: 'Everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis'. cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51390910
neutral · AI labelView post →it's so wonderful that when mathematicians are driven to create a video game you get things like Dwarf Fortress and Fractal Block World
positive · AI labelView post →Can you be inspired by a game you never played? (Tenebrarium is Tamagotchi + Dwarf Fortress, kinda) #indiegame #tamagotchi #simulator
neutral · AI labelView post →There’s not much point in harassing someone who thinks “develop Dwarf Fortress” or “move to Cyprus” are practical responses to game industry layoffs.
neutral · AI labelView post →Don't spend 30 euros for this version to not recommend it saying it's not worth the money when the game is totally free on Toady One's website.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →To be fair, Dwarf Fortress has had its share of game-breaking bugs, too, but it’s still worth it
positive · AI labelView post →
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