Dust: An Elysian Tail - Just announced for Steam!

[Gunstar Green]

Some character designs are better than others, I agree. To me it has more of an 80's animation style with a very Don Bluth feeling in particular with the kiddy art coupled with a somewhat dark yet still child friendly story.

I can definitely see that being a negative for you and others though since the character design is the blandest part of the otherwise stellar art direction. It would probably bother me more if the characters were static and less emotive during the talking scenes. I was a little unsure until I saw the game in motion.

Also I just discovered who Dean Dodrill is and I can't say I'm surprised. He was the lead artist and animator on the classic PC platformer, Jazz Jackrabbit. He was one of the founding members of Epic Megagames.

[isiolia]

I half wonder if the character portraits for cutscenes are based on the same art for the smaller sprites (do it in vector, scale up/down or something). Just seems to be lacking - shading is meh, no line weight to speak of, and so on. Obviously the artist is talented, but it is a ton of work for one person to do.

[Gamerforlife]

Interesting, I really don't have a problem with the character designs. Frankly, it's just nice to see a game with this kind of art style. So rare these days. I'll admit though, the environments stand out more so than the characters, they are gorgeous. Couple that with all of the onscreen action, and you have a very nice looking game

[Gamerforlife]

It's so goddamn rare for me to find a game these days that doesn't have ANY of my pet peeves. Just every little thing that annoys me about games is NOT in Dust: An Elysian Tail. I just love the shit out of this game. Forget a perfect 10, I give it an 11

[Gunstar Green]

Here's a video with commentary from the developer. Apparently all of the backgrounds were hand painted piece by piece.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/6yg5dFpdWeY

[synbiosfan]

I really enjoyed the trial but I'll wait for a sale. I'd do 800 points but not 1200.

[Gamerforlife]

I really enjoyed the trial but I'll wait for a sale. I'd do 800 points but not 1200.

Nothing wrong with that. In my opinion though, it's worth every single one of those 1200 points. I still haven't beaten the game yet as I'm getting sidetracked looking for hidden treasures, challenge rooms, keys, friends to rescue, hidden map areas to explore, and doing side quests. Like any good metroidvania game though, you can't do some of this stuff until you unlock new abilities or acquire passage to certain areas.

There's also the matter of the thirty achievements amounting to a whopping 400 points. I've yet to see an XBLA game with that many achievement points, at least not a summer of arcade title. One of those achievements will require a playthrough on one of the harder difficulty settings, which I'm looking forward to. I had fun getting the 1,000 hit combo achievement too, and I'm still working on 4 starring all of the challenge rooms.

It's a pretty fleshed out game.

[Gamerforlife]

Just posting a screen shot to show off how beautiful this game is

[lisalover1]

I played the demo and thought it was alright; you can't go wrong with mixing a Beat-Em'-Up with an RPG, but I'm probably going to wait until it's cheaper if I ever do buy it. The voice acting is actually quite excellent, from what I've heard. I thought the little squirrel/fairy thing was going to make my ears bleed, but all the dialogue was handled well.

[Gamerforlife]

I actually beat the game and put my thoughts in the games beaten thread. The final stage and boss fight was epic, and the game has a really good ending. I'm now going through hardcore difficulty to get the last achievement I need. I put in about 23 hours to do and find everything in the game(without the use of faqs or guides), and I still have to run through hardcore difficulty. I think I got my money's worth