D.O.R.F. is an isometric real-time strategy game developed and published by DORFteam, a small independent team. It was first shown in September 2022 and was still in development in September 2026, with an official release date of TBA. The developers describe it as inspired by the RTS classics of the 1990s and early 2000s. They have said the title logo and the look of the oil pools were influenced by KKND, although the game's concepts predate the developer playing it.
Timeline
Date | Event |
|---|---|
By August 2022 | The engine was forked from OpenRA. In August 2023 the developers said the fork was over a year old. |
September 19, 2022 | The Patreon campaign was published. |
September 23, 2022 | The first teaser was posted on the official YouTube channel. |
September 25, 2022 | Zeppelin Assault, the first of a series of weekly unit showcases usually uploaded on Saturdays, was released. |
October 2022 | Showcases of the Heavy Tank, Tesla Tank, Powersuit and Halftracks followed, along with a preview of the music track Lifting Fog. See Units. |
April 23, 2023 | The Steam store page was announced and opened for wishlists. |
June 11, 2023 | The teaser shown at the 2023 PC Gaming Show was posted on the official channel. |
August 12, 2023 | A development blog post explained the planned dynamic lighting and depth-sorting overhaul for 2D sprites. |
Mid-2023 to mid-2024 | The rendering overhaul required every graphic to be redone. In June 2024 the developers said there had been almost no public updates for nearly a year because of it. |
August 24, 2024 | A New Lighting Engine update video showed the reworked graphics. |
September 29, 2024 | The first Map Editor Timelapse video was released. See Map Editor and Modding. |
April 2025 | A teaser made for a German games showcase aired; it was posted on the official channel on May 17, 2025. |
June 28, 2025 | A 3D Sprites video showed sprites that tilt and pitch like 3D models. |
August 2025 | A Kickstarter planned for this month was moved to March 2026 for tax reasons. |
September 27, 2025 | A second Map Editor Timelapse showed a new multitool brush. |
December 23, 2025 | A development post set out the naval combat design. See Naval Warfare. |
January 31, 2026 | A video showed the overhauled physics-based unit movement. |
March 17, 2026 | The Kickstarter campaign launched with an official trailer and reached its initial goal on the first day. |
March 31, 2026 | The End of March update covered the new lighting features and the terrain-altering warhead. Further end-of-month updates followed, though none was posted for June 2026. |
April 3 to 13, 2026 | Unit and faction videos were released during the campaign, including the Maximus Tank, one video for each faction, the Map Editor, Tanklets, the Millennium Airship, the Orion Heavy Weapons Platform and the Doomroller. |
April 15, 2026 | A Kickstarter Success video was posted. The campaign closed in mid-April 2026 well above its $85,000 goal. |
April 30, 2026 | The End of April update covered optimization, the start of the move to Vulkan, physics projectiles and new civilian artwork. |
May 31, 2026 | The End of May update described a major rework of the logistics systems and plans to bring in more staff. See Resources and Logistics. |
July 31, 2026 | The End of July update introduced the Annex system and new character faces. See Annex System. |
August 31, 2026 | The End of August update covered dynamic cliffs, destructible bridges and hotloading. See Terrain and Environment. |
The development blog index as of September 2026 lists no update for June 2026; the May post was followed directly by the July post.
Engine
The game runs on a heavily modified fork of OpenRA, an open source RTS engine. The developers said in 2024 that it had been changed so much that it bears little resemblance to the original, and the official FAQ says basic logic such as unit attacks and pathfinding has been or will be heavily modified. Because of the age of the fork, the developers said in August 2023 that many later OpenRA updates would most likely not carry over, though they would still add some efficiency and optimization updates. In July 2026 the team was fixing features such as netcode that had been largely neglected since the fork.
The engine's origins also carry a license obligation. Because the engine descends from OpenRA, the game's code library is licensed under GPLv3, so the source code is planned for release at launch, while its assets and rules stay paid content; see Map Editor and Modding for details.
Rendering and Lighting
The early game used baked-in lighting from a fixed sun position, with flat shadows and frequent depth-sorting errors such as sprites flickering or drawing over objects they should be behind. The August 2023 blog post set out the replacement: each sprite gets a normal map and a depth map alongside its flat diffuse image, plus an experimental Micro Z-depth shadow sprite that the game turns into an invisible mesh for casting dynamic shadows.
Moving to this system meant throwing out and re-rendering the game's graphics. New sprites are lit evenly from every side so real-time lighting does not clash with painted-in light, the old SHP format was replaced with PNG, and the lighting and depth data were eventually packed into a single auxiliary RGBA image per sprite to save video memory. The developers said the overhaul also fixed much of the old Z-fighting and flickering.
Date | Rendering or engine change |
|---|---|
August 2024 | New lighting engine shown with dynamic lighting, shadows and per-pixel depth sorting |
June 2025 | 3D Sprites shader lets vehicles and aircraft tilt and pitch, so vehicles no longer stay flat on slopes |
December 2025 | Acceleration, deceleration and movement not bound to the map grid added |
January 2026 | Physics-based unit movement shown |
March 2026 | Spotlights, volumetric lighting and a haze and fog system added by Tommy in time for the Kickstarter trailer; terrain-altering warhead added by Gustas; maps limited to 100 lights, with Forward+ rendering planned |
April 2026 | Physics projectile system finished and work begun on weapons being blocked by friendly units in the line of fire; indirect-fire barrels now elevate |
April and May 2026 | Work to replace OpenGL with Vulkan |
August 2026 | Hotloading of asset changes supported |
Gustas Kažukauskas has done the Vulkan work described in the development updates. In the April 2026 update he said he got Vulkan running within a week, was leaning toward Vulkan 1.2, and expected support for older graphics APIs to be added in the final stretch of development. The May 2026 update said Vulkan would not bring immediate performance gains but would allow optimizations once the framework is in place. As of September 2026 the store page's system requirements still listed an OpenGL 3.3 graphics card.
Art Pipeline
John Williams creates almost all of the art. Assets are modeled in Autodesk Maya, textured with a texture atlas or with Substance Painter, rendered with Arnold, and captured from a camera tilted 30 degrees with orthographic projection. Many vehicles share parts such as wheels, tracks and cannons, and many infantry share a rig and some animations. The August 2026 cliff pieces were also detailed in ZBrush. The high-poly character sculpts used for unit portraits were made by a different artist. By July 2026 the team was working with Allan, who made new faces for portraits and cutscenes to replace the originals made by J.D.
In March 2026 the developers said the game uses no generative AI for any of its art, audio or scripting assets.
Funding
Development was first paid for through the developers' savings and Patreon. In September 2023 they said they had spoken with a few publishers and might try Kickstarter the following year. In May 2025 they said a Kickstarter would be needed to fully fund the game, let the team work on it full time, and pay for things such as voice acting and sound libraries. They wanted the game further along first, with the new lighting and the 3D Sprites feature in place, so backers would not see a game missing critical features. A campaign planned for August 2025 was moved to March 2026, because running it late in the year would have lost more of the money to taxes.
Kickstarter
The Kickstarter campaign launched on March 17, 2026 with a goal of $85,000 and was funded on its first day. By March 28 it had passed several stretch goals; the remaining ones then included a dynamic campaign system, hiring additional talent and fully animated cinematics. The campaign closed in mid-April 2026 well above its $85,000 goal, and a Kickstarter Success video followed on April 15. As of September 2026 the development updates had not listed which stretch goals were reached.
Patreon
The Patreon campaign has run since September 2022. Its description still said in September 2026 that the game was being made by two independent developers in their spare time. The page then showed 1,839 members, 335 of them paid.
Tier | Price per month | Listed benefits |
|---|---|---|
Free | $0 | Free membership |
Scrap Sarge | $2 | Thanks for supporting the game |
NONCOM | $5 | Early access to new screenshots, dev notes and videos |
Resourcing Comptroller | $10 | A copy of the game at release after pledging for two months or more, plus access to the demo when available |
Oligarch | $50 | The same benefits as Resourcing Comptroller, for those who want to give more |
Team
The press kit lists three developers: John Williams, Thomas Christiaan van Leth and Gustas Kažukauskas. Development updates also credit other contributors by first name or initials.
Name | Role as described by the developers |
|---|---|
John Williams | Listed developer; writes the development blog posts, creates almost all of the art and manages the Steam page. His background is in 3D animation, and before this game he made isometric graphics for the Twisted Insurrection mod. |
Thomas Christiaan van Leth | Listed developer in the press kit |
Gustas Kažukauskas | Listed developer; programmer working on the move to Vulkan, and added the terrain-altering warhead |
Tommy | Added spotlights, volumetric lighting and fog, finished the physics projectile system and began the weapon blocking system |
Allan | Made new character faces for unit portraits and cutscenes (July 2026) |
J.D. | Made the original character faces |
Development updates refer to Tommy only by that name and do not link him to any of the names in the press kit.
The team has grown slowly. In June 2023 the developers described the game as an indie project by two developers working part time, and from August 2024 they described a team of three part-time developers. In April 2026 a programmer was lined up while contracts were finalized. The May 2026 update said nobody had been formally brought on yet because contracts and NDAs needed an attorney, but that in the next week or two another engineer, an animator, a writer, a composer and sound engineer, and map makers from the Tiberian Sun modding community would join. It also planned to contract artists for in-universe advertisements and propaganda posters, dedicated head sculpts for unit portraits, and voice acting. By August 2026, newer team members were learning the map editor.
Music
Music has come from several composers, credited in the official FAQ and in video descriptions on the official YouTube channel.
Composer | Credited work |
|---|---|
Mister Kad | Most of the music in the YouTube trailers, including the first teaser and several 2022 unit showcases |
Igor Rabovsky | The Steam announcement trailer and the 2023 PC Gaming Show teaser, and several 2026 videos including Kickstarter Success |
Aidan D. Higgs | Music in some trailers and videos, including the 2026 Kickstarter trailer |
Chicajo | Tracks used in several 2025 and 2026 videos |
Artificial Eye | Lifting Fog, previewed in October 2022 |
Omegabolt | One track for the game (mentioned in June 2024) |
In July 2023 the developers said the game already had an in-game jukebox and that an official soundtrack would likely be released as DLC or a bonus. In June 2024 they said the soundtrack would likely come from a variety of artists. A composer and sound engineer was among the hires announced in May 2026.
Release Estimates
The official release date has stayed TBA on the store page and in the press kit. The developers' estimates have moved back several times:
When stated | Estimate |
|---|---|
June 2023 | A full release was likely 1.5 to 2 years away |
January 2025 | Release date still to be determined |
March 2025 | Late 2026 to 2027 described as the more accurate estimate |
FAQ, last edited March 2026 | Late 2027 or 2028 |
March 22, 2026 | Late 2028 called a cautious estimate, with the team hoping for late 2027 |
Platform plans have firmed up over the same period. In June 2023 the developers said Windows and Linux would be supported at launch and that macOS might follow later; the FAQ now says the game will launch with full Linux and macOS support. A GOG version is planned, likely alongside the Steam release according to a June 2023 reply, and the press kit lists GOG. In September 2025 the developers called a mobile port unlikely. Early Access has not been ruled out, but in March 2026 they said they would prefer a proper 1.0 launch.
As of January 2026 the team had no official Discord server of its own and said it would likely create one later in the year. For news, the developers point followers to their X account and the official YouTube channel.