The premium version of Dwarf Fortress is approaching an impressive milestone of 1 million copies sold. And the Adams brothers have no plans to stop developing their life’s project.
There are quite a few other roguelike (or roguelike adjacient) games that do beat it handily. To give a few examples:
DF started development in October 2002 (according to their own website, scroll all the way down.)
UnReal World’s first release was in 1992 and is also still getting regular updates.
NetHack has gotten new versions ever since 1987. The latest big change was 3.6.0 in 2015, 3.6.7 came out in early 2023 but there’s no reason to believe there won’t be a next version. If we count that in 1987 it started as a fork of Hack, we could even add another 3 years in the front as Hack was published in 1984.
Edit: I just realized: In the world of MMORPGs we also have a few examples: Everquest which came out in 2000 and is still getting expansions. Even WoW isn’t too far behind with a 2004 release date, which probably means development began before DF’s development too.
This game is pretty much the best game ever made.
It’s probably the longest development time, too
There are quite a few other roguelike (or roguelike adjacient) games that do beat it handily. To give a few examples:
DF started development in October 2002 (according to their own website, scroll all the way down.)
UnReal World’s first release was in 1992 and is also still getting regular updates.
NetHack has gotten new versions ever since 1987. The latest big change was 3.6.0 in 2015, 3.6.7 came out in early 2023 but there’s no reason to believe there won’t be a next version. If we count that in 1987 it started as a fork of Hack, we could even add another 3 years in the front as Hack was published in 1984.
Edit: I just realized: In the world of MMORPGs we also have a few examples: Everquest which came out in 2000 and is still getting expansions. Even WoW isn’t too far behind with a 2004 release date, which probably means development began before DF’s development too.
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is open source, actively developed and amazing!
Edit: I didn’t read your comment correctly the first time, I don’t know how long CDDA has been in development.
I mean, it’s just 1 dude and he’s simulating an entire fantasy world as granularly as he can.