Kitfox Games and indie developers Tarn and Zach Adams have announced a premium, revamped version of Dwarf Fortress.
The long-running city-builder / roguelike fantasy game is getting a paid version with modern visuals on Windows PC, via Steam and Itch.io, although a release window isn’t confirmed. Featured above, you can view a teaser trailer for the new release.
If you’ve somehow never heard of Dwarf Fortress (its official name is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress), the game was started by brothers Tarn and Zach Adams over sixteen years ago as a freeware simulation game, developed solely via optional donations.
Here’s some screenshots:
The game became infamous for its complex systems, ASCII graphics, and at times punishing difficulty. The new paid version will have more friendly visuals, and the original ASCII version – what they’ll now call Dwarf Fortress Classic – will remain free and get intermittent updates as before.
Both Mike “Mayday” Madej and Patrick Martin “Meph” Schroeder, mostly known for their tileset mod packs on Dwarf Fortress, will be developing a brand new visual tileset just for this paid version. Musician and sound designer Dabu will create new music tracks for each season in the game.
Lastly, the game will support Steam features like Steam Workshop integration, so fans will be able to more readily mod the simulator.