Dustbowl

[h1]Post Apocalypse Retro Style[/h1] I picked Dustbowl up during one of the previous Steam sales as a game that looked interesting and was just a little outside my normal gaming wheelhouse while still sticking with one of my favorite game settings: Earth Post Apocalypse. So, what is Dustbowl and how did my experience with it shake out? Let’s find out. [h1]Story[/h1] The story in Dustbowl is set after an alien invasion wipes out the majority of humanity. The aliens also stripped the Earth of most of its usable resources leaving humanity’s survivors destitute and forced to eke out an existence in underground bunkers, searching for resources in an irradiated, dust filled world. You, the protagonist, are the son of a respected soldier who was asked to come out of retirement in order to investigate the source of earthquakes which suddenly started up and threaten to destroy your underground bunker. He is sent into the Dustbowl, a crater in the middle of this particular area of the world, from which no explorer has ever returned. After he doesn’t return as well, you decide to try and find out exactly where he went so you can find and hopefully help him. In order to gain the necessary surface world experience, you take on various quests for your community and other communities in the area as well. After you build up enough experience and gear, you also head on into the Dustbowl in hopes of both finding your father and also the source of the earthquakes as well. Pretty cool story. It’s not groundbreaking, but it does remain consistent throughout. I encountered one story issue in the game, but it wasn’t notable enough to have a negative impact on my rating. 7.5 out of 10 [h1]Gameplay[/h1] The gameplay in Dustbowl consists of fairly equal parts overland travel, home base meandering, and building/site exploration. Overland travel is handled via top down point and click traveling. Select a spot on the map and your character walks over there. Click on interactive buildings and such and you will enter them. You will also have plenty of random encounters where you will enter a tiny 2-D map. Generally, these are traveling merchants, loot finds, and enemy encounters. You will also encounter some Easter Eggs, most notable among them being something from Doctor Who. You will also encounter radiation outside, and this can become strong enough to cause serious and perpetual damage until you get free of the affected areas. Finally, if you have found or purchased a tent, you can set up a campsite in which you can cook raw food you may have found and rest. Upon entering a building or complex, you switch to 2-D characters in a movie screen type 3-D view. You will be able to click on various items to either pick them up, open them, and read their descriptions. The same method is used when interacting with other people. This is consistent whether exploring buildings or wandering around your home base(s). Some of the objects you will interact with include stoves/campfires to cook food, workbenches to craft items (there are only around 6 or 8 craftable items, so it’s not too overwhelming), merchant stalls, storage lockers, and so on. As far as the actual gameplay, outside of what I mentioned above, Dustbowl has a light survival aspect to it. In addition to monitoring your health, you will also need to keep an eye on your hunger, thirst, and fatigue. These are mediated via food, liquids, and sleep. Of course, what would any post apocalyptic game be without combat? Well, combat in Dustbowl is handled in classic JRPG fashion. Namely, you square off opposite your opponent and use weapons and items during combat to attack and heal. The wrinkle to this is a meter system for attacks. This reminds me of Gladius, an excellent if underappreciated game from days long since past…or the kick and batting meters from various sports games. So basically, you click the attack button and try to time your next click to get the attack in the colored zone. There are two colors, which represent successful attacks and crits. Your opponents’ attacks are handled the same way, only via RNG (so you don’t actually see their meter). You only fight one opponent at a time, although you may fight several in a row depending on the specific battle. What this game does, it does quite well. 8.5 out of 10 [h1]Graphics[/h1] Dustbowl is a game that looks like it came straight out of the mid to late 80’s. This is by design. The old school goodness found within hearkens back to the days where graphics weren’t as prominent of a feature in gaming. It also serves to provide an evocative experience while not intruding upon your ability to focus on the actual gameplay and story. That said, this game looks pretty stunning in both its presentation and utilization of these old pixel graphics. Dustbowl is retro done extremely well. 8 out of 10 [h1]Audio[/h1] The audio in Dustbowl isn’t so much of a prominent feature. You get stock sounds for combat and such, and some really cool background music that changes depending on where you are on the map or in the story progression itself. I can’t say it was truly memorable, but I do remember it providing a bit of heightened drama at certain points of the game. I’d say this warrants a 6.5 out of 10 [h1]Verdict[/h1] Dustbowl isn’t a perfect game and suffers a little bit from using what appears to be GameMakerPro, but despite its rough edges, this is really a well made game and a very fun experience that I enjoyed for some eighteen-ish actual gameplay hours. There are three endings, and you will benefit from timely manual saves, especially once you get to what is obviously closing on the end game. Anyway, I feel this is a one playthrough and retire type game, but a good one nonetheless. I look forward to Pompous Pixel’s next game, which reportedly will be Dustbowl 2, and would recommend giving this one a go to experience it for yourself. [h1]7.6 existential beings judging humanity after devastating world events out of 10 possible. Why a “.6?” Fractured states of mind, obviously![/h1] [code]If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, it would be appreciated. Cheers. https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/[/code]

Dustbowl is a postapocalyptic game driven by RNG mechanics while trying to tell a classical RPG story. The art design is actually quite nice, but the actual mechanics of the exploration, crafting and especially the combat system are severely lackluster, making it a game of chance more often than not. The difficulty curve is high, but the options to develop one's character are severely limited, as is crafting, as is the amount of different enemies. While Dustbowl isn't a complete failure, there are far too many other games doing a far better job at being an indie-survival title than Dustbowl to be able to recommend it.

First and foremost, every quest through Oldman is a mess. The game straight up gives you the wrong directions for the signal repeaters, and I only found Desert Radio by walking the whole world map in a grid pattern, exhausting the map areas where I thought it could plausibly be, and eventually ran into it in a place I could *only* have found by doing that kind of grid search. You won't run into this stuff until about five hours in, but here's what you need to know: -To get to Desert Radio, walk west from Fort Union. You'll pass a lake surrounded by radiation, on the other side is the signal repeater. From there, continue west until you change screens, then walk north. You'll pass two brown dirt roads. At the second one, walk west. Desert Radio is in that area. -After you get back to Oldman, you need to talk to him to finish the quest. Then he'll tell you to talk to Tully. But don't do that. Talk to Oldman *again* despite there being no prompting to do this, and then you'll be able to accept the quest that will let Tully talk to you. Tully is in Fort Union, in the room past the bunks with the sleeping man. Both of these things are unintuitive AF, and again the game straight up gives you the wrong information about Desert Radio, so why am I recommending it despite that? Basically, this is a surprisingly fun demake of Fallout 1 / Stalker / Metro / A Roadside Picnic. It's a point-and-click adventure game meshed with a survival rpg using Atari-era graphics done by what I assume is a one-man team, and by some miracle it is mostly bug-free, atmospheric, and good. It's got some jank to it, and you'll probably mulch your first 30 minutes of gameplay after realizing you screwed everything up and need to start over, but after one restart you'll be fine. In the very beginning, it's easy to use up all your resources and back yourself into a corner, but the further you get the more you're able to make mistakes and recover from them. The game's setting is in the eponymous dustbowl, a radioactive alien-infested wasteland in middle america, and the game does a good job in not mirroring Fallout too closely. The whole setting turns around the aliens, even though actually running into one in the early game is rare, and the whole time I was playing I was genuinely unsure what I was going to encounter next. Combat in Dustbowl is not super complex. You get a little active reload style QTE every time you attack, which determines how much damage you deal, and mostly you just shoot or occasionally spend a consumable grenade against your enemy until they fall down. The game does *not* always keep encounters at your level, and you should be prepared to spend wads of resources on some fights, but glide through others with ease. Unfortunately, many of those wads-of-resources fights give you negligible exp and no items, so running is advised if you stumble into them on the world map, but if you find them in a dungeon, even if you run, they'll stay on their current screen until you've cleared them. For things like beetles (high hp, armor, hit like a tank, cause status ailments), this can really tax your early game if you have bad luck. That said, the game is pretty generous with resources as long as you're exploring and pixel-hunting, so I never felt like the game was being unfair. Overall, if you don't mind a sudden frustration spike when you get to Oldman's quests, and if you liked original Fallout or Wasteland or would be interested in a demake-style wasteland survival rpg, this is a surprisingly meaty game for its current price. On the other hand, if you hate point-and-click adventure games or stuff with slower, more deliberate pacing, stay far away.

Держится на ровне Wasteland по атмосфрности, но есть некоторое количество багов. Игра отлично подойдёт любителям Point n' click и спокойного геймплея. Если вам понравился Fallout 4, то эта игра не для вас

Buggy mess. Long since abandoned dev. Even their domain website is gone. No fixes in sight. No support in sight. No community. Dead game. Massively boring repetitive gameplay. Game includes a movement speed option, but works by increasing the games framerate, so you starve / dehydrate faster. Terrible interface. Ugly even by pixelated graphics standards. No options menu without going through install folder. Clunky and unresponsive. Bugs noted by devs in 2015 remain in 2018, it's almost 2019. Example, early game quest to fetch weapon crate. Picking up early (absolutely possible and highly probable) will cause the heavy item to become stuck in your inventory, because handing in the quest crashes the game. No fix. No autosave feature, combined with dreadful menu system makes for depression. Screen-by-screen gameplay with respawning enemies. They get free hits on you with no chance to avoid, but on the other hand you get showered with so much loot you can just heal through it. Can one hit kill any enemy with any weapon once you learn the click technique (takes five minutes.) Obvious the developer never truly cared about making the game comfortable to play. Even if you like post apocalyptic games, this one sucks. Maybe try Underrail, that game is everything Dustbowl could never be, and more, simply by virtue of being functional and fun. Only good thing is you can't pre-order it, and it's not early access. That's not saying much. Also no microtransactions, loot boxes, or in-app purchases. So yay. Avoid, even on sale.

[h1]DUSTBOWL: A Flawed but Fascinating Genre Mashup[/h1] [url=https://youtu.be/FrA6Rd7hxx8] Check out the full animated analysis for DUSTBOWL on the 2 Headed Hero YouTube channel HERE! [/url] [url=https://heartsandbarrels.com/2018/09/07/dustbowl-in-2018-animated-backlog-quest-analysis/] OR, check out the text version of our video on Hearts and Barrels! [/url] Released on Steam back in 2015 by The Pompous Pixel, Dustbowl is an ambitious adventure RPG heavily influenced by other series of post-apocolyptic games such as Fallout, Metro, Wasteland, and STALKER. Featuring retro stylings, open world exploration, a smattering of simple survival elements, and a fairly hearty amount of character dialog, Dustbowl unapologetically wears its many influences on its sleeve. Gameplay is a mashup of oldschool point-and-click adventuring, looting, exploration, questing, and combat. While some claimed that the gameplay in the initial release tended to be a bit grindy, the devs have diligently improved the game with a series of balance patches, and even added in an experience point system. Dustbowl is unapologetic about its early 90s root influences, which we welcomed, but some of its elements could be seen as problematic. Lacking the modern conveniences of quest markers or even a map system, this game feels right at home with the ancient PC RPG cult classics of the past. Your quest log is sprinkled with tongue in cheek references to other post-apocalyptic titles, but contains only sparse mission details. Therefore, clues must be gleaned from conversations in true oldschool fashion, a detail we really appreciated. A slight amount of pixel hunting is also required for some of the sidequests, which is sometimes compounded by the small screen real estate. Be aware – the game does take a little bit of finagling to get running in fullscreen. A simple set of adjustments within the none-too-obvious game launcher provides an ample amount of modern resolution options. Strangely enough I did also get a couple hitches and even a complete lockup while playing, but these occurrences were rare. Dustbowl started out as somewhat of a hardcore headache, but really grew on me after I figured out how to run it properly and finally got over the early game’s difficulty. This game truly tickles my thinker, and now stands as a pretty solid alternative for those looking to scratch the retro adventure or RPG itch. Definitely worth a solid look for those willing to get past its initial issues.

Might have been a fun retro-RPG if it wasn't for the combat system (basically a mini-QTE) which really jars with the rest of the game style.

I bought this game for $2.50 during one of the steam sales. I don't think it is worth the normal price of $10 but if you can get it on sale, it is a fun little game. There are some issues as described in other reviews. The biggest one being the resolution issue (even in fullscreen, it is still difficult to see things). The poor resolution is because of the artwork which is nice looking for a pixel game. I like how there are pixel items placed in the game to find and pick up, but sometimes you'll encounter pixel art which isn't interactable (ie. a bottle on a shelf) despite the previous room where the exact same art was interactable. These inconsistencies seem few and far between, but it is still annoying when they do appear. The combat system is lackluster and isn't exciting in any way but the game excels in other game mechanics. There is a food/water/rest system that requires you to find food/water (which isn't easy to come by) to maintain a healthy character. Thus you are always considering if you want to buy more food/water or ammo/utility. The story is fine but sometimes feels like a chore (running back and forth between the same locations). The soundtrack is really nice but the sound effects get annoying after a while since characters don't talk. I mute the in-game sound and play the soundtrack in the background using my media player. While I don't see this as occuring, it would be nice if the dev added modding to the game. This game could become really amazing if players could contribute art/mechanics/items/etc to the world. The UI could use some improvement and a map would help a lot, but it isn't needed since the map/rooms aren't too complex to navigate. Overall, I'd give the game a 7/10 for fun/enjoyability. If you enjoy post-apocalyptic stories and pixel art, you'll enjoy this game for about 15 hours.

It's Wasteland or Fallout 1 but with an indie twist. Worth exploring

I really want to like this game. It's interesting and has a good style. But why oh why would you make a story-based game without putting any effort into the writing? It's absolutely littered with bad punctuation and basic grammar errors (they're/there/their, etc.), constantly pulling you out of the experience. I lost count of how many I saw just in the first 10 minutes. It's torture! I don't regret buying it, indie developers should be supported, but damn. It breaks my heart to see such a wasted opportunity.