Duskers

About Duskers

Duskers is a roguelike by Misfits Attic, the small studio behind A Virus Named TOM, released on May 18, 2016 for Windows, Mac and Linux, with funding from Indie Fund. The maker sums it up as The Road meets the first Alien film: a roguelike with dungeon crawling and real-time strategy, set in survival horror. It won Best Other Game at Intel Level Up 2016.

You are a drone operator in a universe that has somehow become a giant graveyard. Your only eyes and ears are old, gritty technology: you hear through a remote microphone, see what each drone sees, and issue orders by typing into a command line at your ship's terminal. Motion sensors tell you something is out there, but not what. You jump from derelict to derelict, salvaging scrap, fuel, new drones and upgrades, and read the ship logs that survive to piece together what happened.

Each run starts with three drones and a random handful of upgrades. A schematic view shows the airlock, your drones and the rooms and doors you have found, but threats only appear on it once a sensor or the motion detector picks them up, so you keep switching between the map and each drone's own view. You scan rooms, drop sensors, power doors with a generator and, when nothing else is left, open a door and hope. Most ships carry some kind of infestation, and learning what each one does and how to deal with it is much of the game.

The dread comes from how little you can see and how much can go wrong. Weapons are rare, so you might have to explore a military outpost with only a motion sensor and a lure. Sensors break, lures run out and camera feeds fail, so a favourite strategy cannot be relied on for long. The universe is procedurally generated, and when you die you lose everything, though the logs you have recovered stay with you.

Against other space horror, Duskers puts no character on screen at all: you play the operator at the keyboard, and GameSpot found that this made each run feel personal and tense. Its review called it punishingly difficult at first and reliant on patience and experiment. It suits players who like slow, thoughtful sci-fi horror and do not mind learning to type their way out of trouble.

How to play Duskers

1. Buy it on Steam, GOG or the Humble Store for Windows, Mac or Linux.
2. Pick a derelict on the galaxy map, choose which drones and upgrades to bring, and board through the airlock.
3. Type commands at the console, such as navigate 1 r6 to send drone 1 to room 6, or open a door by its number; you can also steer a drone directly.
4. Watch the motion sensor and use lures, doors and turrets to keep creatures away from your drones.
5. Salvage scrap, fuel and upgrades, tow lost drones back through the airlock, repair worn parts, then jump to the next ship.

Tips

• Scan and probe rooms before you send a drone in; you cannot fight much of what you find.
• Doors are your best defence: close them to trap or block what moves.
• Check the door number before you press Enter; opening the wrong door onto a known infestation is a common way to lose a drone.
• Turn on stealth before opening a door to a room you have not scanned, if a drone carries it.
• Keep an eye on fuel and drone wear, since running out ends a run as surely as a creature.
• Read the ship logs; they are how the story of the empty universe is told, and they carry over after you die.

Questions