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Dwarf Fortress has sold half a million copies
- jmorenoamor 4y agoI'm really happy for them, a labour of love and passion o er the years. I hope they keep working on it. Congratulations!
- samwillis 4y agoRevenue numbers on that page don't include the Steam numbers since the launch in December ~ $15M is revenue in one month!! To go from $15k to $15M, x1000, in a matter of weeks must feel incredible. Particularly after 15 years of hard work.
- jeffwask 4y agoReally happy for these guys and the reward for their passionate dedication to the game and community.
- luxuryballs 4y agoand it’s motivating for those of us (me) who have been working on a project and are quite aware that it will take years to complete
- codeulike 4y agoWatch out for survivor bias tho
- TillE 4y ago80% of everything fails. It is absolutely possible to succeed as a solo indie game developer, even if the likes of Minecraft or Stardew Valley or Dwarf Fortress are pretty extreme outliers. But it's nice when they do succeed.
- ido 4y agoMore Like 95%
- hesdeadjim 4y agoI'd say even that is generous. Especially once you consider opportunity cost -- length of development, contractor expenses, hardware, lost potential earnings if employed, etc. My VR game eventually sold 130k copies over four years, but amortized over 1.5 years of development, $100k contracting expenses, $25k hardware, most copies sold at sale price, and another partner to split earnings with I still would have made significantly more as an employed principal or even senior engineer. As far as indie game success goes, selling this many copies puts me on the far end of the percentile scale. Oof. There is of course the non-monetary "compensation" aspect. I created something I am truly proud of, tons of people have either seen or played it and enjoyed the experience, and I crossed a huge item off the ol' bucket list. Even if the game had only sold 10k copies, I still would have called it a win personally.
- sph 4y agoHow many of those failing 80% were working as hard as the Tarn brothers or Eric Barone? I'd be surprised if 1% of them were. Luck is a big factor, but working hard is an often underrated component. Equating game development, or anything in life, as a lottery is a terrible mindset to be in and sets one up for failure and mediocrity. Success lies somewhere between cutting one's own losses early, and unrelenting stubbornness.
- fragmede 4y agoJust work a little bit harder! You'll make it! If you didn't make it you just didn't try hard enough? That's pretty fucking toxic and is why the video game industry is such a cesspool of broke dreams. But don't take my word for it. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ea-exec-says-toxic-environments-are-inevitable-inside-large-publishers-but-you-have-to-take-action/ https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ea-exec-says-toxic-... is as much a place to start as any
- somenameforme 4y agoDepends on one's motivation. I really doubt at any point the Dwarf Fortress guy expected to become a millionaire with his game anymore than Notch expected to become a billionaire off Minecraft. They pursued the ideas because they were doing something that they themselves wanted, and enjoy(ed) making. There are other examples like UnReal World [1]. It's a game about surviving in the wilderness in Finland made by a guy living out in the wilderness in Finland. It had its first release 31 years ago, and the dev is still going at it. He's not exactly rolling the dough, but what's better than doing what you enjoy and making enough to get by doing it? Well sure, making way more than you need! But spending the prime of your life doing something you love with the chance of a nice payday, seems more pleasant than spending the prime of your life doing something you dislike but with a more guaranteed upper mid payday. [1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/351700/UnReal_World/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/351700/UnReal_World/
- throwaway4aday 4y agoThe success of DF should be viewed as the result of perseverance in coding and dedication to a community. They are pretty much the OG of their niche and have spawned thousands of copies but the copies have been the ones to fail for the most part mainly due to not sticking with it and/or not building a strong community around their projects. DF survived pretty much in spite of the actual product itself which, while it has improved steadily over time, remained almost actively user-hostile with its UI. You had to really love the game and the community in order to play it regularly. The Steam release is really a crowning triumph that will hopefully ensure the legacy of the game if not a completely renewed life.
- make3 4y agoyeah this is 100% survivor bias; their success only means you can make money with already hugely successful & popular projects, it's not indicative that your project will be successful or that you're doing the right thing
- luxuryballs 4y agobut it’s an example of someone following through and bringing something to fruition, not to imply it means you’ll get the same sales and reception but working 15 years on a project is an insane extreme, if he can do that I can do a year or two just to say I finished it
- wonderwonder 4y agoAnd it's 15k divided by 2 before tax isn't it? Pretty amazing story of just doing what you love and eventually getting rewarded.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoApparently Toady has had several 6 figure opportunities just to license the name that he's turned down. The game is made for the love of making it and what little money they made was always just about allowing them to keep doing what they love. The resulting good will from their 20 years of labor and refusing to sell out paid off in the end when they needed it. Honestly, I'd have bet that if they released the "premium" version for free on bay12 but $30 on Steam they'd still make the majority of what they have.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah, they've been "comfortable" for years now, the main reason to "sell out" if you will was to ensure that health insurance would be available.
- nasmorn 4y agoHow can you be comfortable if you don’t even have health insurance. Seems like an oxymoron to me.
- colordrops 4y agoWhen you are young it seems like you don't need it. Usually there comes a time though where you realize you should have it.
- NoraCodes 4y agoIn America, healthcare (insurance and out-of-pocket) can be a major contributor to cost of living for anyone with anything more than the occasional cold. It's especially bad for self-employed people like the Adams.
- jyxent 4y agoProbably a bit less revenue, due to regional pricing and the key arbitrage that ends up happening with that. Still a huge success, though.
- agolio 4y agoIf anyone deserve to get rich it's the people that gave away their project for free for 15 years turning down multiple monetisation opportunities on the way. Very happy for them. Next up VLC!
- atum47 4y agoI'm still awaiting for the linux version. =)
- atum47 4y agoDon't know why this comment got down voted. I'm really interested in the game, I even wrote to the developers asking when a linux version would be available. Here's the conversation: Me: Are you guys planning on a Linux version? By that I mean a version with graphics, as the one you released on steam. Thanks Them: Yeah! The existing code for linux was a little too fiddly to update (I'd always been doing symlinks or whatever that just weren't great and we generally want to do a better job). We've already started the ball rolling bringing somebody on. It won't be in December, but with the existing code we're hopefully it won't take forever and ever.
- atum47 4y agoBy the way, this exchange happened early December 2022.
- aliqot 4y agoGood. Fuck cancer.
- lkbm 4y agoContext: One of the developers got cancer, and while he was okay this time (health-wise and financially), they realized maybe some financial security would be smart given how much treatment could cost: https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xypb5/the-dwarf-fortress-creators-werent-in-it-for-money-but-now-they-need-it https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xypb5/the-dwarf-fortress-cr...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- toto444 4y agoI have noticed every time cancer is mentioned there are a lot of 'fuck cancer' comments. May I know where the expression comes from ?
- lygaret 4y agohttps://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/fuckcancer/ https://stronglang.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/fuckcancer/ Also, generally, it's a way to express solidarity with the reality that a lot of time there's no "hoping for good news", "buck up" is a horrible thing to say, and just... well, fuck cancer.
- nvusuvu 4y agoThere is an unmeasurably large amount of suffering due to cancer. Not just from the people that have directly experienced it. Watching helplessly as it consumes the bodies and minds of your loved ones is devastating. Its likely that someone expressing that sentiment has dealt with that fallout. My heart goes out to them.
- praptak 4y agoI remember an xkcd strip ending with that phrase: https://xkcd.com/931/ https://xkcd.com/931/
- jwcooper 4y agoHaving dabbled in dwarf fortress over the years, I think they did a really nice job on the steam release. It must have been a daunting project to streamline most/all of the features in DF. Congrats to the team on their success!
- wheats 4y ago>streamline most/all of the features in DF What features did they streamline? I thought they just replaced the ASCII graphics with sprites and changed some hotkeys?
- netruk44 4y agoI haven't played the Steam version, but it's my understanding the menus aren't keyboard-based anymore. That alone is a massive undertaking, Dwarf Fortress has an insane number of submenus for them to figure out good GUI places for them all. Everything used to just be in a central massive "press a single letter for this specific submenu" sub-screen on the right third of the screen, with multiple submenus to navigate to what you're trying to do.
- thatguy0900 4y agoAll the menus are still keyboard navagable, if you have that muscle memory already. I think that's a great touch
- MrLeap 4y agoThis isn't true, as far as I know. Some menus are, but hotkeys have been changed quite a bit. Quite a few menus seem mouse only. I can't ABABABABABAB to add a bunch of beds to a carpenter anymore, DD doesn't mine. The hotkey path for placing doors in the steam version is bananas. Still a great game! Hoping there's a mod or a patch that lets me use the classic keys with the new interface eventually though.
- pacoWebConsult 4y ago
- Tepix 4y agoNote that if you buy it on itch.io you also get a Steam key. So if you count both separately and add the numbers, you'll probably count too many. Anyway, i bought one of the copies and the game is fun, whenever i feel like doing unlimited amounts of micro-management ;-)
- nusaru 4y agoThank you. I just now went to buy the game and nearly bought it on Steam but I remembered this comment at the last moment.
- wkdneidbwf 4y agopatiently waiting the macos version. i want to play the new version so bad!
- helf 4y agoTried it under Rosetta2 or whatever it is called?
- SllX 4y agoRosetta 2 only translates x86_64 Mach-O binaries to ARM64; you still need a Mac version.
- cyberpunk 4y agoYou can run it on m1 under x86 wine via rosetta ("wineskin") [0]. Turtles all the way down! 0: https://macresearch.org/play-dwarf-fortress-mac/ https://macresearch.org/play-dwarf-fortress-mac/
- SllX 4y agoI’ll have to take you at your word because that link sent my browser into an endless refresh loop, but that is crazy. How is Wine’s performance on an M1? Asking for a friend.
- coldpie 4y agoPretty good. Free trial of a commercial version here: https://www.codeweavers.com/ https://www.codeweavers.com/ (I used to work there.)
- wkdneidbwf 4y agoi saw someone on reddit write up getting it working repackaging the steam version it with wineskin or something like that. it was enough work that i though, “meh, i’ll wait”. i’m not going to bother with parallels or some other emulation solution. i can be patient.
- naillo 4y agoThey deserve way more :)
- INTPenis 4y agoI used to play DF a lot back in 2009, was a real geek about it. Then life took over and I lost all the muscle memory. Since the Steam release came out I've been playing DF almost DAILY again. It's so much FUN! Adventure mode will take the world by storm again, so that will probably mean a huge uptick in sales once it's finished.
- WharfWhoretress 4y agoHave they announced their intent to re-do Adventure Mode also? I've heard it both ways.
- Arrath 4y agoYes they will be releasing Adventurer mode in DF Steam. There is, I've read, some quirk in the Steam store agreement where if a game has a free version they must have feature parity, so development will focus on bringing the Steam release to par with the classic version, and then both will be developed in step.
- cmrdporcupine 4y agoJust did a 7-hour-each-way roadtrip with my 12 year old son and my ears were filled by him with the minutiae of Dwarf Fortress in both directions. So I hope the developers are getting paid handsomely, someone should be, with that level of intense obsession being produced :-)
- bmurphy1976 4y agoIt's gonna be 500,001 when I'm done with my current game. It's at the #1 spot on my Steam wishlist. I try not to buy a game until I'm actually ready to play it these days, so it's coming soon just not quite yet. Congratulations on the well earned success!
- karlgrz 4y agoI got it last week and played through the tutorial and then about 30 minutes after that. It's really well done :-)
- lfodofod 4y agoSo uh, what does the kit plane company have to do with all of this?
- haunter 4y agoKitfox Games? They are the publishers
- papercrane 4y agoKitFox is publishing the game and taking over customer support. They probably funded the music and art, but I don't know if that's confirmed or not. It's likely they went with KitFox because they already had a relationship. One of the founders of KitFox is Tanya Short, who's edited two books on procedural game design with the DF programmer, Tarn Adams. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315156378 https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315156378 https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429488337 https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429488337
- mysterydip 4y agoI was just looking at buying these books yesterday, but didn't make the connection with the author names! Thanks for the tip, definitely purchasing.
- arketyp 4y agoGood for them. I'm glad such a personal lifetime project and piece of art can sustain in these cynical times.
- causality0 4y agoI'm so excited to see where they go from here. My fantasy is a version of DF where entity movement isn't locked to a grid, that would open the door for real animations, smooth movement, or even a 3D version.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoNone of that requires a non-grid based approach. Many puzzle games are grid based but have smooth animation and movement, and rendering it all in 3D is pretty orthogonal. The big problem would be making the entities non-abstract enough that their animations could make some kind of sense visually.
- causality0 4y agoNone of that requires a non-grid based approach. I kinda figured that but I wanted to couch my opinion because the last time it came up I got yelled at a lot when I wanted the sprites to face right when moving right.
- zhynn 4y agoThey hired another developer for the first time ever, I am thinking this will be a huge boost to development speed. Granted, I bet the source is.... labyrinthine and will take quite a while to get up to speed. Now that they have more than one dev they will probably want to use source control...
- OkayPhysicist 4y agoThey have a roadmap [0] for DF that, assuming historical development velocity, will take another 5 odd years to complete. The big upcoming (ignoring the never ending yak shaving that tends to lead DF development) is the Myth and Magic update. Also, boats. [0] http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
- sumobob2112 4y agoreally really really wish that they had kept a mac release on steam
- tgtweak 4y agoNot counting the countless countless millions of copies of knock-off games sold on many platforms since dwarf fortress began.
- legitster 4y agoIt's crazy how much money they were leaving on the table this whole time. My mind is trying to wrap my head whether their lives would have been better or worse had they done this much sooner. I'm not sure I have a conclusion.
- massysett 4y agoI’m guessing worse: they’ve had years to refine this game. To see an example of what a game without that refinement period looks like, just see any early Paradox release. They can be satisfied that they didn’t start charging until they had a refined product.
- zhynn 4y agoAlso, they could focus entirely on their own vision for the project instead of being totally reliant on delivering for the marketplace. They had "slack" (in the slack/moloch sense) to try out weird ideas that may not have been possible if they were relying on sales revenue instead of donations to stay afloat.
- Jolter 4y agoIt comes down to your personality, I think. Whether you prefer to finish a project and move on, or whether you want to polish a product until it’s perfect. This is conscientiousness taken to the extreme, you could say. I’m sure their chosen way of working has made them a lot happier than launching a half-baked game as “early access” ten years ago. Even though that could have afforded them a much more comfortable lifestyle, I have a feeling the gaming public might have gotten tired of the game and moved on.
- Sozar2000 4y ago[dead]
- rehamelbasha 4y ago[dead]
- tastyfreeze 4y agoHaving enjoyed DF immensely, for free, in the past, I bought DF on Steam to support the Toady One and Three Toe. The UI changes make the game much more approachable. It still has a steep learning curve. But, I don't need to run a dwarf job manager alongside the game. The one thing that I would love to see added is the ability to create and reuse blueprints. Third party macro tools did this job in the past. Congratulations on your much deserved success Toady One and ThreeToe.
- echohack5 4y agoI love Dwarf Fortress and it's the inspiration for many modern simulators (and I put my $30 for Tarn with this release), but I do think that Oxygen Not Included, Rimworld, Factorio, et.al. have surpassed it. My main issue with DF is that the main challenge of the game, combat, is pretty boring and rife with issues. For example, let's say I'm new to the game and want to put some XBow dwarfs behind a few fortifications in my base. Will the dwarfs intelligently do this when a siege happens? Is there a specific way to tell the AI that specific spots are where the Dwarfs should stand to defend? No and No. Instead I will either have to painstakingly set up individual zones / burrows for each individual defender or the dwarfs will just ignore the fortifications, even if they are in a burrow! And they'll just sit there and ignore invaders breaking through your kill zone unless you specifically micromanage them into 1-wide spaces with fortifications facing the kill zone, and even then they might just run outside your fortress on the other side of the fortifications so they're close to where you ordered them to. Rimworld on the other hand, (for all of its flaws around random and explosive damage), will at least let you draft a pawn, order it to stand behind a wall, and the pawn will get a significant cover bonus even without fortifications. They're smart enough to lean out and attack on their own too. I say all this not to criticize DF but to say that the genre has come a long way, and I hope that with this success they're looking at weaknesses like this in the gameplay loop so that folks don't just take 20+ years of goodwill as a replacement for the possibilities ahead. PS: Fuck cancer
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zhynn 4y agoYou are correct about logistics, but that is such a small part of DF to nitpick on that I have to push back. The logistics aren't the Fun part, and no other game has come close to DF on the Fun stuff. DF things that come to mind that no other colony-sim has: - 3 dimensions (z-levels) and all of the shenanigans (hydraulics, creative traps, etc) that go with them - geological and historical civilization simulation - the inter-relatedness of the game session to the history of the world is a story-generating masterpiece. - The "zones" (surface, caverns, spoilery places) and how different they feel. Oxygen Not Included does this kinda, but not as deeply. - Three different games in one using the same procedural engine and world: Adventure Mode, Legends Mode, Fortress Mode (Steam edition is currently missing Adventure mode and it will probably be a while). - The "flavor" procedural systems: Villain, Religion, Instrument/Music, Literature, Forgotten Beasts. They don't have tons of impact on gameplay, but it makes the lore so much more rich. - Sub-biome "surroundings" regions (Good, Evil, Savage, Benign) which have large effects on gameplay. Evil areas can be hilarious Fun. - the pacing feels just right to me. It's not realistic from a simulation perspective (skills increase too quickly, it takes very little time to build complex things, etc), but it "gets to the good parts" in a very satisfying duration in my opinion. The combat takes longer than it should, but then stories can happen. This game is a wonder.
- moritonal 4y agoSo they've used some of this to hire a second developer. I wish them the best of luck, entering a codebase developed by a single dev for 15 years.
- ttctciyf 4y agoSeems to have hit the ground running: https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail/3625992251248624683 https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail...
- warent 4y agoI never played this game, but heard it described as "vast". Was curious what programming language it was written in, and instead found this: https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Language https://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Language WTF is this game?
- metiscus 4y agoDwarf Fortress is an almost two decade project of interactive storytelling in the form of a video game. They've modeled the world down to an incredible level including personal relationships between people, races, and nations, skill growth, a mostly correct geologic model, the depth of this game is immense. The lives of each person alive in the simulated world are recorded and details are explorable etc. They model the languages spoken by the various races, basically an incredibly creative group of people just recursively modeled the world for something like 15 years adding depth where they wanted and the result is Dwarf Fortress.
- zhynn 4y agoDF is a procedurally-generated colony sim (build a colony in the wilderness and survive/thrive/die in an entertaining way). But that's not _why_ it is vast. The vastness comes from three main things, I think: 1. the number of distinct procgen systems. Creatures have procgen phenotypes and personalities. The landscape, biomes, and simulated geology/hydrology. Biomes. The civilizations and simulated history. The names of things. Religion, Instruments, cultural songs and dances, masterwork items and treasures, legendary forgotten beasts, and a bunch of stuff that doesn't come immediately to mind. 2. the inter-relatedness of the procgen systems. In many procgen games, the different systems do not affect each other. Systems that affect each other multiply the possibilities. And if they all affect each other, it's exponential. They all multiply each other. It's hard to describe how hard this would be to build in a way that wasn't just a mess of nonsense, but they did it by focusing entirely on the underlying systems and the UI was impenetrable ASCII with baffling UX. That has changed with the steam edition. 3. This game was written by two guys over the course of more than a dozen years funded by donation. It is an exceedingly rare and towering artistic achievement. This game should not exist, and will almost certainly never be surpassed (at least not in the same artisanal way). One of the goals that was mentioned as a north star was that they wanted this game engine to be able to generate any fantasy story that has ever been told. But that none of those stories would be explicitly coded in, the world was just capable of making it happen. You know, I probably could have just linked to their roadmap. The game is only halfway complete by the creator's opinion: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html That will give you some idea of the INSANE ambition of this game.
- nix23 4y agoI just can say....super happy for them they really earned it!! Polished and free for so many years....excellent!
- iKlsR 4y agoSteam version needs some more polish but it will come. Bought at release and on a 4k display, multi core system, top of the line gpu and more ram than I know what to do with I get a paltry mid 30s to 40s gfps and scrolling the map is a pain so it's near impossible to play due to the jank but the patches have been frequent, hope they get around to fixing these issues soon. - https://discord.com/channels/329272032778780672/1050233682243375176 https://discord.com/channels/329272032778780672/105023368224... - https://dwarffortress.mantishub.io/view.php?id=12054 https://dwarffortress.mantishub.io/view.php?id=12054 - https://dwarffortress.mantishub.io/view.php?id=12023 https://dwarffortress.mantishub.io/view.php?id=12023
- bryondowd 4y agoDF is mostly single core CPU bound. I've heard it also doesn't play well at higher resolutions. Try turning the game resolution down to 1080p.
- iKlsR 4y agoThe discord thread linked has that and a ton of other things tried as well such as fractional scaling on gpus, disabling game features, sdl1.2compat which is newer sdl backported etc.
- eddsh1994 4y agoWish this was available on an M1!
- josephd79 4y agoI’ve seen several post about this game. I’m gonna take the plug this weekend.
- senectus1 4y agohaha hoo boy. say good bye to your weekend. also i recommend a few youtube tutorials on the game.
- smegsicle 4y agono more linux support on classic ??
- assbuttbuttass 4y agoIt's coming, plus the game runs great on Proton
- smcleod 4y agoIt's a real shame the steam version is for Microsoft Windows only. I guess I could try running it with Wine but that's not ideal.
- IntelMiner 4y agoPresumably just "for now" Plus I'm sure it works fine on Proton
- sphars 4y agoAccording to ProtonDB[1], it's rated as Platinum [1]: https://www.protondb.com/app/975370 https://www.protondb.com/app/975370
- tick_tock_tick 4y agoIt's basically pure c/c++ simulation and SDL for graphics probably one of the easiest games for wine.
- ttctciyf 4y ago> steam version [...] I guess I could try running it with Wine Seems like you're not familiar with Proton[0], The "Wine + enhancements" compatibility layer that the native Linux version of Steam uses to run the majority[1] of significant Windows games. User reports are that DF runs without problems under proton[2,3,4] Anecdotally, as a thoroughgoing and (evidently) shameless cheapskate, I can report the free "classic" ascii only Windows version[5] works well under stock Wine-staging via apt on my Ubuntu laptop. Having said all that, I share your sadness that a native Linux version wasn't released along with the windows Steam release, though reportedly it is planned for the future[6,7] 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software) 1: https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/ 2: https://www.protondb.com/app/975370 https://www.protondb.com/app/975370 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zwk7b8/linux_users_impressions_of_the_steam_version_so/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zwk7b8/linux... 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zsv6fl/installing_steam_workshop_mods_on_linux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/zsv6fl/insta... 5: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_50_05_win.zip http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/df_50_05_win.zip 6: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/11/dwarf-fortress-releases-december-6-on-steam-and-itchio-native-linux-support-later/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/11/dwarf-fortress-release... 7: References by Tarn Adams to "the ports", e.g.: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/z82m0g/im_tarn_adams_aka_toady_one_dwarf_fortress/iyamfft/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/z82m0g/im_ta...
- baby 4y agoSubthread: anyone else wants to join my support group for people who don’t get these games? I tried rimworld, which seemed much easier to get into, and it seems like a sims-like game except that unlike sims it’s very unintuitive. I’ve been trying to figure out how to enjoy this game the same way I enjoyed sims when I was younger, and it dawned on me that I never really played sims the “correct” way and rather just did things because I wanted to see these things happen in my sims people’s lives. That makes sense. But what’s a colony? What do I want to do with that colony? I got confused by the lack of feedback from my decisions (or the complexity and depth of every decisions you can make) and realized at some point that I was not enjoying the game coz I was just trying to figure out the mechanics in order to win. Maybe I’m playing it wrong. Maybe the whole point of this game is to have some sort of digital terrarium?
- jackmott42 4y ago>I never really played sims the “correct” way and rather just did things because I wanted to see these things happen in my sims people’s lives That is exactly how to play DF. There is no winning. Just do what you want, see what happens. I'm working on creating the greatest library in the world, hoping to get elven and human visitors to learn and contribute even more knowledge. It does get harder as I get older to enjoy this stuff, but I have my moments.
- assbuttbuttass 4y agoDigital terrarium isn't far off, a lot of the fun of the game is just seeing what crazy stuff it can throw at you (and, what you can throw back)
- devin 4y agoI purchased a copy and don’t even have a windows machine to play it on. Cheers to them for their success. It is well-deserved!
- npteljes 4y agoGood news, if someone runs Linux - the game runs flawlessly with Proton: https://www.protondb.com/app/975370 https://www.protondb.com/app/975370
- mdtrooper 4y agoAnd at the moment DF steam version has not a Linux version. When this happens, it could be near to the million a copies (I hope it :) ).
- assbuttbuttass 4y agoI've been playing the Steam version on Linux with no problems. Proton is amazing :)
- bobse 4y agoI didn't buy it because /pol/ told me things about developers.
- S-E-P 4y agoThis is pretty awesome news! I’m happy to see them doing well. I remember playing DF a bit in college and just blown away by the devs and their undying love for the game, all whilst doing it for free no doubt.
- hypertexthero 4y agoI wonder if the experience of playing Rogue and NetHack is more akin to being an “individual contributor” in a project, whereas in Dwarf Fortress you are a “manager”? Maybe now is the time to find out. I look forward to buying it! Congratulations to the devs!
- dan-robertson 4y agoI think there’s an ‘adventure’ mode as well as fortress building.
- pixl97 4y agoAdventure mode isn't enabled in the steam version yet.
- wheresmyshadow 4y agoThis really makes me happy, what an achievement! And to think that free game is still available... I'm glad it turned out so well! Congratulations!
- Alan_Dillman 4y agoSo happy for those two devs.
- matt3210 4y agoWould be 500,001 if it worked on Mac