Dwarf Fortress on Steam and itch.io has been a mega success for Bay 12 Games, a deserved success, given their previous free release supported and updated for a long time. Now the developers have confirmed it's closing in on a million sales.
The free version of the game still exists! The paid version literally only gets you the new tileset and music but is otherwise the exact same game and still updated! And if the ASCII tileset is a big turn off, people had made free tilesets years ago you could use instead (it was the only way I could play the game myself back in pre-steam days).
I wanna get the game, but its still quite expensive in my country. Currently sitting 107.6 RMB, thats half a days wage for me.
The free version of the game still exists! The paid version literally only gets you the new tileset and music but is otherwise the exact same game and still updated! And if the ASCII tileset is a big turn off, people had made free tilesets years ago you could use instead (it was the only way I could play the game myself back in pre-steam days).
https://bay12games.com/dwarves/
The text based version is still free
and its got tons of free mods including visual overhauls
Gotta save that money for Factorio Expansion
You can download the game for free in its original form here: https://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/
IIRC there used to be custom tilesets/graphics packs, not sure if they’re still maintained after the game launched on Steam.