Hello everyone!
I know, I know, I've said for about a thousand times now that I will be more active on Hive. Only to drop a few posts and disappear until a few months later.
Once again, I am very sorry for doing this. This time, I actually left Hive for a more important reason compared to the other times.
In my last post, I mentioned something about finishing up a few courses I was required to do in university. This was the cause of my absence on Hive this time around. I decided to abandon every other thing that I was doing to focus in school, plus exams were due around the time I made that post so I needed to focus and study.
Quite frankly, I do not want to take any chances of potentially extending my duration in university.
Now enough about that issue, it's time to head back to the main topic of this post - another indie game review.
For this pick, I decided to have a look at a game that is completely off the radar. I realized that I have never ever played a horror game before which is understandable due to how I get jittery a lot of the time. Today is the day I attempt to become a man and play a horror game, at least a somewhat horror game.
I found this game randomly on YouTube called Duskers. After seeing a bit of gameplay on it, I decided that maybe I could try it out.
Duskers is a strategy game with some roguelike and horror elements. Apparently, there was some sort of space apocalypse(?) so you are left with drones which you use to scavenge for resources on derelict space crafts. That is the simplest way that I can describe the game. Using the drones, you then have to explore derelict space ships and scavenge for scraps, fuel and other resources.
(By the way, I think this game has gotten the word "derelict" stuck in my head now.)
The control mechanic is definitely something that you don't find in a lot of video games. For most of the time, you will be using a command line interface to control the drones with various commands for different actions like movement, opening doors around the ship or even using the tools that each drone carries. It is still possible to control the drones using the arrow keys but it is only limited to movement and for one drone at a time.
This game certainly does throw a number of surprises your way. Like radiation could breach into the space ship you're exploring, meteors can strike, the drones' tools could break from repeated use, doors can stop responding for no reason or some drones could go temporarily blind because... why not. A lot of things can randomly occur on each expedition.
Of course it's not going to be just your drones in the spaceship. That would make things too easy. Some spaceships (and by some, I mean all the spaceships you will face after your first few) will have different kinds of enemies within. Combat is one of the things that you should not even be thinking about in this game. The drones are pretty vulnerable to attacks from enemies which could be robots, aliens, slimes and other things. They could even get attacked through vents (No, it's not the Among Us imposter). The main way of dealing with them is by completely avoiding combat.
Although, there are a few ways of killing some of the enemies. if you're lucky enough, a ship may have defensive turrets that you can activate by accessing the ship's terminal to attack the aliens, or a drone of yours may have mines that you can place around. You can even send the enemies into space through airlocks. However, there is a catch - whatever works on them, can and will work on your drones too. So if a defense turret gets activated with an enemy and your own drone in the same room, both of them will get shot.
Entering each room is always like flipping a coin - you'll never know what you may find until you enter, unless one of your drones have motion sensors which can be used to detect enemies in nearby rooms. Even with that benefit, there are times when the motion sensor will not work on certain rooms, leaving you in the dark of what could be lurking there.
I can not count the number of times that this game has made me to feel so tense. I always get so nervous whenever I hear warning beeps in the game or see a red indicator whenever I use a motion sensor. The yellow indicators (Which means that the sensor is indecisive) may probably give me a heart attack one day.
I would say that Duskers is an embodiment of the phrase "risk vs. reward". The game forces you to think carefully before making a move. Things like "How do I avoid this alien infested room?", "What is the safest path that I can take?", "Is it worth it to explore every corner?", "Should I just cut my losses and retreat?" are some of the questions that you will be wondering when playing this game.
Of course, not every ship that you explore will be filled to the brim with scraps. Sometimes, you may even realize that there is nothing to gain and you've just wasted a bunch of fuel and possibly drones to get to that spaceship. A slight mistake may cost a whole lot.
Would I recommend giving Duskers a shot? Definitely yes.
While this game is not entirely a horror game, Duskers has made it clear that if I was playing an actual horror game, my soul may actually leave my body at one point.
