Dustbowl

Long story short: Really cool retro aesthetic, good atmosphere. Really trash balance in regards to RNG for encounters, loot, and poor combat. It wasn't worth my time, and it's probably not worth yours. My biggest issue is a game that doesn't respect the player's time, and this is one of them. Time well spent is one thing, playing the savescum and slave to RNG to create an artificial sense of "difficulty" is another.

This game has a lot of minor technical issues, and they add up in annoyance! 1) It starts in a tiny window if you have a HiRes system. You can fix this by going to the game folder and running a separate exe - Winsetup.exe - but this should be properly incorporated into the initial startup (and I shouldn't need to research it to find out the solution! It should handle it properly or immediately tell me about that setup exe! This is basic setup stuff!) 2) It default runs in a mode that can cause flickering shadows and textures on HiRes/Modern system and needs to be forced out of it! Why? Again default to what works! 3) The mouse pointer seems to have some sort of acceleration built into the game so it is awkward (for me anyway) to use as it will suddenly zoom if I move too far and I feel my arm is tense moving slowly enough to avoid this issue. Why? That should be something that can be turned off or at least modified but it isn't! Why not use the systems native setting at least? 4) Some things I click on flicker the description on and off so fast I can barely see it (from reading the forum this may be because I have an old Deathadder mouse? Ironically said mouse…

I'm on the fence. I don't think any of my complaints will ever be rectified since the game's been out for a while now, but I'm still basically positive towards the game, even though it has some huge problems. The game is generally charming and soulful, and it contains an interesting little adventure. It's fun to poke about in the world, solving quests, and so on. The combat is unique, and it could be a plus or minus based or whether or not you like the little mini-game that controls the combat (I found it a bit tedious, but interesting to see a new attempt at combat that I haven't seen before). The difficulty and balancing is where the problems come in. The game has a very random difficulty curve. You will, at least for as long as I have played, always be very low on supplies (healing items, food, ammo). Couple that with the fact that enemies pop up randomly (JRPG-style) and you will very often find yourself in situations where you are low on health or ammo and have to save-scum like a madman to be able to make your way out of sticky situations. I'm talking save --> walk to next room --> check if there's an enemy --> if no enemy then save and repeat, if enemy then try to die as q…

For how low fi it is, it gives me all the notes of a great apocalyptic rpg. Proof of concept that you don't need trip a graphics to have an excellent adventure.

Looks can be deceiving. Dustbowl is more intricate than it looks. The freedom to explore and scavenge at your own pace makes it akin to classic Fallout games, despite the movement and combat being different. The length of the game was pretty spot on for me. I stayed invested to the end of the main plot and (I believe) I completed all the side quests as well.

Not a very deep game. I have ocd and NEED to finish games I play - only reason I have as much time as I do.