GAME · released

Dwarf Fortress

Bay 12 Games · Kitfox Games

Quick read

Dwarf Fortress is a colony sim: you dig a fortress into a generated world and manage dwarves whose moods, needs and mistakes write the story.

What kind of game is it?

Fantasy colony simulation: digging, moods, sieges, and stories the game does not narrate for you. Complexity is the product.

Who is it for?

For players who miss a fortress whose stories the game never narrates for them.

How it plays

Loop: Running a colony
Sessions: Long sessions
Progression: A world that stays
Players: Single-player
Structure: Sandbox
Tone: Deadpan · Brutal

Game DNA

What playing it feels like, out of 100. Our reading, separate from Steam reviews.

Progression80
Estimate
Social18
Estimate

Key Steam facts

Steam store figures, checked 13 Sept 2026.

Release

released

2022-12-06

Review score

94.8%

Checked 17 Aug 2026.

Steam positive percent.

Review count

31,493

Checked 13 Sept 2026.

Store price

$29.99

Checked 13 Sept 2026.

Languages

Demo

Early Access

Players

Single-player

How many people play Dwarf Fortress?

Estimates from public Steam data, not figures from the studio. Ranges, not exact numbers.

Estimated copies

790k – 1.7M

Steam reviews × 25 to 55.

Estimated gross revenue

$12M – $42M

Copies × current price × 50–80% (sales, regional prices). Before Steam's cut, refunds and tax.

All-time peak players

28,288

Most people playing at the same moment, per SteamCharts.

Average players, Aug 2026

789

Peak that month: 1,339.

Median playtime

71.7 h

Half of 300 recent reviewers played 24.4–188.1 h. 5% under 2 h.

Players over time

Sept 2023Aug 2026

Where the players are

Languages of the last 300 Steam reviews. A proxy for regions, not a country split.

English76%
Russian5%
Spanish (Spain)4%
Simplified Chinese4%
Portuguese (Brazil)3%
French2%

Steam data checked 4 Oct 2026

What makes it different?

Failure is folklore. Digging, moods and sieges write stories the game never narrates.

Core mechanics

How it scores

The fantasy: Creativity and Survival. Our scores out of 100, separate from Steam reviews.

Mechanical depthEstimate

95 / 100

Similar games

Full games-like page →

Banished

Banished is a harsh village sim: food, firewood, and a winter that does not care whether you named the dead. A famine is a schedule you wrote when you built one house too many.

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Prison Architect

Prison Architect is a management game where the product is a facility that can riot if the toilets and the regime disagree. A census is the HP bar, and the yard is a plan you will defend on the news.

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Medieval Dynasty

Medieval Dynasty is a first-person village: hunt, marry, tax, repeat. A house becomes a street, and the save is a family that still needs grain.

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They Are Billions

They Are Billions is a colony RTS that ends when the horde finds the hole you left in the wall — a campaign of postponing that minute.

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Related games

Nearby games. Not always a direct substitute.

Shared: Procedural generation, Base building, Crafting, Creativity

Terraria

Terraria is a 2D sandbox that outgrew the '2D Minecraft' shorthand: bosses, classes, and a craft tree that keeps rewriting the world. Co-op is optional; the map is persistent.

Open →

Genre / subgenre

Subgenres: Colony sim.

Steam genre: simulation / colony sim.

Related rankings

Related teardown

Dwarf Fortress — launch intelligence

Twenty years of a cult free version, then a Steam release methodically prepared over two years by Kitfox Games. Result: 160,000 sales in 24 hours and over 600,000 in two months, for a niche ASCII management game.

Read the launch analysis →

Sources

Store price checked 13 Sept 2026.

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