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.

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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).