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Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress is about building a dwarf fortress in a world generated for that run, then guiding its residents through changing dangers. At ≈ $23.77 from 
Kinguin, it suits a purchase motivated by a complex single-player simulation where setbacks are part of learning how the world works. At $29.99 from Kinguin, this is a chance to take on a single-player fortress simulation where every generated world brings new challenges.
KinguinDwarf Fortress PC Steam CD KeyAll-time low ~ $23.99across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $23.992024-05Current Low Across Stores~ $29.99Steamvs. Historical Low+25%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Dwarf Fortress
Generate a world with its own history, then lead a dwarf community as you build a fortress and manage its supplies. Dangers, difficult decisions, and the quirks of your dwarves make each settlement a distinct simulation. Steam players rate the game 94%% positive from 29,380 reviews. The Steam PC version released on December 6, 2022. The interface supports English.
Credits
Developer
Bay 12 Games
Publisher
Kitfox Games
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$23.992024-05-09 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yes | — | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Fortress management
The Steam PC version combines fortress construction and management with a procedurally generated world and its distinct challenges.
Mode and onboarding
The game offers single-player play and tutorials to help newcomers get started.
Language
The listed Steam language support includes English interface text.
03Frequently asked questions
What do you do in Dwarf Fortress?
You build a fortress and guide dwarves who need food and beer while facing dangers such as hostile attacks.
Are the worlds different?
Each generated world presents its own challenges, including different dwarves and geological features such as aquifers.
Are there tutorials?
Yes. The Steam PC version includes tutorials that guide you through building your first fortress and keeping dwarves happy.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
In my current fortress, it was year 102. With a stable food supply, access to water, and trained guards, I felt proud that I had no casualties so far in this fortress. I noticed an alert pop up on the side of my screen- "Thief: Child Stealer" This was the first test of my defenses. The dwarves were ready. The Goblin child-stealing thief came with two goblin lackeys. They quickly headed towards the front gate of my fortress. I rang the alarm and called all the dwarves inside my gate, and raised my drawbridge. A couple dwarves, along with the gate guards were left outside. They had the overwatch of the marksdwarves in the gate towers. It was more important to protect the children. In the end, the militia of Kolsherik made short work of the three goblin thieves. We lowered the drawbridge to let the remaining dwarves back in to celebrate. A few days pass, and the dwarves notice that someone is missing. A baby named Aban Stigazezum. She was one year old, and no one had seen her since the attack. I looked up and down over the defenses but I couldn't figure out what happened. I could've sworn there were only three thieves and that I had killed them all. I knew where the bodies were buried. Six months later, the dwarves and I had moved on. One night while looking over the guard towers I notice an extra, naked green dwarf standing next to the regular guards. I hovered over it, it was Aban. She was back as a ghost to exact her dwarf baby revenge on the ones who had let her get stolen. Aban liked to silently float up and down the guard towers, between the floors and through the walls, occasionally haunting the guards at the front gate as well. Maybe she blamed them for the lapse in security. Eventually, after a few more months of harmless but disturbing hauntings, I had finally found time to build a tomb. I didn't have a body for a proper burial, but creating a personally etched memorial slab to commemorate Aban should lay her to rest and help my guards rest a little easier. They've learned from this, Aban. They won't let a thief into the fortress ever again. I place the slab, and Aban is satisfied, laid to rest. I read the slab to see what my engraver wrote about Aban. The slab reads "In memory of Aban Stizgazezum / Born 102 / Crushed by a drawbridge in the year 102" I guess I know where to find the remains. 10/10Show moreShow less
52.9 hours at review3,542 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I haven't played the original Dwarf Fortress because I just couldn't bear the UI\UX of the ASCII graphics, so I've been waiting for this release for a very long time. The tutorial felt nice but as I kept playing I started feeling more and more uncomfortable. And here am I - about to put negative review on the game with tons of fans and 98% positive reviews. Here's a list of things I've got uncomfortable with. No animations I do understand that sprites is better that ASCII graphics but there are literally no animations for the dwarfs. Is he working, talking or walking - you cannot be completely sure until you select him. I do understand that those limitations may be imposed by engine's complexity, but it feels like DF is still a text game with some sprites on top of it. Unclear action output I've decided to plant some seeds. Read through the help. 'Looks easy enough'. As the tutorial recommended, I've created a farm plot and selected 'Plump Helmets' A few minutes later I've come to check how the plants were to find out that my selected option says 'No seeds' 'That's strange - tutorial says I should have them. Let's select another one and see what happens' After a few seconds dwarfs 'teleport' to my plot, stand on it, and then go away. The recently selected option says 'No seeds' as well. However, I've noticed that there's a list of items at the bottom of the menu - with my seeds in it. I am still not sure whether they've been planted properly since plot looked exactly the same - no visual indication of my seeds at all. Uninformative UI That one is pretty much the same as the previous point, but a bit broader. The game seems to dislike numbers. Once more, this is game about survival in the harsh world and it doesn't give you information about itself. I wanna assign a new worker for mining. I open the jobs list. How many information about suitability of the workers I get? Turns out only a single line - either the person is a miner already or you get literally no info. Maybe the dwarf dislikes mining? (sounds blasphemous but everything can happen) You wanna see stats - there are only text descriptions. Is 'Adept' better than 'Skilled'? Find out on your own. There are literally lots of free space in the menus but the game doesn't utilize them at all. The words highlighted with colors has no tooltips. Come on, that's not rocket science - most RPGs do that, Rim World does that. Why cannot DF just give me ALL the information it already has inside of it? I wanna see ALL the numbers and be able to tell which dwarf probably wins through a brief glance at a single stats list\table. Unfriendly menus I wanted to make a few cups for dwarfs since they got debuf for drinking without cup\mud. I've opened workshop, searched 'CUP' - no results. There's a submenu called wood - you open it and then you can select cup. Doesn't sound hard - right? Now you need to make 7 cups and there's no duplicate task button - only repeat infinitely (imagine spending all your wood on cups). Also, imagine yourself opening some menu with filter and starting typing. Ideally, your results will be filtered, or at least nothing happens. But in DF, where every button is a shortcut, you will start doing things. It's not a major issue, but I've faced it dozens of times through first hour. Limiting user input to the active menu doesn't feel THAT hard. Conclusion Dwarf Fortress did a lot for the gaming industry - there's no doubt. But as a modern game it just feels too unpolished. I would not put the negative review if this was an Early Access, but after 11 years of development I've been expecting much more. Main killer feature of the update - graphics - are not really used to give the player information about what's happening on the screen. Neither does the menus. I would really want to love this game. In it's current state, though, it's still too harsh for those get used to modern game design. P.S. Feel free to call me a casual player if you'd like.Show moreShow less
1.5 hours at review416 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I spent hours generating the perfect world. Selected my embark location with perfect features: a river, waterfall, metals, and clay, and thick forests. I prepared for my journey carefully, choosing essential skills for each of my seven dwarves. Each would be needed to ensure an optimal start. All required items and livestock, picked with purpose. At spawn-in, next to a river: stockpiles, dig sites, tree chopping, and herb gathering were all designated before unpausing the game, planned out for a perfect first-year start. Holding my breath, I gently tap the spacebar. The game unpauses. An alligator immediately attacks one of my dwarves, maiming and drowning her while the other dwarves react to dispatch the alligator. The blood and gore causes everyone to vomit, and the remaining six dwarves are traumatized, become depressed, and begin attacking each other. The woodcutter kills everyone before succumbing to his own wounds and bleeding out. The settlement is wiped out before it even begins. Welcome to Dwarf Fortress. 10/10.Show moreShow less
12.2 hours at review3,340 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
EDIT: 3 years later and you still can't designate an individual up or down stair lmao. Modding is still more complicated and unwieldy than it needs to be. Ammo designations are still unavailable, leading to lovely little complications like your marksdwarves being assigned ammo automatically that they cannot reach. Did anyone at kitfox ever actually play the game before taking over? Or are they so dumb that they just can't wrap their head around why anyone would actually want control over the details of their game? And you know the worst part? You can't go back. The version of DF with new content and the version with management tools for people with half a brain are now two distinct eras. You must choose between janked up colony management and updates. But all of these slight annoyances would probably be forgivable if not for the fact that Kitfox seems to have made barely any progress in 3+ years of active development. The two biggest changes in the 3 years I have not been playing this game are the re-introduction of adventure mode and siege improvements. While the siege improvements are welcome, they at best put the raids on par with Rimworld, and seem a rather minor in the grand scheme. Adventure mode, which was already a barebones distraction from the main game in DF2014, is somehow half as feature complete as it was before. 3 years, and all we got from a full-fledged dev team is a walking simulator and raiders that can't just be funneled into the death hall. Again, lmao is all I have to say. ORIGINAL REVIEW: I've been playing DF for years, and I don't mind throwing Bay12 some money for the first time after the thousands of hours I've spent playing this game, but this version is seriously lacking compared to the classic. I was under the impression that this would be a UI improvement with little change under the hood, but this version has been endlessly frustrating due to a bunch of nonsensical changes that aren't even in a changelog. Lots of tiny little things that a new player wouldn't notice have been removed. Doors can't be closed tightly to block animals, the simplified stair orders that don't allow the user to select stair type results in down stairs being dug when you want up/down. For example, I was try to punch through a aquifer and dwarves cancelled their orders, as they do, and then only dug down stairs when the dig orders are issued again because instead of being able to designate one stair construction the game now tries to decide for you what staircase you are trying to build based on your starting point. The same thing goes for probing caverns, pretty much the first milestone of the early game. If you penetrate the roof and want to cover your down stair while leaving the up stair to stop strange flying beasts from zooming up your staircase, you used to be able to just lay a floor. Now that destroys the up stair for some reason and traps your dwarf. Did anyone actually playtest this release? Military/Hunting management has also been greatly simplified. Where did the ambush order go? Why can't I designate ammo use? You also no longer get a readout of the size of your designations. Have fun squinting and counting little yellow squares. World gen parameters can no longer be exported through legends mode (your perfect random seed will never be seen again), and the new modding system (which I suspect was pushed by the publisher, Kitfox, who is weirdly gatekeeping their mod guide on Discord) has removed the capability to modify the game's raw files on the fly. A savvy player used to be able to switch things up mid game just by messing with some strings of text in the raws, a classic roguelike feature. Now you are ONLY allowed to apply mods at world generation, which is absolutely absurd considering how long it takes and how easy it used to be to say, remove an out-of-control aquifer drowning a perfect embark or mess with the color palette. Raws have been completely removed from save game folders and this is endlessly frustrating. Why? How hard is it to let me mess with dwarf hairstyles on the fly? What is the end game here? Many frustrating aspects that could have been worked on are still there too, but I won't fault them too much for that, it is DF. But with all the talk of improved dwarf labor priorities, why not make dwarves not prioritize constructions that block off access to other constructions designated in the same order? It's extremely disappointing that Bay12 has chosen to streamline the game at the cost of certain complexities. I have been playing since I was a little boy messing around in the elementary school computer lab looking for any game I could get for free. I have dived into every major release since 2010 with glee and spent weeks playing with my dwarves, but this release has left me nothing but frustrated and burnt out in a couple of days. This is just my little whackjob conspiracy theory, not really a part of the review, but it makes me wonder whether the Kitfox is really trying to steward the game to help it survive into a new era, or if they're deliberately sacrificing the beautiful micromanagement of DF for a ever-so-slightly dumber version for streamers and sales. Based on their pre-release projections, it seems like they did not have high hopes for the game, and a feature-cutting directive might have been pushed onto Bay12. Or maybe I just think too highly of Toady to think he's done wrong. Either way, I will be playing DF Classic until this is fixed or the negative changes are pushed onto that game.Show moreShow less
28.2 hours at review303 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Two giant boars wandered in and ate a bunch of children. They then also killed and ate three dwarfs who attempted to help the children. My mayor then walked up to the giant boars and killed them both with her bare hands. She has now won six straight elections in a row.Show moreShow less
10.9 hours at review3,053 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
This game is hard to review. (Already played the non-graphical version for ~500 hours) On one hand it's an amazing, elaborate simulation and procedural generation of fictional fantasy worlds, with a physics simulation that makes the game way more interesting than similar games like Rimworld. There's depths to plumb, both literally and metaphorically, that will keep you having either fun or frustration for hundreds or thousands of hours. On the other hand, there are so many small frustrations that you rarely can say that you're undeniably having "fun", rather than battling with the interface or with "quirks" of the game to just get something simple working. Take harvesting and milling plants, for example. Your dwarves have grown a crop of "plump helmets", a hardy underground plant that conveniently needs neither sunlight or regular water to grow. You'd like those plump helmets to end up as food the dwarves will actually eat (and let me tell you, they are -picky-) , so one way to do it is to mill them into flour. (Edit: actually plump helmets can't be milled, not that the game lets you know that in any particular way, but let's use "cave wheat" instead)... except, as the wiki for the game explains: "Ensuring the exclusive milling of certain plants (to, say, produce only dye, not flour) is quite cumbersome. It requires a stockpile that only allows these plants and setting it to q-'give To A Pile/Workshop', as the millstone provides no menu to specify what to mill. If you don't set a custom stockpile, the miller will pick the closest random plant, with the usual, occasionally surprising, definition of closest. You also need something like a furniture stockpile that allows only bags, setting that to 'giving' to the millstone too. Deactivate wood, stone and metal as material to avoid it being cluttered with coffers. You still have to ensure somehow that the plants arrive at the right stockpile, for example by not allowing them on any other. Finally, allow the source stockpile or a third custom stockpile to take the resulting mill product or you will receive the misleading error "needs millable unrotten plants". Once you got this working repeat for every other plant you want to mill, either switching the 'give' orders every time or setting up a separate millstone for every plant/plant combination. " If somewhere you were reading that and thinking, "what the hell", welcome to dwarf fortress! Some things work amazingly well, where you can automate some tasks using work orders and the fortress starts to "run itself" in a way that lets you go and think about more interesting things, like how to pump and channel magma into a moat around your fortress, or mining deep into sweet mother Earth to find mysterious and surprising things. ... except in the interface transition they forgot to add a way to equip your crossbow-dwarves with ammunition so they usually just try to bludgeon enemies to death with their crossbows. Which is awesome, but it's one more little frustration that you don't need. ... and your dwarves will slowly get sadder and sadder because despite working and eating alongside each other, they never actually socialize because they're not directly within 1 space of each other, so they forever complain that they haven't seen their friends or family who are actually right beside them all the time. Some people recommend cheating every few years and wiping your dwarves' stress/unmet needs, but, come on. Fix the system. ... and they'll never eat honey or other things because there's a bug where they don't like liquid food, and also if the honey is in a jug and that jug is in a barrel (and other frustrating combinations of situations that you'll never realize are broken until you're bashing your head against the wikipedia/forums/websites to try to solve something), the dwarves will pretend it doesn't exist. But you can work around these things if you just create a one tile stockpile with no barrel that's linked to... blah blah blah, see where this goes? Endless frustrations. I want to play this game, but for frustration-sake, fix longstanding bugs and gripes. Hopefully now that the devs have deservedly made their millions, they can hire a couple of people to help them out with basic quality of life stuff that no game in 2022 should suffer from. I'll gladly give a thumbs up if a "frustration update" happens in the future. Ps. The music is sublime. Buy the soundtrack too if you want to give a $20 fistbump to a great artist.Show moreShow less
23.7 hours at review271 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
For anyone asking if we've been waiting all these years to pay for this game. Yes.Show moreShow less
3.7 hours at review2,845 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Moved the TL;DR to the top, at the suggestion of a comment. good shout. TL;DR, New players, ignore this review. The interface is fantastic and you should not consider this something you will ever experience. If you're a veteran, consider whether or not you can deal with relearning ALL of your muscle memory, because in its current state that is a necessity to play at all. If you're a new player and like the look of dwarf fortress but could never stomach the original's interface, this game is exactly what it promises. It's the original, full fat version of the game with all the detail, no compromises with a beautifully reimagined interface and graphics that make it a joy to look at, with a lot of quality of life features and general improvements to performance. I want to love this release, but there's one thing they neglected to consider, and that is the fact that some of us have been playing dwarf fortress for many years and have an internal model of *where to find stuff*. Designations for mining are under the "D" menu, building is under "B", then "W" for workshops. When mining you can press "X" to cancel designations in a specific area. The list goes on. I knew that some of the keybinds would change, because the game now by default supports panning the map with WASD which a lot of newer players will expect coming from games like rimworld. What I did not expect was the way the interface had been completely reorganised, meaning I cannot possibly do what I had planned, which was to simply rebind everything manually until I was satisfied with the results. Designations have been split up into different categories for mining, chopping, and plant gathering, so no more single submenu for all designations any more. This means the network of muscle memory I have built up has not only changed which keys to press, but which order to press them in and even which functions you have access to from within each sub menu. To be clear, this was all done for the right reasons. The explicit goal of the new release was to... well, completely overhaul the interface. That's why my "Not recommended" isn't meant for most players. It's meant for veterans who think they will have trouble adjusting to a completely different organisation of functionality, and will be frustrated by this fact. There is no contingency to accommodate those players in the current game. I have faith that either modders or the devs themselves will be able to remedy this eventually, perhaps a setting that puts the game into "Veteran muscle memory" mode, rebinding functions to how they were in the original.Show moreShow less
0.5 hours at review269 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
now compatible with human brainsShow moreShow less
4.1 hours at review2,667 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I can't in good faith recommend this game to the average person and really wish there was an option for a neutral review. Everything is riddled with "just knowing" obscure interactions that will frustrate you and entirely impede progress. Open another window googling, reading a wiki, or watching a videos. Usually a combination of all three. Here are some examples. Want to make a rope and store it in your stockpile? Cool, you need to just know that ropes aren't an item in the game according to the stockpiles and are classified as a "chain", made out of a material such as plant cloth. Want to make a door out of glass? Cool, unlike every other door in the game, glass doors are called "portals". Want to make charcoal for your furnace so you can finally smelt some iron, or maybe break down that bituminous coal into use-able coal? Cool, you need to burn wood into charcoal, which according to the stockpile is coke, because charcoal doesn't exist in the stockpile. Then you use that coke to be used as fuel to break down the bituminous coal into... coke. Not coal, or charcoal. Coke. But it breaks down into 4 pieces of coke, not one. It does not show you or explain this anywhere, only if you stare at the workshop will you notice. Want to make a stone chair so you don't waste your precious wood? Oh stone chairs are called thrones, so you have to search thrones when making them from stone at the stone workshop, versus just a chair, even though, it is functionally, a chair. Want to make a wooden coffin? Oh yah, thats a casket, but a a stone coffin is a coffin. A metal coffin is a sarcophagus. Want to rewire a mechanical gear connection between a door and a lever? You have to remove the gears from both, or completely remove and replace the items. As a removing one over the other will not allow you to attach the connection because it has a connection already, even though they can have multiple connections. Placing anything within a stockpile that allows "refuse" will decay items that can be decayed. Via what can only be considered arcane forces from the eldritch creature that stockpiles are secretly part of. If you don't overlap these, then items will not just magically decay within the stockpile. No where is any of this information given to you in the game. It expects you to just know what the keywords are, despite having the same functions. These are just a few examples. And the list of completely alien things like this goes on... and on... and on... Mugs, goblets, cups? Caskets, coffins, sarcophagi? Chairs or thrones? Every rope is a chain but not every chain is a rope? Coke is charcoal and coal, but charcoal and coal are not real because they don't exist to the arcane magic of the almighty stockpile. So unless you have the time to spend 30+ hours in game becoming frustrated over searching for what specific text string the game wants from you in this specific instance, such as ropes not existing, even though its called a rope when you use it in every single place but the stockpile, and then another 150 hours watching videos, reading wikis, and forums posts from 2009 that may or may not be relevant. Then I cannot in good faith recommend this game to the average person. The learning curve is completely factious and seems like an unreasonable barrier to entry. The game is crafted with love over 20 year period, and what it sets out to do, it does very well. If you invest a ton of time into it, that not everyone has. I am currently 70 hours into the game as of writing this and I am still encountering things that completely impede my progress or any sense of achievement because I had the audacity of not "Just knowing" what the game wanted from me. I enjoy what it offers, and some of the things it allows you to do are very fun and interact nicely. Dwarf Fortress is very good at crafting its own narrative that you try to guide as it does whatever it wants, and that's super fun. Every story is different, every scuffle, argument, cave in and siege. None of this matters though unless you want to spend hours upon hours researching things outside of the game, and even then, the one thing you forgot is going to stop you dead in your tracks. Love the game for what it is and what it does, but it is not for everyone.Show moreShow less
69.5 hours at review222 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.