Dwarf Fortress (Now With Pixel Graphics) Releasing On Steam This December

Dwarf Fortress, the legendary colony builder sim now has a release date for its Steam release.

The original game started development in 2003 and was released in 2006, with its graphics were entirely generated by ASCII symbols. Despite its relatively crude graphics, its interlocking systems and mechanics are powerful to generate fascinating stories (where a bug can be a feature).

Its most famous example of this is how cats can end up dead from licking vomit from drunken dwarves, which contains alcohol, which is lethal to cats.

This is a now-famous example of unintended features stemming from emergent game systems

Toady had added realistic effects to alcohol. If a dwarf was drunk when they vomited the spew would contain large amounts of alcohol. Cats would lap it up and die from alcohol poisoning https://t.co/uZvXNiNduP

— Dwarf Fortress Bugs (@DwarfFortBugs) October 25, 2018

Developer Bay12 Games is now ready to release a commercial version of Dwarf Fortress, now with pixel graphics which should make it a lot more approachable to newcomers.

Dwarf Fortress has a balance of construction, management and roguelike gameplay and has since influenced many other colony builders to follow its trail, like Rimworld.

Dwarf Fortress will not only add new graphics, it now has a soundtrack of 15 songs and a tutorial.

Dwarf Fortress will be out on December 6 on PC via Steam.