Dustforce

[Sean]

Behold, the most eco-friendly indie game ever made.

Dustforce is an extremely fluid, fast-paced janitorial simulator/platformer with an emphasis on speedrunning and self-improvement. Yes, by sweeping up a storm with parkour-style aerobics, you too can find your own sense of worth and destiny, and improve your relations with others and change the world... or you can just get better at the game with each play session, which Dustforce is very good at encouraging the player.

The goal is to clean up every speck of dust while keeping track of your combo meter. Do both, and you'll score the best grade and earn a key to unlock a more difficult level. There are sixteen levels per difficulty - four for each area, and you can play them in just about any order you wish. The controls are very slick and responsive, and finding ways to get faster and faster at each level is part of the fun. Cheap shots are few and far apart, and the game's difficulty does cater to players of all types. People seeking casual play can build enough skill to at least unlock all of the levels, while the more hardcore ones will definitely try SS ranking the gold levels in order to play the super secret, extremely arduous final stage.

This game is simply fantastic, and everything about it is a labor of love. The visuals are soft, colorful, and inviting, and the soundtrack is goddamned beautiful. Best of all, the dev. team are being pretty awesome by offering all future DLC for no extra charge - among the added content will be a level editor and of course, additional levels.

And now that I'm done trying to sell the game to you, here are my personal thoughts (that are not covered by the above): this is the one of the most fun games I have played in a long time. The large number of levels means that there's always a lot to replay; I've already clocked over a dozen hours into it and I'm far from bored. My only gripe is that yes, a couple of the most difficult levels can be way too difficult. They provide a great challenge for those who can dig it, but there are two stages in particular that I've just plain given up on for now (Hideout is one of them, go look it up on YouTube to see what I mean), mainly because they're designed in a way that requires ultra-precision platforming, which, and let's face it, Dustforce isn't the kind of game for. Dustforce emphasizes flow and buttery movement, and that's what 98% of the game does extremely well.

At the moment, the game is on Steam for the PC. A Mac version is in development and will be coming out pretty soon. You can also check out the Dustforce soundtrack on Bandcamp, which I recommending giving a listen.

So yeah, anybody else playing this? Honestly, this is one of the few Steam games I'd totally recommend buying at the full price. If you're not quite sold on it yet, then the trailers and videos should do a good job showing you just what this game is all about.

EDIT: I forgot to link to a trailer. Bad me! Here's one of them.

[LATER BUDDY]

Yeah, I've been wanting this pretty hard ever since you showed it to me, XD. Just about everything is extremely appealing, but yeah, I'm bound to a Mac, so I have to wait. While it hasn't gotten my full attention of hype recently, I'm pretty sure I'll be sucked into it as soon as it hits my OS.

[Blacklightning]

Dustforce is an extremely fluid, fast-paced janitorial simulator/platformer

What.

with an emphasis on speedrunning

What?

parkour-style aerobics

WHAT!?

Either these guys have some really, really good drugs, or are very, very japanese. Who the fuck would come up with something so inexplicably random?

I want it.

[Conando]

The concept of this game is so outlandish that it's awesome. I'll probably get this at some point because, I love me some wall jumping platforming.

[KrazyBean]

TotalBiscuit did a WTF is... episode on this game, that's how I found out about it.

It looks awesome!

[Sean]

Okay, so

Sure, I'll take 18th best in the world.

Fuck Hideout. I'd rant more, but I think I'll save that for the 30 days topic! Here's a video of the currently #1 guy.

[Sean]

Dustforce is released on Mac and finally has a level editor. Not only that, but it's 50% off right now.

Unfortunately there are some problems getting it to run on Mac, and disabling the intro is broken for PC users, so when you load up the game, don't check the box. So you could get it now and wait for the devs to fix it (they're diligent about fixing this stuff), or you could pass until the fix is released. I recommend getting it now if you have any interest in playing this, though.

[Swiss]

Yeah, I picked this up yesterday and I'm loving it so far. Exactly what I want from a game!

Also, that soundtrack is just...lush.

[Carbo]

Finally, an opportunity for me to buy this thing with my own money.

[Sean]

A patch was released just now to fix the intro bug. Now you PC users have absolutely no reason not to get it.

Here's some media that I forgot to include in my last post.

(You can get this lovely music here.)

The level editor in action:

The official site for Dustforce custom maps can be found here. And yes, there is already a remake of world 1-1 from SMB1. And it's a bit harder than you'd think it would be.

[LATER BUDDY]

Btw, for anyone with a Mac trying this, most likely it'll send you to a black screen where you can hear the music and control things (you can hear sfx when you hit arrow keys anyways). The steam menus and junk still work snazzy, but it won't let you escape unless you do Command+Option+Esc. Easy enough, but I didn't know that combo (was trying just Esc and junk like normal and it doesn't work).

Sucks that it's unplayable as soon as it hits. I tried yesterday and it was this problem, and I heard it just updated recently, but the problem still persists.

[turbojet]

So I wanted to join in and see what it was about. So I finally activated my Steam account that I received from Portal 2, downloaded it, and...it won't open.

[Cola]

I've been meaning to try this one out ever since my friend told me about it.

No money though.

DARN.

[turbojet]

The Steam launch issue has been fixed. Will play it more later. Kind of tricky at first...

[Komodin]

After playing this game for over an hour now, I can safely say that it's pretty darn awesome. I'm being completely honest when I say that it's the best $5 game I've ever bought. Playing it with a keyboard is kind of a pain, though; once I've set up the controls for my Xbox controller, however, I've really grown to appreciate this great game.

[turbojet]

My first PC game...

Note to self: Get a controller

[MegasonicZX]

Huge bump for this topic but for anybody who doesn't know, this game is coming out on systems this month, so for anyone who hasn't got it on their PC or just can't get it on PC, you don't have to worry cause its coming out soon.

 

[turbojet]

As excited as I am that Dustforce is coming out on consoles and getting the attention it deserves, how in the hell can Capcom begin to want to publish this and then not release a Megaman game, the same audience that Dustforce is tailored to?

[MegasonicZX]

As excited as I am that Dustforce is coming out on consoles and getting the attention it deserves, how in the hell can Capcom begin to want to publish this and then not release a Megaman game, the same audience that Dustforce is tailored to?

It might be because they're releasing strider this year and this game is kind of ninja-ish in a way so this coming out along with strider does make since even though strider doesn't come out til later.

[MegasonicZX]

Sorry for the double post but the PS vita version of the game has been officially designated as Feb 4th, the console release dates have yet to be revealed but maybe next week is my estimate (and if lucky maybe this one) since those would correlate with their promise of a january release.

 

Here is the link: http://www.capcom-unity.com/xantista/blog/2014/01/20/dustforce-ps-vita-release-date-announced-with-numerous-ways-to-save-thanks-to-ps-play

[MegasonicZX]

Well if anybody has been paying attention to this, the game will be out in two days on vita (and hopefully on consoles) so anybody else besides me excited? *crickets chirp*

[turbojet]

I have been thinking about getting this for the PS3. I just wanted to see how I will do with an actual controller in my hands instead of just keys on the keyboard.

[MegasonicZX]

I hope that they keep the level editor, it looks like it'd give lots of replay value though I could understand if they don't too since we're getting 100 levels of free dlc after the game releases.

[MegasonicZX]

In celebration of dustforce coming out tomorrow, I (and the guys at capcom) present to you the dustforce mini vac!

 

[MegasonicZX]

Sorry for the triple post but dustforce is now officially out on both PS3 and Vita, not really sure about the 360 though.