[Review] Dustforce

[Lekon]

Dustforce Review

Title: Dustforce
Platform: PC
Developer: Hitbox Team
MSRP: $9.99 via Steam
Editor: James "Lekon" Barry

What's Hot: Controls wonderfully; art and music add a remarkable charm to the game.

What's Not: A few of the later silver/gold levels approach controller/keyboard toss difficulty.

Fresh from the dust/slime/dirt pits comes Dustforce, a game about cleaning, double jumping, ceiling dashing, and dirty maids. Dustforce tasks you with taking a crew of four cleaners through various levels in an attempt to win fame, glory, gold... okay none of those. It does task you to try and get the fastest times, while keeping a combo meter running, and while hitting ever spot of dirt/dust/leaves/goo you can in your trip through a level.

How do the leaves stick to the walls?

Dustforce finds you in a large open world, with several doors hidden throughout. Each door leads to a new level, with some doors locked behind colored locks. Once in a level though, you'll see the timer start, and the combo bar pop up, showing that you had best get to cleaning. The main goal is to reach the end of the level, and defeat any dirty monsters at the end. On the way however you'll have to avoid spikes, dodge monster attacks, run along walls, and that's just the first few levels.

Dustforce controls almost perfectly. A controller is highly recommended, but not required. Your character can double jump, dash (on ground or in mid air) as well as run along walls or ceilings for a short period of time. Running along a set of dirt will automatically clean it up, but you can also use the light or heavy attack buttons to clean up stubborn messes just out of reach, or sometimes on the other side of a wall. Herein lies the trick. Though you can only dash or jump twice before hitting the ground, if at any point you clean something (Either through hitting a wall with some dirt, or knocking some dust off a monster) you can dash or jump one more time. Chaining these jump and clean combos goes from handy to vital as the levels get harder. As a bonus, if you can keep your combo going until the meter is full, you have access to a screen clearing super attack, often the key to finishing off the end of level monsters.

The green makes it go faster

At the end of each stage, you're graded on Completion and Finesse, with the best result being an S in both. This SS rating also grants a key, which will let you unlock one of the doors in the main hub. These locked doors lead to the real challenging levels, ones that will tend to cause quite a few more retries than the normal modes. Luckily, Dustforce has a number of ways to alleviate the usual frustrations with platformers. For one, your character will not die unless they hit a set of spikes or a bottomless pit. If you're hit by an enemy, your combo meter resets, but there is no life bar to worry about. Should you actually die, you are sent back to the nearest checkpoint, and off you go again.

The game itself is a wonder to see in motion. Animation is fluid, smooth, and always seems to be in a frenzy when you have a good run going. Each of the four themes of stages (Lab, Forest, City, and Mansion) have different enemies, dirt types, and backdrops, and each of the four characters have different animation sets to add a bit of unique style to your choices. The music has a unique charm to it, flutes, drums, and happy tones throughout help set an upbeat theme to the game.

Take that, other game reviewers!

Shown above is one of Dustforce's best features. Every game is recorded. At anytime after you've completed a level, you can move over to the scoreboard and simply hit the movie icon next to it, and watch that players entire run through of the mission. This serves those of us who want to show off, as much as those of us who want to figure out just how the heck to S rank a mission. This simple feature helps kill so much frustration from those levels that you just can not figure out. Plus, it gives proof for those who want to show just how awesome their speed runs are.

What really struck me about Dustforce was the amount of fun it was just to move through the game. Sliding down ramps to jump and smack a gargoyle before running up a wall and across a ceiling only to land a super attack and finish a level always felt awesome. There was a ton of challenge in playing Dustforce, but never any real feeling of frustration. Thanks to the Video options, I could always check when I was stuck and see just where I was messing up, instead of having to guess or give up. This is a perfect game for quick little bursts, and I think it will be happily installed on many a laptop.

Cleaning with style

A level editor is planned for sometime after release, and I'm anxious to see what kinds of clever runs people come up with. The game comes with local multi-player, however I was not able to give the multi-player a run, thus it has not been discussed in this review.

Dustforce is a fast paced, artistic, well crafted game. The addition of videos attached to the leader boards will help those who want to shave just a few more seconds off their best speed run, or those who have no idea what they're doing wrong. This is a game that makes you look awesome when you hit it just right, but thanks to the checkpoint system, doesn't punish you for messing up once or twice.


Score: 4.5 out of 5 CoGs


James says, "A game made for the competitive platforming clean freak in all of us."

[Lekon]

As a note, the game will be on sale around 1pm EST, according to Steam and Hitbox Team.

[muddi900]

Do want!

Sorry nothing to add after that.

[Squidbot]

I suspect Mrs Squid may end up with a copy of this. It sounds right up her street.

[Shieldmaiden]

Originally Posted by Squidbot

I suspect Mrs Squid may end up with a copy of this. It sounds right up her street.

So you're saying that your other half likes cleaning?

[Squidbot]

Uh oh. I accidentally sexist.

[Shieldmaiden]

*Le gasp!*

[Ink Asylum]

Glad to hear this ended up good. It'll be on my wishlist.

[Superman's Dead]

This looks awesome.

[Lint of Death]

$10? Hmm. I'll probably get it around the end of the month or so.

[biosc1]

Will get.

Keyboard controls versus controller? (just see if I can play this on my laptop)

[Ravenlock]

Still no buy link on the Steam store, but this has been on my radar for awhile. Will definitely be snagging it when available. Thanks for the review, sir.

[danhoo]

This looks quite cool. Is there, by chance, a Mac version available too?

[crazyD]

Wasn't this originally a flash game or something? I could have sworn that I've already played this.

[kyrieee]

They released a prototype made in GameMaker I think

edit: I bought this game and it's really crashy =/

[Lekon]

Originally Posted by kyrieee

They released a prototype made in GameMaker I think

edit: I bought this game and it's really crashy =/

A couple of people are having crashing issues. Just saw the devs tweet that they found one of the causes and have a patch coming very shortly to fix it.

[MagGnome]

This looks great, and the trailer on Steam sold me. I won't be picking it up right this second, but I added it to my Wishlist. Hooray for indie developers!

[Spigot]

Can this be played with a controller? I'm having the damnedest time keeping all of the keys straight with the way it is on the keyboard. Love the game otherwise though. Beautiful art and really nifty music.

[Lekon]

Originally Posted by Spigot

Can this be played with a controller? I'm having the damnedest time keeping all of the keys straight with the way it is on the keyboard. Love the game otherwise though. Beautiful art and really nifty music.

Just head to options and you can remap any of the keys to a controller. I was using a 360 controller with my review copy.

[Spigot]

Originally Posted by Lekon

Just head to options and you can remap any of the keys to a controller. I was using a 360 controller with my review copy.

Sweet. I'll try this tonight. The layout just doesn't seem intuitive on the KB.