Dwarf Fortress News

Grab your pickaxe and secure your book of procedurally-generated poetry, because Dwarf Fortress is out on Steam right, flipping, now. Bay 12 Games's hugely ambitious colony sim, which is notionally a game about building a fortress for small, bearded humanoids, but is really an engine for generating elaborate fantasy histories and player-driven stories within them, has been in active development since 2003, with an initial launch in 2006. Since then, it has been continually developed by brothers Tarn and Zach Adams, who have added a truly wild amount of stuff over the last two decades. It's also famously as impenetrable as its title suggests, mainly due to its ASCII visuals and unwieldy, keyboard-exclusive control scheme.

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It’s time to strike the earth because Dwarf Fortress Steam Edition is out now!

This new version brings a brand new pixel art tileset, a new helpful tutorial to onboard unfamiliar players, new soundtrack and sound effects, new user interface and navigable menus, and other quality of life additions to the legendary civilization management and construction game.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The game will launch with the Fortress and Legends game modes that longtime players are familiar with. We plan to add the Adventure and Arena modes to these versions of Dwarf Fortress very soon.

You can learn more and see Dwarf Fortress’ development roadmap here.

Steam Workshop integration is also available making it easier for mod developers to create creative additions to the game. You can read our evolving mod guide here.

If you're a longtime player and want to know what's different in this version, the (incomplete) changelog might be interesting!

The brand new soundtrack for this version of *Dwarf Fortress*, with tracks even made in the Dwarvish language, composed by Dabu, Simon Swerwer and Águeda Macias is also available now for purchase separately on Steam.

The classic version of *Dwarf Fortress* will remain available for download at no cost, and will continue to be supported in the future on Bay 12’s website. This future support includes mouse functionality and other improvements seen in the Steam release.

Thank you to everyone in the Dwarf Fortress community for being so supportive and patient over the years. We hope that you’ll enjoy the game with it’s improvements and be be able to introduce your friends and family a lot easier.

This is just the beginning.

Kitfox Games + Bay 12 Games

Over 13 years playing Dwarf Fortress, I've seen my share of legends. I've witnessed one-armed dwarven generals strangle dragons as old as time. I've watched in horror as an artisan emerged from months trapped in the caves below my fortress halls, clinging to life just long enough to craft one last work: a puzzlebox of obsidian and bone. Now, I get to see Dwarf Fortress arrive on Steam, the colony sim's emergent storytelling more approachable than it's ever been—but only just...
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Hello Urists!

It's Alexandra from Kitfox Games the last regular news update before launch (ahhhhhh)!

We are excited to announce that the Official Dwarf Fortress Soundtrack for the Steam Edition is out RIGHT NOW! This legendary song collection is of the highest quality featuring tracks by Dabu, Simon Swerwer and Águeda Macias (The Gamba Geek).



Youtube (includes 1 hour ambience track):
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp1Y6qRhEmZyEeE3O1xz-qb62htJbPqIF

Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/1IzWFdH2pfCbho7naePC9o?si=2xe8kZIsQn-k_uhCRzgXWQ

Apple Music:
https://music.apple.com/ca/album/dwarf-fortress-original-game-soundtrack/1656317303

Bandcamp OST:
https://dabuaudio.bandcamp.com/album/dwarf-fortress-official-steam-soundtrack

Dwarf Fortress Steam Edition uses a system of musical cards that play throughout Fortress Mode.These snippets are available separately from the OST:

Bandcamp In-Game Cards:
https://dabuaudio.bandcamp.com/album/dwarf-fortress-in-game-cards

[h2]Modding Guide[/h2]

Thank you to all the modders who contacted me to discuss their work! I've been working with Tarn to develop a modding guide that will help you get your mods onto Steam Workshop. It should let you convert existing object mods, but it doesn't have any information for tileset mods since that's a lot more information and some folks will do that best by mimicking what they find in the actual folders. Much like the Roadmap, this will be an evolving document which we be updating as we go but it will be quite a big task.

Modding guide: https://bay12games.com/dwarves/modding_guide.html

Send your Well Wishes to Bay12

With less than 5 days till launch, its never been a better time to join the Kitfox Discord aka the Official Dwarf Fortress Discord! We are an active friendly community always ready and willing to help with any dwarfy questions you might have. Don't miss out on chatting with the devs, joining community events and getting all the dwarf news right away! Also make sure to send your well wishes to Tarn and Zach ahead of launch!




That's all I have for now, but you'll be hearing from me again on Dec 6th for launch!

-Alexandra