Dustbowl

[H1]When the dust falls, great stories are told...[/H1] Dustbowl appeared silently on Steam a few days ago. No fanfare, no publicity, one moment silence and the next. *poof* It's here. A little slice of retro-apocalypse goodness. The brainchild of two developers, Dustbowl is set after the visitations of an alien race who covered the land in a biochemical dust that quite literally rendered the surface of the planet unlivable. A toxic, barren wasteland (drawing inspiration from the UFO afterlight storyline) where what remains of humanity gathers together in small underground shelters, away from danger, away from the light. Technology has fallen apart, and humanity lives precariously on the cusp of extinction, this is very much the death throes of society, with people still struggling to come to terms with what has happened. Worse, your shelter seems to be suffering a major case of the shakes, prompting the leader of the shelter to call two of the most experienced surface scavengers to...

A very cool little indie game which revealed a sprawling world once reaching the wastelands. Its actually a lot more indepth than the visuals suggest, with a questing system and fairly elaborate range of items to loot. A must for fans of the old school. Quite challenging but thats the way they used to make them! Three mutant thumbs up!!!

This is a first impression. I'll update it as I get further into the game. The game is a weird mixture of King's Quest, Wasteland (bit of Fallout in there too), Metro, etc but does a good job of being its own thing. Combat is simple but works well and actually involves a sense of timing. You can target different parts of the body but unfortunately unlike Fallout you cannot kick a rat in the groin. There's a somewhat Stalker-esque feel to scavenging. There's even a decent crafting system. I don't know what the depth of it is yet but I was able to make some extra survival gear pretty early on. Playing with permadeath on i made it almost an hour in and was killed by a beetle in a subway office complex. I should have turned back but decided to press on knowing what the consequences could be. The game is not easy and so far seems to make you think about what supplies you have and how far you can go with them. There's nothing I haven't seen before, but it's not about the ingredie...

I really want to enjoy this game. This game is basically a different take on Fallout but instead of a turn/grid-based strategy RPG it's more based around point-and-click style wandering and a minigame of a combat system. The game looks great in terms of pixel art. The intro and the characters are interesting. The game is a huge homage to Fallout in my opinion but I Can Not Stand the combat. The Only problem I have with this game and the Only reason I haven't played more than two hours is the combat system. The entirety of combat is just a slow-paced meter minigame where a line slides across a bar and you have to stop the line as close as possible to the center to get a hit in. And enemies will randomly spawn in rooms that you've already gone through so if want to backtrack to another room because you found a fuse for a generator you have to shoot down new enemies. And it's not like you get experience or anything from killing enemies. All you get is some random drops and the Priviledg...

I have a weak spot for new released games that try to look like our beloved classic games. Dustbowl feels like one of those games you can say "I played this a lot when I was a kid". It's like a great 90th game that was never released up until now. Sure some might not enjoy the minimalistic art, animation, combat and survival mechanic, but I did. The story is nice and interesting, it makes you want to play the game until the end. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=624269345 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=621801521 Unlocked all achievements!

If you enjoy old school adventure games I think you can get behind this title. I myself enjoy the retro visual style and throwback interface to older adventure games. The story and writing are ok, nothing spectacular but it’s far from dreadful. The post-apocalyptic setting and story are interesting and different enough from the rest to keep me intrigued on what happens next. The game world and quests are fairly large and so far I have had an abundance of objectives and missions to keep me busy. My biggest complaint is how combat works and plays out. Most if not all encounters are random and combat is turn based. When you enter combat, it randomly (?) decides who has initiative, to attack you simply hit your attack button, a bar will fly across a multicolored slider bar, and you hit the attack button again to stop it. Based on where it stops and lands, it calculates the damage. It’s not horrible, but more often than not it just feels cheap and cheated. Despite the combat, this g...

I didn't expect much from this game to be honest. I'd had my eye on it for a few months and decided to pick it up when it was on sale. Holy crap I fell in love with it the first time I played it. A post-apocalyptic setting with tons of room to explore. I like the art, I like the sound design and I like the story. At first I was put off by the combat mechanics, but I adjusted pretty quickly. Money seems like it's hard to make at first but once you get rolling, you end up not hurting for it anymore. I honestly could have played 10+ more hours in this game and I still wouldn't be tired of it. It also doesn't hold your hand which I really appreciate. This is one of my favorite games that I have played in the past two years. I'd definitely play a sequel.

Short version: I got my time and entertainment out of this game. I liked the story, I liked the combat system well enough: simple, not hard to understand, functional, and I even got very skilled at timing my critical hits. I recommend it for what it is, an enjoyable few hours of story for what I paid ($8.00 if that matters). Long version: I've beaten the game and I can say that I enjoyed the story and the exploration. I do however feel the need to make some things clear. If they can be fixed I think that it will help in the long run. Very minor spoiler chances. [list] [*]Typos- Gonna start small here and, while it may seem petty to point them out, I was very impressed with how few misspellings I found. The only glaring ones were Captain Moore's dialogue. A misspelled 'usually' in the beginning and a 'theres' that should have been a 'there's'. [*]"I have already backache."- This is the message you see when you open a chest that contains items your character will automatically p...

Concept is great, but the encounters in the beginning are far from balanced. Enemies hit with critical hits more than misses, they have armor while you don't, drop almost nothing of use and rob you of more than half your health and with almost no way to heal up. I can understand the prospect of a difficult game, but the risk versus reward for this games combat is awful, and their is almost no chance to avoid or escape it. Edit: I have complete it, and while the difficulty does go down further on, I would like the option to run from fights. Some battles have no rewards and are just a massive waste of resources. Storage quickly becomes a problem too, as only 16 slots does not facilitate enough space for everything you may need. Weight capacity of 35 Kg is not enough if you want a Flamethrower, as .2 Kg of fuel is consumed per use, making both the flamethrower and it's fuel way too heavy for anything practical. The Maching Parts weight is also too high, being a full Kg, meaning that...

Long story short: Really cool retro aesthetic, good atmosphere. Really trash balance in regards to RNG for encounters, loot, and poor combat. It wasn't worth my time, and it's probably not worth yours. My biggest issue is a game that doesn't respect the player's time, and this is one of them. Time well spent is one thing, playing the savescum and slave to RNG to create an artificial sense of "difficulty" is another.