Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.

84 TBA

Indie Role-playing (RPG) Simulator Strategy Turn-based strategy (TBS) 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) Fantasy Open world Sandbox

Dwarf Fortress is an indie developed by Bay 12 Games on Linux, Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows).

Verified 27 Sep 2026 Sources: IGDB , Steam , Wikipedia

What Dwarf Fortress is

Dwarf Fortress was developed by Bay 12 Games. It is available on Linux, Mac and PC (Microsoft Windows). It runs on OpenGL.

The premise, in the publisher's words

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 received attention for being a two-member project surviving solely on donations.

Description from Wikipedia · source

How it plays

It is played from a bird view / isometric perspective. Its themes are 4x (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate), fantasy, open world and sandbox. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component.

How it was received

Dwarf Fortress holds a critic score of 84 out of 100. That places it above 83% of the 5,098 rated indie games in our database, which average 72. Player ratings track closely with critics at 86, across 51 votes.

What you need to run it

The minimum specification calls for Dual Core CPU - 2.4GHz+, 4 GB RAM and 1GB of VRAM: Intel HD 3000 GPU / AMD HD 5450 / Nvidia 9400 GT. At 4GB of RAM, it will run on essentially any working PC — that is below what a budget laptop ships with today. Both tiers are compared side by side on the requirements page, and you can check your own parts against them without installing anything.

Full requirements and PC checker →

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for Dwarf Fortress yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

Know one? Send it in and we will test it →

Official trailer

Sourced from the publisher’s YouTube channel. See all 6 videos →

Screenshots

All media

Dlc

Dwarf Fortress

6 December 2022

Quick answers

Dwarf Fortress — frequently asked questions

What are the minimum PC requirements for Dwarf Fortress?

At minimum, Dwarf Fortress needs Dual Core CPU - 2.4GHz+, 4 GB RAM, 1GB of VRAM: Intel HD 3000 GPU / AMD HD 5450 / Nvidia 9400 GT graphics, 500 MB available space of storage.

How many GB is Dwarf Fortress?

The PC version needs about 0.5 GB of storage, going by the storage line in the system requirements ("500 MB available space"). Updates can add to that, and console versions have their own sizes, which are not listed here.

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