Dungeon World

Dungeon World is a small-scale, turn-based dungeon crawler and world simulation. You create villages, fight monsters and prepare your character for the world’s final day. Each procedurally generated world has changing biomes and emergent interactions, with simple, grid-based movement and actions.

Story and time

When the being that shaped the world abandoned it, the lands began to wither. A wise person foresaw the disaster and left a chance for the god to return and renew its creation. You control an avatar carrying the creator’s essence, with limited time to learn about the lands and their myths, grow stronger across successive lives and, if you choose, confront the creator to try to save the world.

The story is not the main focus. Time is the game’s central theme, conveyed through messages and systems you must learn to progress successfully in each playthrough. Your character ages, and death costs you most of your progress. You can adapt the world to your needs through heirs, seasons, shortcuts and settlements, while planning around both your character’s lifespan and the world’s limited days.

Explore and prepare

You begin in an unknown world and seek allies and treasures as you prepare for its end. Procedural generation gives each world its own small emergent adventures, which can include:

• Establishing or defending settlements
• Finding objects or retrieving them from past lives
• Defeating hordes or major monsters
• Gaining allies to accompany you
• Exploring layers and unknown regions

Eventually the world is swept away and you start over. The game’s minimalist approach emphasizes simple interactions, inventory management and planning rather than combat or statistics. You can create and save as many worlds as you want.

World and systems

The simulated world includes interactions between NPCs. Movement, item use and temporal cycles are turn-based and grid-based. The game includes over 40 monsters and items, over 20 settlements and NPCs, a collection of creatures and stories, and cheats for use in the late game.