Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams was amazed other devs had heard of his game the first time he went to a convention: ‘I didn’t know that anyone knew what we were doing’

Dwarf Fortress is a bit like caviar—not everyone’s into it, but the people who are describe their experiences with it like a religious awakening. But the game’s legendary co-creator, Tarn Adams, didn’t even know it had a big following for many years, as he told PC Gamer’s Joshua Wolens in a recent interview at Gamescom 2026.

“It was something like 2013, 14 going to PAX in Seattle, and there was an indie mega booth at the time,” he recalled. “Of the 50 or 60 games showing—I’m just ballparking the numbers—I’d say 90% of them heard of Dwarf Fortress and also had a very amazed fan-ish response when we were introduced.” It was the first time Adams had a sense of the reach his game had.

“That was crazy. I had no idea that that was even a thing,” he said. “I didn’t know that anyone knew what we were doing … I enjoyed it. I try to have good moral qualities, but I am apparently subject to all forms of flattery and vanity and such.”

If he could go back in time, he wouldn’t so as to not “disrupt the timeline.” But if he could go back in time without the risk of doing that, Adams said might encourage himself to evangelize the game more in its early days.

“I’d probably be more confident about getting it in front of more people sooner. I didn’t know the people to do that, though, so I’d probably be like ‘go meet some more people,'” he said. “From the release of the game in 2006 up until around 2013, I didn’t meet another game developer really, except maybe one or two at a Dwarf Fortress-specific meet.”

He acknowledges things would have felt different then—he was “not a very social person” at the time and DF was “outsider art” for a number of years—but he’d still give his old self “a little pep talk, maybe.”