From Dust to Dust

Nice tech demo, where is the game?

Having completed some significant work, I treated myself to a game that I wanted to try out for a long time, From Dust. It basically all sttlarted with the first "Dev Diary" video. A beautiful landscape molded in real time with realtime simulation of water, fire and vegetation. A real technology gem.

I heard a lot of the game and few reviews where positive. But god games where never very popular, so in this case reviews are not the gold standard. I got the game via steam and tried it out.

The first thing that greeted me was the ubisoft launcher, that required me to create an account. Really, an account for a pure single player game?! Nice annoying DRM scheme, you know Steam has one and it works without annoying you. Next the launcher went through the hoops of updating the game 3 times. Seriously?! Why did they not put the latest version of the game on steam?! What did I need to download then anyway?! Once I got over these DRM induced annoyances I was able to play the game.

The game puts you in the position of "the breath", a godly presence that can scoop up sand, water and lava. It is your task to colonise an area by sending people to villages marked by totem poles. Each village will grand you a specific special power, such as jellyfying water, so you can pull a moses stunt.

The game is beautiful and the simulation is crisp. The only visual snatch are the simulation boundaries. They put some effort into hiding them, but they still are quite noticeable.

But all in all, the game is a terrain editor on steroids. Although interesting and sometimes challenging the game is not really fun. It is nice to see that such technology works, but this is not really a game, more a tech demo. On the other hand I paid 15 EUR for it, you can't really complain.