Games where you play the role of a deity will make people recall memories of classics such as Black & White. Highly influenced by aboriginal and tribal details, From Dust comes to the Xbox 360 with a concept quite original.
With magnificent scenarios that remind us of why Mother Nature has been feared and revered by many cultures. Ubisoft gives us a very pleasant game.
Expand the life across the land
Story
Simple yet delightful, in the middle of the ocean in a small piece of land the aborigines in search of the memories of the tribe, create “The Breath”, a mystical deity to help them in their journey through the world. “The breath” helps them to discover new lands and recover the memories of the ancients to guide them to their final destination.
Although it might seem like the typical management game, this is not a game where you manage tasks for the people of the tribe, or in which you build houses for them. Part of the goal includes building villages yes, once you find a totem they will travel there and build a village.
But building villages is not the objective in the game. After all the secondary objectives like building villages and finding memories has been completed you have to guide your people to sanctuary guiding them to strange new lands in search of the ancients.
With the help of “The Breath” you can move huge amounts of sand, molten lava or water which you use to help the tribe. Whether creating dams made of hot lava to divert rivers, bridges made of sand or expand the vegetation where only barren rock existed before or protect the village from terrible tsunamis.
And how do you solve the challenges you encounter in every level leaves alot of freedom to the player to decide and make their own strategies.
The game does not have a lot of music, with the exception of tribal music you hear when a tsunami is getting closer. Reminds me a lot like the kind of music australian aboriginals play. i’m sure i’m not mistaken to think the designers had them in mind when they worked the concept for this game.
Find a totem and guide your men to build a village
Campaign
The campaign, with 13 unique levels where you must face and master the powers of nature to overcome the different challenges. From the most basic to the most difficult challenges in the last levels, the campaign, is varied and quite entertaining.
Challenges
This game mode offers more than 37 different challenges, need more? If you finished campaign mode and want more, these challenges are what you crave for! In some of these challenges “The Breath” will be able to use only one the powers such as lava or water (to name a few) in which the tribes must survive natural disasters or that a certain number of Aboriginal reach a totem fighting against the elements to build a new village, some are easy and some not so.
Use The Breath to move water, lava or sand
Downsides
Entertainment as it is From Dust feels somewhat short, the first time not knowing much about the level you play you can take some time to complete the challenge but once you finished the game and go for a second run of the campaign, you can see the game ends quite fast as you use the learned strategies for each level.
No co-op at all, and although it would have been nice to have for challenge mode specially, it’s not really needed that much and is nothing to miss.
Extras
The game includes an award for our avatar, a tribal mask that looks great! Unfortunately it is the only award for your avatar on the game.
A tsunami it's coming, the ancient powers protect us
Overall
From Dust offers a different concept that looks and feels fantastic, a game that tells us much about the delicate balance of our world in a unique way. Graphics are good, controls and gameplay aren’t bad either. Available for 1200 Microsoft Points, a good game with a unique style everyone should try.
We give the game 8.5 out of 10
~Mario
