With the tidal wave of heavy-hitting titles to be released this year, it’s perfectly understandable to be cautious when treading into new gaming territory. But one of the terrains that is often overlooked is the downloadable games that usually cost half the price of full retail releases. Every summer, this area is rich with new and innovative titles. Remember Limbo from last year’s Summer of Arcade on Xbox Live? I still find myself playing every now and then when other games have become stagnant, and paying for a newer game seems unreasonable. This summer is just like the last with numerous titles coming out in the upcoming weeks that cost a fraction of the blockbuster games. But which titles are truly deserving of your money? I’m not going to go through the list but we will talk about one in particular today that you should definitely consider: From Dust.
This is your tribe. Help them unveil secrets of their ancestors to unlock more "breath abilities!"
From Dust is a new and impressive installment in the “god-game” genre. The story follows an ancient tribe in search of their ancestors as they traverse the harshest of terrains and weather conditions this side of a Ronald Emmerich film. Its gameplay is easy to grasp but using your abilities in the manner to get you through levels can prove to be challenging.
When you step into the world of From Dust, the tribe awakens their god, the Breath. AKA, you! Your job as their deity is help them expand their memories and learn the ways of the ancients to manipulate the terrain in order to keep the tribe alive. Eventually you’ll have to deal with strong forces of nature such as active volcanos, tsunamis, earthquakes and brush fires. Game progression is driven by the use of your abilities to erect walls with cooled lava to hold back tsunamis, displace soil to allow the tribes access to areas of interest and ultimately create your own utopia. Allowing the tribes to expand eventually gains them the ability to learn songs that can repel these deadly forces requiring less action from you to keep their vilages up and running.
Each level also grants you specific abilities such as creating soil from nothing, jellify-ing water and even destroying matter entirely. These abilities are paramount in completing levels and progressing the tribe’s memory of their ancestors. For you achievement and trophy hunters, spreading the forrest to 100% on each level gets you one step closer to completing the game. On top of an addictive story mode, there is also a challenge mode. Challenges are timed and just that…challenging; adding hours of gameplay and expanding your knowlege of the many ways you can use your abilities to construct lands of enchanting proportions. Times completed on the challenge levels are posted between you and the community to see who has bragging rights or even to let you know if your method of completion is the best.
Although the game has no official sandbox mode, it’s easy to get hooked on a level and see just how long you can keep the tribes going. Just as fun as it is to expand the world as you see fit, it’s also amusing to see how easy everything you’ve built can be swept away from an active volcano or land erosion from water. I would definitely throw this game into the “puzzle” category. As much as I got caught up in creating, there were some levels I had to restart multiple times in order to not screw myself up so badly from the get go. The ultimate prize, in my opinion, is the final level of the story mode. You literally have an entire level to create as you see fit with the abilities of soil, lava, water and plant life. This is the closest you’ll get to a sandbox experience with this game and believe me it’s just the right dosage.
Describing this game as "Beautiful" doesn't do it justice.
From Dust was definitely on my radar since its 1/4 page article in February’s edition of GI. It’s innovative and addictive gameplay is rewarding in the sense that it is pure creation. If you’ve ever considered video games as a medium for art, then From Dust would completely validate your reasonings. From Dust is available now on XBox Live Arcade for 1200 points and will soon be available to PS3 and PC owners as well.
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