From Dust review

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, XBOX Live

Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier

Publisher: Ubisoft

Genre: God Game/Puzzler

Release Date: 27^th of August 2011

If required to summarise From Dust in one sentence it would be best described as The Sims: Nature Edition. For although at its core it is a God Game, similar to Black & White from a few years back, you are giving far less omnipotence with which to shape your world. Instead you are given almost complete control over the earth, water and even magma that populates the game world and little over the people who worship you as their God.

The game begins with a broken civilisation who have forgotten all the things that once helped to make them great, you play as The Breath a deity of sorts who is tasked with making the world they inhabit hospitable enough for your subjects to thrive again.

The main focus of the game is to erect a series of villages around ancient totems across a number of maps that make up the overall game world. You do this by manipulating the environment around you, if a totem is located across a vast lake you can scoop up large amounts of earth to create a land bridge or simply drain the water and relocate it to the sea. As the game progresses things get trickier, tsunamis become a regular occurrence, trees that spit out fire will begin to crop up near villages and volcano’s will erupt sending hot lava spewing forth burning everything in its path.

To combat this, as you progress you are able to gain additional powers such as the ability to jellify water for a short period of time, which become invaluable for staving off destruction from the relentless onslaught of the tsunamis and the ability to uproot and replant trees that spew water when fire approaches them to prevent your villages from burning to the ground. The world in From Dust is remarkably complex, reacting just as you would expect real life nature to, magma will cool and form rock, rock will eventually erode away and waterfalls will form lakes and rivers if left unchecked. This makes the game particularly challenging in parts, a strategy that served you well on a previous level may not necessarily have the same result on another due to its individual characteristics.

Visually From Dust is beautiful, with the water effects in particular standing out above the rest, but all its components react with each other in a way that is extremely pleasing on the eye.

Verdict.

From Dust is a practically unique experience in gaming combining the God Game genre and Puzzler seamlessly. Couple this with its unusual story and great visuals and what you’re left with is a very, very good game which although becomes frustratingly difficult toward the end really should be played by a great deal of people.

4/5