I actually had no idea that an update for Dustforce was coming out when I started playing the game again a few weeks ago. Imagine my surprise when I started up the game and it changed on me, adding levels, new tutorials, and a new overworld layout. All this, to a game two years old. I’m still undecided on whether that’s a great thing or not - after all, I do want to see Hitbox Team finish Spire.
It’s just as well, though, since it gives me a convenient time to re-review Dustforce. My previous review… well, after reading it today, I decided didn’t quite do it justice. Plus, I wanted to do some more analysis of why this is my second-favorite game of all time. It’s more than just the aesthetics; it’s the feeling it evokes, the emotions it carries. So, put on your brooms and overalls, and let’s go clean some stuff.
Dustforce is your typical ninja-janitor simulator ultra-hard platformer, in the same vein as Super Meat Boy. Each level has you cleaning up a different location, be it a forest valley, a large cave, or a spooky mansion. You’ll sweep up leaves from the forest floor, and pick up trash from the streets of the city. Doing that is as easy as touching the surfaces on which they rest; do so, and your little janitor-avatar will automatically start moving his (or her) broom.
Getting onto those surfaces is the hard part, as you’ll soon encounter spiky rocks, angry bears, and precarious ledges. The controls and rules to navigate these obstacles are simple enough. You’ve got your typical double-jump and dash, and two variants of an attack. Hit some floating rubbish, and you get an extra jump or dash. Press up when you’re clinging to a wall, and you run up the wall. Clean enough stuff, and you get a super attack that clears everything in a large area. At the end of each level, there’s always a leaf bundle or some irritated creature to sweep into submission; once you relieve it of its burden, you’ve finished the level.
These gymnastics are accompanied by some of the most best animations and environments I have ever seen. Other games may be cooler, or more realistic, sure, but this one has an amazing style. Each level is just gorgeous - I mean, look at that screenshot! Those platforms, those mountains in the background, that gradient, hinting at a sunset; it makes for a pretty scene. But how did they pull this off? By all rights, the game should be incredibly goofy - you’re a ninja janitor, for goodness sake! A man with a large nose and a broken overall strap sliding down slopes and performing aerial acrobatics! It should feel stupid, but it is pulled off such that it never does. There’s not one dissonant note to be found in the symphony of elements here - especially not in the immaculate soundtrack.
But, well, that’s enough hyperbole about the aesthetics. You can probably determine yourself if you like how Dustforce looks and sounds just by watching a video on Youtube. Indeed, that was what drew me in, but it’s not what kept me playing. No, what really kept me going is something harder to understand without playing the game yourself. It is the feeling that it evokes: the sense of mastery. To explain that, we’ve got to go back and take a closer look at the level progression.
At the end of each level, you’re graded on two metrics. The first is completion; inadvertently leave some junk in the level, and you lose out there. The second is finesse; if you fall on some spikes or get hit by an enemy, you get docked on your finesse score. The scores for these two grades range from D to S. Once you obtain the double S, you’ve gotten most of the way to mastering the level. I say “most of the way” because of the online leaderboards - we’ll get to those briefly.
Get enough good grades on levels, and you’re given a key to unlock a harder level. This level unlock system forces you to really get easier levels before you can move on to harder ones. It’s easy enough to slide down a slope, but can you do that and maintain momentum for long enough to cross a huge gap? You’ve destroyed trash cans, but can you slowly smash one over a gap without dropping in yourself?
Each time you move on to the next tier of levels, it’s like moving from middle school to high school, or high school to college; you thought you knew everything, but all at once, your perspective shifts and you realize you don’t know anything. Suddenly you need to learn new techniques, un-learn your habits. You learn to speed-dash off of slopes, to get as low to the ground as you can before double-jumping, to stop holding the up key all the time. Bit by bit, you get better at the game, but there’s always more to learn.
Only the very dedicated and very talented will ever truly master the game. There’s only a single steam achievement, and that is “SS+” - get an SS on every level. This, alone, is a massive undertaking; the first fifty levels may take one hundred hours, but the last ten may take another hundred. However, even after achieving the SS+, there’s still more to do. It’s perfectly possible to slowly and cautiously make your way through a level and still get an SS at the end, but then, the online leaderboard for that level pops up. Suddenly, your SS may not look so impressive - dusters are ranked much time it took for them to complete the level. It took you a minute-forty to beat the level, how the hell did that guy do it in just fifty seconds!?
Here’s the thing: it’s never any secret how the hell they do it. You see, after you’ve finished any given level, no matter what your score, you can go back and watch the replay of literally anyone else who has also finished the level. Even if you aren’t a hardcore race-against-the-clock kind of guy, this shows that there’s always a way to SS a level; after all, there’s always someone who’s done it before you. The proof is right there in the replay! It’s even showing you exactly where to jump, how to hit that ledge, when to attack that enemy! The hard part, of course, is not in figuring out how to execute the level - it is the execution itself, the dexterity and reaction time.
I’ve read several other reviews of the game, and some of them have criticized it for being too hard, requiring too much precision. But… I don’t think that’s why it’s an easy game to give up on. I am not a person who is particularly dextrous or talented at platformers, but I love this game. I love how the game doesn’t hold your hand. I love that it has such a ridiculously high skill ceiling. I love that I will probably never SS every level before I die, but that the fact does not deter me from trying.
Why? Here’s the simple reason: it is readily apparent that you are getting better. To me, this is the greatest strength of Dustforce. From the easiest levels to the hardest ones, I can feel that my reactions are better, that my jumps become more precise. Even bashing my head against one of the hardest levels in the game, I knew I could beat it. For every ten deaths on a level, there is one jump I successfully hit that I didn’t before, one launch off a ramp that I thought I’d never execute. That is where the difficulty comes from; not, perhaps, just because the game is too hard, but because it requires being crushed, again and again and again.
But when I finally SS that level you’ve been working on for five hours, the sense of accomplishment is amazing. It is beyond words. It is the fist pump, the shout that accompanies it, the feeling that you want to tell everyone around that I have finally beat this damn level. It is a truly stark sense of mastery. I know all the secrets of the level. You know its inner hopes and fears, and its favorite color. I. Beat. It.
I know that this is not the case for everyone. Maybe I’m just a masochist, maybe I’m just a glutton for achievements that really don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. After all, it’s not like I’ve just cured cancer or… well, really achieved much of anything except for get a fake award for cleaning fake things. I know all that, but it is truly significant for a video game to achieve such depths of feeling. And, I’m a believer that it’s not too hedonistic to say that it is worth feeling good once in a while.
Woah, we got a little too philosophical there. Let’s just back up and just summarize. The game’s got style and charm, I don’t think anyone can deny that. However, Dustforce is certainly not a game for everyone. I said, in my first naive review of the game, that you are “guaranteed to like it”; I know, now, that is a false assertion. But if you enjoy a mechanical challenge, if you enjoy the feeling of mastery, you are in for a treat with Dustforce.
Damn you, Hideout. Someday, I’ll get you…