Welcome to Dwarf Fortress. Prepare to guide your stout charges to fortune in a world fraught with many perils. You'll begin by creating your world and watching an animation of the region's history.

Once this process is completed, you can prepare a group of dwarves and send them out to seek wealth deep in the mountains. As you dig deeper and more dwarves take up residence in your outpost, your doings will attract attention, both wanted and unwanted.

Deal with challenges as they arise, and you might one day find that your fortress has grown to become the capital of the kingdom.

Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.

Although Dwarf Fortress is still in a work in progress, many features have already been implemented.

Here are some key features of "Dwarf Fortress":

· The world is randomly generated with distinct civilizations spanning over 1000 years of history, hundreds of caves, dozens of towns, and regions with various wildlife.
· The world persists as long as you like, over many games, recording historical events and tracking changes.
· Command your dwarves as they search for wealth in the mountain.
· Craft treasures and furniture from many materials and improve these objects with precious metals, jewels and more.
· Defend yourself against attacks from hostile civilizations, the wilderness and the depths.
· Support the nobility as they make demands of your populace.
· Keep your dwarves happy and read their thoughts as they work and relax.
· Z coordinate allows you to dig out fortresses with multiple levels. Build towers or conquer the depths.
· Build floodgates to divert water for farming or to drown your adversaries.
· Much much more...
· Play an adventurer and explore, quest for glory or seek vengeance.
· Meet adversaries from previous games.
· Recruit people in towns to come with you on your journey.
· Explore without cumbersome plot restrictions.
· Seamlessly wander the world -- 197376 x 197376 squares total -- or travel more rapidly on the region map.
· Accept quests from the town and civilization leaders.
· Retire and meet your old characters. Bring them along on an adventure with a new character or reactivate them and play directly.
· Z coordinate allows you to move seamlessly between dungeon levels and scale structures fighting adversaries above and below.
· The combat model uses skills, body parts, wrestling, charging and dodging between squares, bleeding, pain, nausea, and much more.
· A dynamic weather model tracks wind, humidity and air masses to create fronts, clouds, rain storms and blizzards.
· Over two hundred rock and mineral types are incorporated into the world, placed in their proper geological environments.
· Add new creatures, weapons, plants, metals and other objects via modifiable text files.
· Extended ASCII character set rendered in 16 colors (including black) as well as 8 background colors (including black).