Dwarf Fortress (officially called 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 it received attention for being a two-member project surviving solely on donations. The primary game mode is set in a procedurally generated fantasy world in which the player indirectly controls a group of dwarves, and attempts to construct a successful and wealthy fortress. 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 text-based graphics (using the CP437 character set) and is open-ended with no main objectives. Before playing, the player has to set in motion a process which generates a fantasy world with continents, oceans, and islands, produced via generative geology and hydrogeology, meteorology, and biogeography, and then fully simulates the evolution of all civilizations down to the lives of their inhabitants in order to yield a coherent world with internally consistent lore and history. The main game mode, Dwarf Fortress, consists of selecting a suitable site from the generated world, establishing a successful colony or fortress, combating threats like goblin invasions, generating wealth and taking care of the dwarves. Each dwarf is modeled down to its body parts, organs, and tissues, as well as having a discrete mind and individual personality, including likes and dislikes, and possesses specific trainable skills in various labors, as well as short and long term memories to facilitate all this. The second main game mode, Adventurer mode, is a turn-based, open-ended roguelike mode where the player starts off as an adventurer in the world and is free to explore, complete quests, or visit old abandoned fortresses. The combat system is anatomically detailed with combat logs describing events like organs getting pierced, fat getting bruised and limbs getting severed. Creatures have no hit points, and instead death occurs as a result of the impairment or disruption of vital functions.
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. The game has a cult following and an active online community. As there is no way to win, every fortress, no matter how successful, is usually destroyed somehow. This prompts the official community motto: “Losing is Fun!”