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Dust: An Elysian Tail swishes to PS4 in 1080p, 60fps
Dust: An Elysian Tail is getting a second shot at console stardom in the near future when Dean Dodrill's anthropomorphic action exploration game jumps to PlayStation 4. Dodrill announced the new port via the PlayStation Blog on Thursday, allowing Fidget, the game's lovably freaky cat-bat character thing, to cover the pertinent details. "Imagine a 2D side-scrolling platformer, with crazy-fast swordplay and screen-clearing MAGIC supplied by yours truly. There are power-ups! Special abilities! Hidden passages! A whole world of STUFF to find!" says Fidget, clearly still enthused about her first project as a freaky cat-bat thing. "Now, if you can, imagine all this awesomeness is hand-drawn like an old animated movie from the 80s and 90s, but with art at crazy high resomolutions! Like, 1080p! People tell me that's pretty darn good! Also, 60fps. I'm guessing that's some sort of speed? Like, the speed of awesome? I don't know much about these things, though. I mean, look at my hands! I'm not plugging anything into expensive TVs with these ham-hocks." Dust was originally released on Xbox 360 in 2012 to critical acclaim, after Dodrill built the game largely on his own starting in 2008. The Metroid-style quest eventually released on Windows, Mac, and Linux as well. [Images: Humble Hearts]
PSA: Dust: An Elysian Tail explores Steam today
As promised, Dust: An Elysian Tail has found its way to Steam today. Until May 31, you can grab Dust for $13.50, ten percent off its usual $15 asking price. The action-adventure RPG from Humble Heart made its debut on Xbox Live Arcade back in August as part of the Summer of Arcade promotion. Despite how vast Dust: An Elysian Tail is, it's actually missing a third of its intended story, which was cut due to the months of extra time it would've taken to finalize the larger vision. Even with the omitted content, Dust: An Elysian Tail turned out to be a fine game.
Dust: An Elysian Tail scampers onto Steam May 24
Next week marks the Steam debut of Humble Heart's XBLA darling, Dust: An Elysian Tail. Dean Dodrill, animator and creator of Dust, took to Twitter to announce the May 24 launch date; though there is currently no Steam product page. Dust: An Elysian Tail is a 2D action platformer in the vein of Metroid and Castlevania, featuring beautiful hand-drawn sprites throughout. Aside from being visually appealing, it's also a delight – a game our review said "doesn't do much to innovate the platform-adventure sub-genre, but it does manage to look and play beautifully throughout, and sometimes that's enough."
Dust: An Elysian Tail coming to Steam
Humble Heart's 2012 XBLA debut Dust: An Elysian Tail is headed to Steam and could potentially be available as soon as next month, Polygon reports. The announcement was made by Dust designers Alex Kain and Dean Dodrill during a panel at PAX East, wherein Dodril explained that he isn't going to "do a whole lot different" with the PC port, being satisfied with the current experience.Dodril also teased the possibility of a Dust 2 at some point in the future, with Kain adding that there is "no shortage" of ideas for a sequel.
Dust: An Elysian Tale dev had to scrap third of the game
Dust: An Elysian Tail, one of the few highlights of this year's Summer of Arcade, actually had to cut a major chunk of its story to make release. Speaking with Gamasutra, Dust co-writer Alex Kain says they had to cut a third of the game.Creator Dean Dodrill's original vision for Dust had "a massive third act," according to Kain, taking players to new locations, with a new main antagonist and refocused storyline. This would have required months more time the team didn't have, so it was cut.Kain says, "It was hard to part with the mysterious final villain, but the game ended up a lot tighter, and the story felt much more satisfying ending where it did." Gamasutra has much more on Dust in its extensive postmortem.
Dust: An Elysian Tale bounding to XBLA in 2012
Despite the relative silence on Dust: An Elysian Tail since it won 2009's "Dream-Build-Play" competition, one man has been playing it daily for years now. That exclusive audience is the game's developer, Dean Dodrill, who says the game will finally be released at some point in 2012. Nay, he promises it'll be released in 2012. "It's coming out in 2012, promise," Dodrill wrote under his pseudonym "Noogy" on the Neogaf forums. He doesn't give any other details, or even a more specific launch window, but we've reached out for a more definitive date.
2009 Dream-Build-Play winners announced, Dust takes top honor
It must be nice winning $40,000! We imagine Dust: An Elysian Tail developer Dean Dodrill will be drinking his fair share of shirley temples this weekend with all those extra duckets, after winning first place in this year's XNA Developer Dream-Build-Play competition. As you can see in the gallery below and video after the break, Dust is a beautiful, hand-drawn side-scroller that features action-RPG gameplay in the vein of Castlevania ... but with furries.Second place (and $20,000) went to Panya Inversin from Coin App who created Max Blastronaut, which looks to be a mix between Super Stardust HD and ... Double Dragon? We're just as confused as you are, but see for yourself after the break, below the Dust clip. Third and fourth place went to Mauricio Garcia's Rotor'scope and Hu Ling's HurricaneX2 Evolution, respectively. Congratulations to all of this year's winners!%Gallery-72019%
