Dwarf Fortress: Analog Build
A downloadable game
A tiny analog love letter to Dwarf Fortress
Dwarf Fortress: Analog Build is a short tabletop/freeform game inspired by the procedural glory of Dwarf Fortress: settlement-building, emergent disaster, and the joy of watching a fragile system become complicated. It's a raw and crazy little exercise in cutting up cardboard into physical Dwarf Fortress style structures.
Players use paper, scissors, drawing, improvisation, tables, and shared invention to build what seven stalwart dwarves have embarked to create: a new fortress. The goal is to evoke the feeling of a tiny fortress simulation taking shape at the table.
This was originally created for the 2019 Golden Cobra Challenge, under tight page-count constraints. It is rules-light, strange, and intentionally sketch-like: less a full adaptation than a playable design artifact, a seed toward a fuller tabletop or floor-game version of fortress-building.
Expect craft, chaos, and the usual lesson: losing is fun.
Strike the earth.
Practical Info
Players: 2–8
Time: 30–90 minutes
Format: tabletop/freeform game / analog craft experiment
Prep: low
Materials: paper, cardboard or cardstock, scissors, pens or markers, table space, and a willingness to make a mess
Tone: chaotic, crafty, funny, doomed, improvised
Best for: game jams, design workshops, larp nights, tabletop groups, Dwarf Fortress fans, and people who enjoy strange physical play artifacts
This is not a polished fortress-management game. It is a compact design experiment: part tabletop game, part craft activity, part procedural disaster toy.
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Comments
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bruh how i play this?
It was part of a design competition. So the rules are very light. It is almost improvisational. It is intended to be a simple crafting process that emulates Dwarf Fortress in spirit. The tables provided are based on things that happen in the game. It is expected that anyone attempting to play the game must be familiar with the fortress mode of Dwarf Fortress, and would then play out a crafting process of making a fort along with spontaneously introducing random elements into the flow of play as it does in the video game.