Incline Duskers - Learn to love the drone, because you have only her

[WhiskeyWolf]

What is Duskers?
In Duskers you pilot drones into derelict spaceships to find the means to survive and piece together how the universe became a giant graveyard. In film terms it's The Road meets the first Alien movie. In game terms: It's a rougelike with elements of dungeon crawling and real time strategy, but in a survival horror setting that focuses on subterfuge, and adapting to survive.
When I created Duskers it was really around a feeling: of being alone in the dark, of isolation, of being surrounded by old gritty tech that could only give you a partial picture about what's going on around you, like the motion sensor that goes off, but doesn't tell you exactly what's out there. I like the idea of needing to rely on that tech, and the claustrophobia and isolation that would cause.
It's a tactical, survival horror, roguelite?

Command Line interface?
I wanted the gritty tech to be a first class citizen in the game, so I made it have a command line interface (where you type in commands for the drones to execute. The commands are not complicated, though if you want to you can chain them with semi-colons, and create aliases to issue more complex commands with a simple alias.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/254320/

It will be released this month.

 

[taxalot]

It could be very interesting. I do appreciate the concept, but I hope it's possible to tone down the graphical effects.
And I am serious. The sober and minimalist look do not go well with light beams floating everywhere and random neon glows on various elements. It's distracting to the whole experience. If you want the game to look minimalistic, make it minimalistic.

 

[Zewp]

Released. So is it any good? Because I like the concept a lot.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Starts at 4:40

 

[Ulminati]

Got it.
Explored ships.
Found red signal on motion scanner.
Moved ship to another airlock, planning to herd the signal to a room I had already cleared and vent.
Forgot to close door d12.
Horrible screaming death jumped my drones.
Opened airlock a5 to escape into shuttle. Only, I had just moved the shuttle.
Vented my 2 drones with the most upgrades into space.




If you have a keyboard with lit up keys, play it in the dark and with headphones on.

 

[Ulminati]

Some fun combinations I've found so far:
teleport (with upgrade) + sensor -> better scan than motion. Also works with bombs and lures.
stealth + lure or stealth + bomb -> good anti-monster
upgraded lure in airlock room -> yesplz

Interface and Scan are both super stronk and you should bring both every time.

Make sure not to over-equip your drones. You'll want slots free to shuffle upgrades out of destroyed drones you find. Also, equipment brought along risks getting broken. Stuff in reserve doesn't.
My drone fleet before horrible death was:
generator+scan+teleport(upgraded) -> power a generator, send sensors
stealth+interface -> scout
tow+gather-> grabber
motion -> extended sensor

Also (this wasn't immediately obvious to me), if you find a ship with cool upgrades that you can't tow, you can 'commandeer' instead of 'exit' at the end and swap your ship for the one you cleared. Assuming you cleared it.

 

[lightbane]

Also available on GOG here: https://af.gog.com/game/duskers?as=1649904300

 

[Ulminati]

Seriously... Fuck swarms eating their way through a door, swarming my turret drone, then eating my generator drone. When the game tells you a door has been damaged, you need to worry.

Aliases are your friends for things you may need to toggle in a hurry. I have turret aliased to t, shields to d and stealth to s

 

[Ulminati]

The game needs a way to tow debris onto vents to stop those fucking swarms!

 

[ColCol]

Played it a little bit. So far it's pretty entertaining. Very atmospheric.

 

[Norfleet]

Can you take off and nuke the entire site from orbit, because it's the only way to be sure?

 

[Jaedar]

Can you take off and nuke the entire site from orbit, because it's the only way to be sure?

Let me tell you a story.

I discovered a scrap heap, boarded and all was fine, but exploration beyond first two rooms was not viable. On a whim I decided to demo my ship cannon, to see what it could do. Long story short, I lost all my drones, and the ship turned into an irradiated pile of junk.

 

[Norfleet]

Look, man, you're doing it wrong. You have to TAKE OFF and THEN nuke the entire site from orbit. Sheesh. You people are bad with directions and order of operations. Now you see why we have rules like this? TAKE OFF and nuke entire site from orbit. Pillage, THEN burn. Steps in the right order.

 

[sexbad?]

I really like this game