1 HN user recommended this demo1 month2016–2025score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN cites it as an impressive example of building computation inside Dwarf Fortress.
A short demo of a playable Space Invaders game built inside Dwarf Fortress, with a downloadable map. It shows the game's mechanics used as a computing substrate.
“Though I see he has a new project (Armok Invaders) that looks pretty awesome.” (HN, 2016)
Dwarfputers are a wonderful tangent of their own, with a not-unlikely possibility of flooding your entire computer with firey death in the form of magma in some of the more impressive approaches - this has been possible (but quite difficult) for some time, more recent game versions have made non-fluid based logic gates[1] more realistic and usable. Someone has built an (admittedly simple) space-invaders game[2] using df which is rather impressive. 1. [link] 2. [this video]
Simple space-invaders game built inside Dwarf Fortress
And of course Space Invaders was programmed inside of a Dwarf Fortress game. It’s simplified of course and not exactly real time lol. Wonder what it would take to emulate the full version inside of DF. [this video]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
3 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes