Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.

Although Dwarf Fortress is still in a work in progress, many features have already been implemented.

* The world is randomly generated with distinct civilizations, dozens of towns, hundreds of caves and regions with various wildlife.
* The world persists as long as you like, over many games, recording history and tracking changes.
* Command your dwarves as they search for wealth in the mountain.
      o Craft treasures and furniture from many materials and improve these objects with precious metals, jewels and more.
      o Defend yourself against attacks from hostile civilizations, the wilderness and the depths.
      o Support the nobility as they make demands of your populace.
      o Keep your dwarves happy and read their thoughts as they work and relax.
      o Z coordinate allows you to dig out fortresses with multiple levels. Build towers or conquer the depths.
      o Build floodgates to divert water for farming or to drown your adversaries.
      o Much much more...
* Play an adventurer and explore, quest for glory or seek vengeance.
      o Meet adversaries from previous games.
      o Recruit people in towns to come with you on your journey.
      o Explore without cumbersome plot restrictions.
      o Seamlessly wander the world -- 197376 x 197376 squares total -- or travel more rapidly on the region map.
      o Accept quests from the town and civilization leaders.
      o Retire and meet your old characters. Bring them along on an adventure with a new character or reactivate them and play directly.
      o Z coordinate allows you to move seamlessly between dungeon levels and scale pyramids fighting adversaries above and below.
* The combat model uses skills, body parts, wrestling, charging and dodging between squares, bleeding, pain, nausea, and much more.
* A dynamic weather model tracks wind, humidity and air masses to create fronts, clouds, rain storms and blizzards.
* Over two hundred rock and mineral types are incorporated into the world, placed in their proper geological environments.
* Add new creatures, weapons, plants, metals and other objects via modifiable text files.
* Extended ASCII character set rendered in 16 colors (including black) as well as 8 background colors (including black).

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Enjoy your confined, limited, textured polygon worlds. I'm going to explore a huge, living, breathing universe of possibilities, all in glorious 16 color ASCII with code that could fit on a handful of floppy disks.

This game ruined my GPA at the end of last semester. I haven't touched it in months because I'll end up doing nothing but playing it all the time again.

Reminds me of those ages-old text-based MMOs, like where you'd control a country and invade other players or whatnot.