Dwarf Fortress is going Jurassic; Dinos are coming June 25th!

If you can believe it, Dwarf Fortress has been in development since 2002; and it still receives regular updates. The most recent in a very long line is, amazingly, dinosaurs, which will add another danger to the already hostile digital world that you inhabit.

In case you aren’t familiar with Dwarf Fortress, you control a colony of dwarves that are just trying to survive in a roguelike world, meaning everything is randomised and no two playthroughs are the same. It is extremely complex and the learning curve is very high, and there is technically no win condition, so no matter how successful you are, your civilisation will fall eventually. The main motto for Dwarf Fortress is ‘Losing is Fun!’, and I couldn’t agree more with that. I remember playing the base game years ago at a friends insistence, before its release on Steam (blimey I’m old).

Enough of me rambling on though, you’re here because I mentioned everyone’s favourite pre-historic pals. Well, it turns out that much like everything else in Dwarf Fortress, they aren’t just being added on as an afterthought. There’s going to be over 100 dinosaurs, and different extinct creatures; Not just that but it includes little baby versions and dinomen hybrids, all of which can be used for food, trained as war beasts, or even kept as pets! Considering the world of Dwarf Fortress contains dragons and all manner of other creatures a lot more mythical, and one could argue, dangerous than dinosaurs, I think this addition will be welcome in the cult-like following Dwarf Fortress has. Nothing can be more dangerous to those little dwarves than elephants though.

It is important to note that if you’d like to have dinosaurs in your world, you will need to start a new world from scratch. While doing so there will be a setting that you can choose from to see how hostile these adorable little critters will be. I like the freedom of choice, and honestly dinosaurs might be enough to make me pick Dwarf Fortress up again after all these years. 2026 marks twenty years of the games release, so keep your eye out; I don’t think we’ve seen the last news of Dwarf Fortress this year!

Dwarf Fortress is available on Steam and Itch.io. Grab yourself a copy here;