Tons of game developers praise Dwarf Fortress in celebration of its Steam launch

Dwarf Fortress
(Image credit: Bay12Games)

Dwarf Fortress is the top selling game on Steam.

I don't know how long that will be true, but it's a wonderful moment: one of the most influential and unique games on PC, in development for some 20 years, is finally, I hope, getting the mainstream recognition it deserves. It's definitely getting recognition from other game developers, who've flocked to the launch announcement to celebrate Dwarf Fortress's success, and its impact on their own games.

"Without Dwarf Fortress there'd never have been a Prison Architect," wrote developer Tom Pedalino. The official Terraria Twitter account responded with the same praise, saying "this game inspired Terraria in so many ways - it’s fair to say that without Dwarf Fortress, there may not have been Terraria."

So did Caves of Qud, which has seemingly gained sentience: "Dwarf Fortress is the most intricate simulation game ever made and one of the biggest influences on me, videogame Caves of Qud. Simulation depth, design tone, visual style. All extremely foundational for the genre. All imprinted on me and hundreds of other games."

Other developers and a surprising number of official accounts have chimed in with congrats. That's not unusual for the indie community, but something about it feels just a bit more special with Dwarf Fortress, which has for so long existed as a quirky exemplar of PC gaming's breadth.

It's just nice to see.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

Read more
A lineup of different sprites created for Dwarf Fortress' Adventure Mode.
With Adventure mode squared away, Dwarf Fortress is entering a 'new era of development' as its devs shift focus toward future features
Dwarf Fortress adventure mode art
Dwarf Fortress finally got its roguelike Adventure Mode on Steam, so if you'll excuse me, I've got to go fire up a fresh wombat man
The player stands in front of a gaping hole in their neatly trimmed garden lawn, with the rear of a house and decking in the background.
Designed in just a few weeks, this $5 indie game about digging a hole has journeyed to the centre of Steam's top sellers chart
A medieval merchant in a small village
Manor Lords, the best city builder of 2024, hits 3 million sales as players continue to fill its maps with muddy medieval towns
Manor Lords promo art - knight on horseback looking at a medieval village in the distance, viewed from behind
PC Gamer's Best City Builder of 2024 has sold over 2.5 million, but here's the big news: Now it has bridges
A pack of real life Balatro cards.
The official Balatro Timeline documents the history of 2024's biggest game as its developer went from 'obsessed' with making it to 'shocked' at the reception
Latest in Sim
PowerWash Simulator 2 screenshots
'More evolution than revolution': PowerWash Simulator 2 is coming late 2025, and it's bringing online multiplayer and split-screen co-op with it
A child stands on top of a dinosaur exhibit, hugging the nose of a dinosaur skull.
As a real life museum employee, I'm a bit confused by the amount of pirate ghosts in Two Point Museum—but it's not going to stop me trying to make the most realistic exhibits I can
A citizen of a city
A lot is going on for Cities: Skylines' 10th anniversary—from freebies to new creator packs—but there's still a big ol' elephant in the room
Staring eyes in a face covered in oil
Death Stranding 2's PS5 release date is in June, let's hope it doesn't take 8 months to hit PC this time
Cities: Skylines 2 screenshot - street level at night
Cities: Skylines 2's asset editor remains a distant dream: Colossal Order is still working on it but says it's 'proven more technically challenging than initially anticipated'
Town in Tales of Seikyu with two townsfolk sat on the stairs
Tales of Seikyu is just your regular farming simulator, apart from the fact I've got shapeshifting abilities and I'm engaged to a pretty persistent kappa
Latest in News
A photo of an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor surrounded by DDR5 memory sticks from Corsair, Kingston, and Lexar
Fresh leak suggests Intel's on-again-off-again Arrow Lake CPU refresh is back on the menu (boys)
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Go ahead and complain the discounts aren't as steep as they used to be, but Steam just had its biggest year ever for seasonal sales
Valve Steam Deck OLED handheld PC
'The future of hardware at Valve is bright': Valve celebrates the success of Steam Deck and Steam OS
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Still image of Bastion holding a bird, taken from Microsoft's Copilot for Gaming reveal trailer
Microsoft unveils Copilot for Gaming, an AI-powered 'ultimate gaming sidekick' that will let you talk to your console so you don't have to talk to your friends