Dwarf Fortress
BANGER · Roguelike · 2022
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
A BANGER at $29.99.
- Length
- 60.6h
- Value
- $0.49/hr
- Reviews
- 95% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, 1GB of VRAM: Intel HD 3000 GPU / AMD HD 5450 / Nvidia 9400 GT, 502 MB of storage. Runs on Windows, Linux.
Build a fortress and try to help your dwarves survive against a deeply generated world. Keep your dwarves happy, grow their community and beware of digging too deeply. The deepest, most intricate simulation of a world that's ever been created.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $23.99, set in May 2024. Its cuts run 20 percent off as a rule. There have been 39 in the 4 years tracked, about 5 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 7 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 5 weeks.
On value it sits in the top 3 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 97 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 93 percent. Among the games that feel like it, RimWorld ($34.99, scores 97) beats it on value, while it beats Against the Storm ($29.99, scores 85).
This site sampled 800 of its Steam-purchase reviews; 25 were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written April 2024 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 93 percent of the 4,574 reviews written there were positive, against 95 percent overall, and those are 16 percent of everything written about it.
HowLongToBeat players log 60.6 hours as a typical playtime, and completionists log 200, 3.3 times as much.
Still 915 concurrent players, 4 years in.
Players
915 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
This is a dwarf game. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with miasma clouds, tantrum spirals, and carp that will absolutely wreck your fisherdwarf's day. This object menaces with spikes of !!FUN!!, a simulation so deep you can track the emotional state of a single cat, and a learning curve shaped like a vertical cliff. I've been playing Dwarf Fortress on and off for years, and I keep...
Apparently I bought this to read patch notes randomly when it updates and be amazed. Maybe also to not lose faith in gaming and be reminded of all its ridiculous creative possibilities. Might actually play it at some point.
Dwarf Fortress is not for everyone, but it is something special if it clicks. It is a massive, ambitious project, worthy of exhibit in a museum as a testament to what video games can achieve as a medium. It is a long labor of love with a small, dedicated team who really care about their vision and their community. It first came to my attention via - the Youtube artist Kruggsmash, when a goblin attacking one of his...
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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Dwarf Fortress scores 89/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/975370/dwarf-fortressThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 2, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.