izigame.me

Dust is overall an above mediocre game, but it still manages to have enough to be worthwhile. The fact that almost the entirety of this game was made by one person makes it very impressive despite its many flaws.
The game is about you, Dust, your sword guardian Ahrah, and your companion Fidget going across different areas to explore and fight an onslaught of enemies. It's structured like a Metroidvania, you get to travel across areas split by rooms shown on a map while getting upgrades that allow you to progress further and back travel to discover new secrets. Instead of say, just dropping you off on your own in each area and having you wander around trying to figure out what to do, the game always tells you your objective and focuses more on combat and solving a few platforming challenges or puzzles. Never once did I feel lost and the game streamlines exploring prior areas again by showing what rooms still have treasure to be found on your map. The game has a focus on RPG aspects with you being able to find, craft or buy many items, use consumables and level up to increase your stats. It's fairly typical RPG business.
Combat in this game would be great if It had just a little more depth to it and if the balancing was tweaked to be more consistent. Your main character wields a sword that does your typical slashing attacks. You can mix up the two combat buttons to do different combos, doing things such as knocking your enemies away or sending them up in the air. You also have access to wind powers. You can use wind midair to soar towards your enemies or on the ground to draw them near. What makes this special is that Fidget can send out different types of projectiles that get amplified when you use your wind powers to deal screen covering attacks. This is all well and good, but it would've been better to have more combos with your sword to use throughout the game to vary up the combat.
The problem that comes with combat is the balancing. I played the game on tough to challenge myself, but after just a tiny bit of battling through areas or after coming back from leveling up while back tracking, all of the combat became button mashing and hacking and slashing enemies because they became so weak compared to me. This wasn't helped when I switched to hardcore mode, because that would just mean that I'd be brought down to low health by a single attack. Also, the enemies don't get very creative, with the most unique ones being ones you have to parry to make vulnerable or the ones that can only be damaged with Fidget's magic. The final area of the game also just reuses the enemies of the previous area which is a bit underwhelming. The bosses too suffer from this. Weirdly, the first, third, and final bosses were super easy with me just having to spam attacking them to win. The first boss especially seemingly didn't even manage to land a single attack on me before I defeated it in about 20 seconds. The balancing is very wack, perhaps not taking into account how much you can strengthen yourself via leveling up while backtracking or acquiring powerful items. It still was quite satisfying to mow down enemies and the spikes in difficulty were engaging still. It could become a tad tedious for some while backtracking though since a room's enemies respawn the second you enter another room.
The story of this game is good. It's about the backstory of Dust and the chapters are all you going through the remains/results of the events from the past. Chapter 2 and 3 are the highlights of the game for me due to their locations and the stories they contain. The worldbuilding itself is fine, nothing so different than many other fantasy stories. Dust and Fidget are very entertaining characters and there are a plethora of other interesting ones throughout the story. This game tries to have a serious tone most of the time with many dark events in the past and tragedy occurring in every chapter. This sorta conflicts with some of the more out-there dialogue, mostly with what Fidget says sometimes. She says a lot of jokes, goes on rambles and breaks the 4th wall quite a bit by mentioning mashing buttons or saving the game ( outside of any tutorial too ). She's still a real nice character however and I can't be mad at her because I enjoy these more whimsical moments. The main villain is both a show and a tell antagonist. We see him in multiple cutscenes but only confront him at the end of the game. He is said to have done many horrible things and that is reflected in the environments and people you come across. Not a bad way to have a villain be I'd say.
The visuals of this game are amazing. I've heard that the developer who made this game was mainly an artist and it really shows. Each area is wonderfully crafted with beautiful art and the huds are also quite nicely nicely presented. There are a few animated cutscenes here and there that look pretty cool, though not perfectly animated. I'm not the biggest fan of some of the character designs though, particular with Dust when he has no hat and with how non intimidating the antagonist looks. Also, it's a bit weird how the villain's soldiers just- for some reason have 3D models in dialogue instead of being drawn like everybody else.
The music of this game is also quite beautiful. The ost as a whole is quite sentimental with a focus on orchestral instruments. Apparently according to old forum messages, they changed it to this from the original more pumped up direction they were going with before. These original tracks are in the soundtrack listed as "vintage" ones, and honestly, I wish they kept this direction because I feel it's overall better. They would've fit the more action focused gameplay for sure. What we have in the final game is still great though. My favorite tracks would have to be The Land of Remembrance, Cirromon caverns and Vintage Blackmoor Mountains.
This game is in small ways unpolished. I must point out how the voiceacting isn't perfect. There are quite a bit of line reads that don't fit the tone or annunciation perfectly. Sometimes it sounds like the actors are saying everything in one breath and it comes out odd. Some lines sound awkward being at the end of a dialogue and should be separated for a better flow in conversations. The audio balancing when animated cutscenes start is bad because they are much louder compared to the rest of the game, meaning that they basically jumpscare you when they appear. Fidget herself is also noticeably louder than the other characters throughout the game for some reason. Something that just doesn't feel right is that, after dodging towards a direction, you're unable to perform a double jump if you jump while still in your "recovery animation" after dashing. This is frustrating if you dodge to land onto a platform and intend to double jump but instead are unable to and fall down. For actual glitches, when the minimap reloads, it resets and shows as if you haven't collected treasure which may confuse you but it goes away once you open the map again. A singular spot in the Blackmoor Mountains in the room with some very close to the ground moving platforms allows you to go through the floor by dropping down from a platform. Thankfully this isn't a softlock as you fall down into the room below you.
This feels more so like an attempt by the developer to tell a story and show off a world rather than to make an amazing game. It isn't super in-depth gameplay wise and isn't fleshed out fully content wise. Still, I think it has a lot of good and is something that's worth your time. If you like games like this and just want to experience what it has to offer, then there isn't anything truly bad about it that will make you angry or suffer. It's also an excellent deal when it goes on sale for $4 so perhaps consider getting it when it's available then.