This game is amazing. So tense. So strategic. 10/10.

An interesting deep space strategy game, though a bit pricey for $20 in my opinion. You control a team of up to four drones with a variety of upgrades into ships, space stations, and outposts. You have to salvage these places in order to repair/upgrade your drones as well as repair/upgrade/refuel your ship. Only problem is that there are always enemies on board that you need to take care of.

The above doesn’t sound too hard in principle until you take into account that you almost exclusively control your drones through a command line, typing in commands. If you are playing this game you might as well just unplug your mouse because you can’t use it. You have to be carful about what you type and you need to be accurate because a simple typo can destroy all of your drones. That is why things should be taken slow and carful, because if you make a mistake and one of your drones is in trouble panic will make it even harder to type.

If you like enjoying yourself please, take all the difficulty settings and turn them to zero. By large request the developers eventually added difficulty settings as before ‘normal mode’ meant perma-death, if you make a mistake you either have to cut your losses or restart from scratch. Even on easy mode I’ve never had enough resources to waste on anything. Since the universes, galaxies, and systems you explore are procedurally generated, you are always at the mercy of RN-jesus.

I enjoy the game a bit, though I play it in bursts because it tends to get tedious, which is why I recommend you wait for a sale.

So. I tried this game despite some of the negative reviews and I think you should give it a shot if you have the money for it and you want a unique experience, and definitely try it if you like Aliens and Lo-Fi Sci-Fi


Like Most rogue-lites its rather punishing and you should be very careful when investigating rooms

The story is very slowly revealed through exploring new ships and getting upgrades to scan rooms, capture specimins and access space bases and quarentined areas.

The ability to make shortcuts for commands is really handy and helps when you need to type in a 3 word command in about half a second. Be warned that some of the hazards such as radiation leaks and the monsters suddenly deciding to break down a door into a safe room can easily screw you over. 21 hours in, I still have not completeed the story, but I'm getting much closer, as the story progress is culmulative. I'm not sure if there is an "end game" yet but the story continues to unfold.

Pros:
Good atmosphere
Solid controls
Interesting if convoluted story
Challenging
Fun way to increase typing speed
Command line interface and keyboard only controls add greatly to atmosphere
Extremely adjustable difficulty for those having a tough time
Fantastic help menu and help funciton

Cons:
Some hazards are a bit unfair (but you can turn individual hazards off and have a lot of difficulty options which is good)
If you quit a mission partway through, then you go back to the part just before then, but you now can no longer access the ship (I understand why this is a feature, so you can't prepare ahead of time, but why not just generate a new ship instead?)
Seems excessively punishing if you lose your drone with tow and you don't have any scrap left.



Even with the excessively punishing gameplay at times, it can be avoided by playing carefully.





Think ahead before you do things, have the commands to close the door ready when you enter a room, and don't worry about getting ALL of the scrap. getting a drone and 3 pieces of scrap is more than enough.

At the very least, if you like rogue-lites and Lo-fi Sci-fi then you should try this game.

This game is mindblowing. While looking pretty simple, it will force tension on you. It's creepy atmossphere, the stress of malfuncioning modules and the run for supplies is intense a.f. If you like a mixture of stress and enjoyment, that is the game for you.

What an absolutely pheomenal game. This is a game that I have a hard time pulling myself away from. It is absolutely brutal in it's absolute simplicity. A well crafted blend of understanding when you can take your time, or race against impending failure. I thoroughly love the concept of puting my mouse down and simply using my keyboard. Lean back, relax, and type away. However there is a catch. A glaring one at that. Once your Drones start getting attacked, it's a race to figure out how and why...and to juggle in your mind is it best to manually navigate them? Or is it best to tell them to navigate 1 r3?

The brutal part in the simplicity of the game is that it does not warn you about your actions. It warns you to enviromental happenings, but it doesn't ask you if you are sure you want to do a specific action.

For example: on one starbase I was trying to rescue my drones from a room with Airlock 3. My ship was at Airlock 1 so the very simple command would be: Dock A3. Well in my mind I typed it coorectly, but somehow when I reviewed the aftermath I had typed: Dock; A3. I sat their stunned as what I had in advertently done was have a brief explanation of how to use the dock command, and airlock 3 opened. Poof, there went my 1 and 3 drones into the emptiness of space. No rescue. No spares to make up for it. Just gone. I was crushed. Reset, and go again.

This game is such a marvelous treat. I have gone from extreme highs, to the depths of low in a matter of one derelict. It is absolutely and entirely amazing and I would be doing this game an injustice if I gave it less than a 9.5 out of 10. It should be a 10, however my bumbling fingers in the middle of a crisis wants me to blame the game, so here I am...displacing my anger and my own ineptitude of quick thinking and typing on this fantastic game!

This game is the bees-knees, the cat-meow, the chickens-ankles!!! Using exclusively the keyboard as a controller, I've never played any game like it. The immersion is flawless to me; I dont feel like I'm playing a game, it feels exactly like I'm operating these drones to do my bidding so I can continue adventuing through space searching for the best ship, the best mods, and the truth behind the plot. The monsters aboard any infested derelict ship force me to play tactically, and thus involves a great deal of strategy (except when you get unlucky RNG). There are only a few different kinds of monsters I've found, but each type uniquely synergizes with one another, so pairing any two types of monsters on one level drastically changes and/or narrows the types of tactics you can execute and enforce. The variety in upgrades, or mods, offer a playstyle unique/exclusive for each individual mod. The scarcity of mods avaiable forces you to adapt with what you have, and evolved based on what you find. I love the RNG because if mixes things up with such subtleness that you'll never play the same level twice, but every level is familiar. The only complaint I have about this game is one specific mob, the swarm, and through that, the broken difficulty curve. The only way to deal with this mob is to avoid confrontation entirely and blowing it out an airlock or interfacing a ships defences against it. These buggers will shred you to pieces the moment they notice a drone, even if it's stealthed. With any other mob, you can generally kite them to where you want them to go with stealth: the swarm is the exception because they're fast, and no matter your greatest effort you'll be hard pressed to escape a room and close the door behind you, leaving certain doom safely behind. You'll be able to hear them somewhat in an adjacent room (all mobs have a unique sound que when moving about a room), and this is the only warning you'll ever have before opening a door or validating their pressence with a motion tracker or sensor. Should you brave a confrontation, your only hope of besting them is to gun them down with a turret, forcing you to activate the turret itsself twice. This leads me to inform the reader about my first playthrough- I first began easily enough, and as I advanced the difficulty increased rather naturally. After my first wipe and reset, I noticed the difficulty never reset, so I started with less to work with through the ever scaling difficulty. It got to a point where when I reset again, I literally crossed my fingers that I'd begin with a stealth module or a turret, and if I got neither I would quite literally wipe if I ever had to face these swarms, which at this point in difficulty was every other level (ship/base/etc), and these two modules are perhaps the best, if only way to deal with the swarms manually. I learned on my own that I could reset all local data, and when starting again I found I was back to the beginning, and I was able to keep pace once again with the difficulty scale, making for a far more fair experience. Basically what I'm saying is, the only problem I find in the game is that if you ever reset, you'll have to play even safer, and have to rely on RNG to get the things you NEED to continue venturing and having successful missions. Let me express this feeling through RPG terms. Lets say you start level 1, grind to 20, and die to a boss. If this RPG played in difficulty the same way, you'd start again, level 20, with the same gear as at level 1, and have to face the same boss in the same level 20 area with worse gear than you had before. Should you miraculously attain this feat, you're still 20 levels behind for the rest of the game unless you pick up an item that gives you those missing 20 levels worth of stats. Does this make sense? If so, is it fair that I feel frustrated that unless I have a perfect game, I'm doomed to get shafted by swarms when I have to reset? This can easily be fixed by just setting a base difficulty for the first system after reset, then every level after that system can start gaining difficulty, instead of confiscating all defences then dropping you in the projects. (Essentially like a training ground to allow you to gear up before taking on the universe, instead of jacking your clothes and deporting you to Greenland.) This complaint itsself is probly the only argument I have to say this game is mean, because it's a miniscule issue and the only issue at hand, therefore no one (in my opinion) has any right to call this game bad. Despite this game playing slower than any game I've ever played, it's tense! I found myself holding my breath on a few occassions, knowing the decision I was to make next left everything I'd achieved on the line to try and find success in exploring this one pivitol room. Does this room have baddies? Motion scans are inconclusive. Can I redirect any potential baddies to another room? Impossible, I'd need remote power. Time to hope and pray its not a swarm, because if it is, not just my gatherer is dead, so is my generator drone and there's likely zero chance I'll be able to tow either of them, let alone grab their modules. If this face-check shows me anything other than success, Im down a generator, gather, and at least one other superior module, which takes away the biggest advantage I have on any given level. Even though the graphics are probly considered sub-standard, I feel like this left my imagination to fill in whatever blanks existed, and this is probly what I love most about this game, and why it can get so tense. I almost poo'd myself by mistaking harmless scrap for one of those mobs that jumps on your face and rips out your spine Predator style. Audio ques have made my heart sink faster than seeing a cop in the rear view. I think League of Legends would kick me to the dog house if it ever found out the relationship I'm growing with Duskers, and I think it's worth it, because to me Duskers is certainly one of the best games I've played since the SNES went out of style. Let that sink in for a second. After hearing about this game in a video on youtube, I threw my money at Steam to give it to me, and to be honest this game is the only reason I use Steam. This reviewing is more for the team at Misfits Attic, but I figured they'd probly be more likely see it here. Thank you for all for the hard work put into making this game, and quietly taking the throne of my love over all other hum-drum games being released. I absolutely love this game! I love the rogue elements, I love the 'left-to-the-imagination' type of graphics and I love how I feel like this is the first game of its kind I've ever played, and I already know in my heart of hearts there will never again be a game like Duskers.

This game is absolutely, mind-blowingly AAAAMAAAAZING. AMAZING. Think 'Alien' style retrotech, cmd console keyboard controls, writing your own simple command scripts, creativity, intense pressure. This RPS review says it all: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/05/23/duskers-review/

Absolute 10/10. Stop reading and start buying.

Immensely satisfying strategic experience; a fusion of unique interface with horror and roguelike elements in a bleak, hollow world. It evokes a real sense of dread and determination.

Duskers is one of those games that makes me lose all sense of time.

I can only say I wish there were a bit more obvious progression.

I could call Duskers a top down version of 'IRON HELIX' (from 1993) by spectrum Holobyte.

Pros:
- If you like puzzles, Duskers is worth every penny you pay for it, just like Iron Helix was.
- Easy to learn, hard to master
- If you feel like you're the 'reset' button is your best friend, you are playing the game wrong; reread the manual, think out of the box and try it again.
- Typing skills and a love of retro graphics is desirable, but not a must.
- If you can't type use the aliases, they are not just for show.

Cons: None

This game is a Corker!

The name Duskers is meant to reflect the bleakness of "a tale set at the possible sunset of humanity". The last bit in quotes was written by Misfits Attic when asked on the forums what the name of the game meant and where it came from, and it is all too appropriate.

You feel it every time you hear your ship dock to another wreck.
Every time your drone's mic crackles.
Every groan a ruptured pipe makes.
Every warning that an asteroid is headed your way.
Every notice that a door is being broken through.
Every awful roar that you hear before losing your camera feed.

Every move you make must be calculated.
You can not get sloppy with your drone commands.
One mistake can mean game over.
THIS. GAME. IS. RUTHLESS.

>Duskers 8.5/10