Dwarf Fortress adds Dwarf Babies, an upgraded Adventure Mode and more but macOS cancelled

There's plenty of good news in the latest Dwarf Fortress update, unless you're a macOS gamer that is. A fresh Beta update is out now.

Writing in an announcement on Steam the developers noted you'll no longer be confused whether red-clothed adult dwarves are actually children, since there's now actually baby sprites for dwarves! Oh, the game should also look a fair bit prettier with lots of new fruit, flower and leaf pictures for the "over 180 different plant and tree species". There's also a quest log and information screen for Adventure Mode.

Main addition highlights:

• Quest log and information screen in adventure mode.
• Child and baby pictures for dwarves.
• Many new fruit, flower, leaf pictures.
• Updated dwarf clothing images.
• Made good/bad thoughts about tombs work.
• Fixed error with experiment portrait mandibles.

If you're on macOS though, it's been cancelled "for the time being" as it doesn't make enough sense for them to dedicate time to when there's so much of the game still needing work elsewhere. Feels a bit odd to be on the other side of the fence for once, as that's what usually happens to Linux but Dwarf Fortress has Native Linux support already.

They've also said despite the success, they won't be hiring more programmers to speed it up. They're sticking to "Tarn’s vision, no matter how long it takes, rather than trying to optimize for speed" and they see it as a lifetime project, one that will be updated steadily "forever" but slowly. Just like playing the game itself, the development of it is not for the impatient.

You can buy it on:

itch.io

Steam