If you’re familiar at all with the city-builder/roguelike/civilization game/indie game Dwarf Fortress, you might have a cause to get excited today. Tarn and Zach Adams, the game’s original developers, announced today that we’ll be able to play Dwarf Fortress on Steam sometime in the near future after years of text-based gameplay.
Dwarf Fortress, as stated above, was originally a text-based game where you took control of a fortress…of dwarves. Building up a civilization and guiding it through a variety of various crises, part of the fun of the game was seeing how screwed up you could make your fortress, or how horribly you could fail.
Whether it’s goblin attacks, demonic invasions from digging too deep into the earth, or some other catastrophe, Dwarf Fortress has always been a source of very dark fun. Now, with the new graphical upgrade that the new version of Dwarf Fortress on Steam will be getting, you’ll be able to see it all in glorious color with a new tileset.
The reason that the Adams brothers gave for the sudden release, when the game has been freeware available on the pair’s website ever since it first began development in 2002, is because of various family health issues, along with the uncertainty of Patreon money. Putting the game on Steam gives fans another avenue to support them, along with making it easier to join in if people were interested in the game but put off by the interface.
Even if you’re more familiar (and happier with) the game’s original text-based UI system, the game will still have a sizable amount of mod support, so you can still cause the game to back to its original graphics system if you can mod it back in.
Either way, you can head to the brothers’ official website to learn the release date for Dwarf Fortress on Steam, and even if you already own the game, buy another if nothing else just to support them.
