Duskers

 PC
Metascore
83

Generally favorable reviews - based on 10 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 10
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 10
  3. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. Ars Technica
    Jun 3, 2016
    The best kinds of games are the ones that hook you into that "just one more mission!" mental feedback loop, and Duskers hits that for me and hits it HARD.
  2. Rock, Paper, Shotgun
    May 23, 2016
    My point is: while all this is happening, it feels fantastic. Fantastic and frenetic.
  3. Wired
    May 25, 2016
    The smartest design choice in Duskers is also the one most likely to put players off, initially: the command-line interface.

Awards & Rankings

48
#48 Best PC Game of 2016

User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
6.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 22 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 22
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 22
  3. Negative: 7 out of 22
  1. Skulb
    Nov 9, 2016
    8
    One of the year's best indie releases, Duskers blends Paradroid (google it) with the static cam feeds from Aliens before making you control itOne of the year's best indie releases, Duskers blends Paradroid (google it) with the static cam feeds from Aliens before making you control it all with keyboard commands. It also avoids narrating anything, which sets you up for claustrophobic exploration of derelict space ship after derelict space ship as you attempt to piece together what's going on by yourself. To do this you must use, arm and upgrade drones. You start with just three, but more can be salvaged as you go.
    Aliens are almost all either dangerous or terrifying, and are really best avoided altogether, unless you have some sort of plan for how to kill them. Fortunately there is a robust array of drone upgrades that makes this a little easier. You can use Stealth to sneak up close to an alien so you can shoot it with Turret. Or you can Scan rooms from a distance, activate stationary onboard turrets and open doors to funnel scanned aliens towards them. Or you can simply open an airlock to flush aliens into space. Make one mistake though and you're dead. It's very nerve-wracking. There are also Mines, Interfaces for logging onto ship computers, Gather modifications for scavenging ships and Generator mods, needed to access power grids so you can open doors. Not everything is immediately useful, and experimentation is recommended with new mods.
    In addition to the aliens there are also many environmental threats. Radiation from space can compromise segments of a space ship, and, given time, an entire spaceship can be flooded with it. There are highly annoying leaks from the hull, which will threaten any stationary drones so you're never safe. There are also meteor strikes, although these are rare early in the game. Luckily you can get in your little docking vehicle and leave at any time. Of course then you won't get all the fuel and other resources you desperately need, and will have to hope for better luck on the next derelict. And finally the derelicts can be commandeered as well, effectively replacing your active ship between the missions. This gives various effects, but mainly affects how many mods the actual ship can have. For example commandeering a military ship often lets you fire weapons anywhere on a derelict you're exploring, while other ships will let you scan without using your drones or even power parts of a derelict power grid from the ship, leaving your generator drone free to do something else.

    Duskers can be somewhat frustrating at first. Each drone mod requires a bit of practice before you get the timing down. And while you're getting used to new things you will die. Over and over again. And because the game generates random ships every time, it never really gets predictable. The best tip is to abandon ship while you still can. Call me a coward, but fleeing at the first sign of trouble is the only reason I got anywhere in this game. I highly recommend being a coward. I also recommend Duskers. It's atmospheric , demanding and rewarding.    … Full Review »
  2. Cinetyk
    Jun 18, 2016
    6
    In short:
    - Great, tense, claustrophobic, post-apocalyptic “lost in space” atmosphere with well realized mechanics, design, minimalistic    In short:
    - Great, tense, claustrophobic, post-apocalyptic “lost in space” atmosphere with well realized mechanics, design, minimalistic aesthetic and visual effects
    - Use an array of drones, systems and upgrades/weapons to explore derelict vessels across star systems
    - Salvage precious resources in order to survive
    - Real space features and hazards such as asteroid collisions, radiation, depressurization, leaks, etc.
    - Drone tank controls plus command line controls make it realistic and interesting, despite sometimes tense and tricky to use
    - Different drone upgrades provide lots of different approaches, and you’ll need to adapt make do with what you have
    - Manage repairs and upgrades on drones and systems as they deteriorate
    - Explorable ships/vessels consist of collection of random blocks and are visually mostly all the same with not much contents or detail
    - Progression is very slow, so it gets repetitive and not very rewarding
    - Uncovering of what is going on is also slow and done in short pieces of text    … Full Review »
  3. Alphahel1x
    Jun 27, 2019
    4
    Has the same "roguelike" elements as FTL, so it shares some of FTL's virtues. (Also reminds me of the Amiga game Quadralien.)

    However, once    Has the same "roguelike" elements as FTL, so it shares some of FTL's virtues. (Also reminds me of the Amiga game Quadralien.)

    However, once you get past the wonderfully grim aesthetics and bleak atmosphere, there's no escaping the fact that the core gameplay feels like a tedious logic puzzle where the penalty for the tiniest mistake is instadeath. Success boils down to being patient and methodical, resisting boredom and the temptation to take risks or be greedy. Once you've learned the ropes, the game starts throwing time pressure at you and asking you to solve the puzzle with different sets of tools, but it remains tedious.

    Duskers would be intolerably unforgiving were it not for the following crude mitigation: if things are going south then rather than restarting the whole game, you can simply abandon the mission. Your losses are written off and the only punishment is that you're not allowed to retry that mission, which impacts your progress but doesn't normally end the game.

    There are occasions when quick thinking in a crisis makes the difference between life and death, and this is where the game ought to shine. But it doesn't quite work because there are no stakes: the ability to abandon the mission makes the difference between "moderate losses" and "catastrophic failure" irrelevant most of the time.

    Then we have a few problems in the execution:

    * The drones get stuck a bit too easily when pathing, and the corridors are too narrow.

    * The semantics of your commands are a bit unintuitive e.g. if you want drone 1 to go to room r3 through door d2, then close the door behind it then you might think you could write "navigate 1 r3; d2" but no, that causes d2 to close immediately, blocking drone 1. In fact there is no way to queue up a door closure after another operation.

    * There are some bugs: e.g. last time when I tried to swap upgrades between drones 1 and 4 it showed me drones 1 and 3 instead (even though drone 3 was in a different room). For me, this was the final straw.

    * The rules of travelling between systems and galaxies are unintuitive and inconsistent in some ways. The subtleties are left to the user to figure out.

    * One of the enemies seems to be enormously more deadly and less predictable than any of the others. Yet it appears just as frequently (relative to the other enemies) at the beginning as midway through the game. Feels a bit imbalanced.    … Full Review »
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