Heaven Dust

About Heaven Dust

Heaven Dust is a small survival horror game by One Gruel Studio, published by indienova. It came out on Steam on 26 February 2020 and on Nintendo Switch the next day, then on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S in March 2021 and on PlayStation 4 in September 2024. Its makers call it a love letter to the classic survival horror games of the 90s, the Resident Evil series above all, and reviewers agree it follows the first Resident Evil very closely: a mansion, green and red herbs, an item box and a hulking boss.

You wake in a mansion that once hid a secret research centre. In 1970 scientists found a new virus in blood samples from a tribe in New Guinea and named it Heaven Dust, hoping it held the secret of immortality. After an accident destroyed the research centre there, the work moved to the USA under a subsidiary company called StarDust, and now the mansion is a maze of zombies and deadly traps. There is nobody to talk to: the emails and diaries you find tell the story and hold the clues.

The big change from its model is the camera. Instead of fixed angles you look down on rounded, chibi-style characters from a high isometric view, in rooms that are still dark and blood-spattered. You carry six items at a time and leave the rest in the item box of the safe rooms, which play a soft piano tune when you enter. You stand still to fire your handgun, and auto-aim lines up the shot. Rooms open to codes from the notes and to stranger puzzles, such as a whistle that calls down a dove. There are several endings, and reaching the good one depends on what you do along the way.

Reviews are mixed. Players on Steam and PlayStation rate it highly, while critics on Metacritic average 55: the puzzles and exploration are praised, while some find it too close a copy of Resident Evil, and the zombies and sound effects too tame to frighten. One reviewer finished it in about four hours, and there are achievements for beating it in under two hours and in under thirty minutes. It suits players who know the old mansion formula and want a short, cheap return to it.

How to play Heaven Dust

1. Explore the mansion room by room from the high top-down view.
2. Pick up keys, ammunition, herbs and items, keeping to six inventory slots and storing the rest in the item box in a safe room.
3. Stop and raise your handgun to shoot zombies, or walk around the ones you can avoid, and watch for deadly traps.
4. Read the emails and diaries you find: they tell what happened to the research centre and hold the codes for doors and computers.
5. Solve the puzzles to open new parts of the mansion and find a way out.

Tips

• Zombies can be hidden from view until you get close; a burst of music and their groans warn you when one is near.
• With only six slots, and the gun and its ammunition taking two of them, plan each trip from the item box so you are not walking back for one item.
• Write down codes and clues as you read them; many doors and computers ask for them later.
• If you want the good ending, remember the dove you call down with the whistle: it has a second use later in the game.

Questions