When I read about Dwarf Fortress, I immediately remembered something I read many years ago (probably more than 20) in a game development book. Practically at the beginning it was stated that Tetris marked the end of successful games developed by one personthat the evolution of the video game sector will not allow something like this to happen again in the future.

Attention, this is not a reproach to the author, because at the time everything indicated that he was right. The video game industry was starting to be a big budget industry, great titles and great starts, something that of course involved great teams. Graphics, especially since the advent of 3D-enabled graphics cards and accelerators, have begun to push for realism, which brings us to the current point, with titles like Microsoft Flight Simulator continuing to leave us speechless.

However, and despite the fact that we live in an age with impressive graphics, we can find other titles that are much more modest in this respect, but which have achieved tremendous success for various reasons. Stardew Valley, Undertale, Fez, Papers, Please or Dust: An Elysian Tale, not to mention the best-selling title in the history of Minecraft, which now has a team of developers, but was originally created by just one person.

Not so in this case…but pretty much ever since The dwarven fortress was created by two brothers who took more than 20 years to complete it.. Of course, it’s important to be clear that the Tarn brothers and Zack Adams didn’t wait until they finished it to release it. The truth is that the first version of the game, a construction and management simulator with a fantasy theme, was released in 2006, although it was a very basic version of the game that did not even have graphics that arrived only last year. vol., with pictures created with mosaics from pixel art blueprints.

In this case, the tenacity of the brothers undoubtedly paid off, because according to their own reports, by January 2023 Dwarf Fortress had an income of $7,230,123.58. Yes, you read that right, more than seven million dollars, without a doubt an absolute success that, among other things, allowed the brothers to add a third person to the development team, which allows us to think enough that they will continue working on improving Dwarf Fortress (hopefully they are considering translating it into more languages) as further future developments are already under consideration.

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