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PC Gamer
PC Gamer
Rick Lane

The challenges of developing the colony sim, from Dungeon Keeper to Dwarf Fortress and beyond

Dwarf Fortress PC Gamer Tarn Adams Electronic Arts Future
A trio of dwarves descend into the depths in the Dwarf Fortress key art.

From the archives: This feature was originally published in PC Gamer #305 (UK, June 2017). It appears below as originally written, with only minor changes in formatting and presentation.

No gaming genre can generate stories quite like the colony sim. Almost entirely unique to PC gaming, colony sims task players with building and sustaining a habitat for a group of AI characters, which could be anything from dwarfs to demons.

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