Dwarf Fortress Is Getting A Steam Release Date, No Really!
Indie classic Dwarf Fortress is getting a Steam release date for later this year. Yeah — that Dwarf Fortress!
You either read that title and got immediately excited/nostalgic or are scratching your hairless chin wondering “what’s that game?” Before we get into what Dwarf Fortress is let’s just cut to the chase. It’s coming to Steam on December 6, 2022!
Dwarf Fortress Is Coming To Steam – For Real!
I’ve had Dwarf Fortress on my wishlist since…I don’t even know how long. It’s first Alpha release was way back in 2006 as an indie release that was being worked on by two brothers. This game has been in development since 2002 and in many ways launched the Roguelike Construction/Management Survival genre. If you’ve ever played or heard of Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, Prison Architect, Banished, StoneHearth, Dwarfs!? or any of the MANY other Roguelike Survival Games out there, then you’ve got Dwarf Fortress to thank.
The earliest days of Dwarf Fortress didn’t really have your typical graphics either. It was all essentially ASCII code and very primitive. However, a community sprang up around this game and started creating UI mods for Dwarf Fortress. These mods started to add more art and made the game more accessible (at least visually) to more players.
I picked up this game at some point in the past and sunk way to many hours into it. The learning curve was/is STEEP to say the least. However, once you got past, well, beginning you discovered a vast un-ending game. Unless your colony died. In which case, welcome to Dwarf Fortress.
The basic premise is that you start the game on a new random seed world. You get a group of Dwarves and you set out at your starting location and have to build a colony. Sound familiar? That’s because dozens of game have taken this exact same formula over the year and done their own thing. But none of them have done it to the extent of Dwarf Fortress. What makes Dwarf Fortress so special is that each play through is really unique because of, well, all the stuff happening in the background.
I was first introduced to Dwarf Fortress by a friend who showed me an old message board thread about player’s documenting their playthroughs of the game. They all ended with the death of their colonies but it was how they died out that was both hilarious, epic, and sometimes sad. It was the community around the game and the sharing of these stories that really hooked me and I knew I had to give this game a chance.
You see the real charm of this game is that the saga of your colony and the world that it’s in feels alive. There’s other things happening out in the world and if you grow your colony large enough you might just be able to see some of it. Dig, build, and grow. Trade with other civilizations, fight off raiders, go to war…when I say “saga” I really mean it! If you can get past the initial hurdle of learning how to play the game it opens up into a vast mine of hours of gameplay. And remember, when your colony meets it’s untimely end: Losing is fun!
Dwarf Fortress is launching on Steam December 6, 2022. Wishlist it now!
