For four days, people came to the Javits Center in New York City to
experience one of the largest conventions on the east coast: New York
Comic Con 2013! Fans of comics, movies, television shows, and toys came
together to revel in their hobbies, and with them came video game
companies to show off their wares for the upcoming holiday season and
beyond. We here at 3RM attended a few of those days, and we have
impressions and video to provide from our experience!
-----
Tony:
At Capcom’s booth there were a number of downloadable titles on
display, and one of them was the console port of Hitbox Team's Dustforce, a combo-heavy platforming
game about dust and ninja janitors.
Dustforce stars four unique janitor ninjas in their effort to clean the corrupting filth of the world. The team consists of a blue janitor
with his broom, a red janitor with her push broom, a short purple janitor with
feather dusters, and an old green janitor with his vacuum cleaner. While
each have similar controls, they each have slightly different movements, such as jumping a
touch higher or attacking faster. The point of the game is for these ninja
janitors to race through each stage and clean up as much mess with as much ninja
skill as possible. Playing the demo I got to try out a forest area covered in
leafs in need of sweeping. Racing into the stages, my janitor would run along
walls, across ceilings, and clean off any leaf-covered animals in the stage
all while avoiding multiple hazards.
The gameplay of Dustforce was very reminiscent to N+ and
other wall-running platformers. The largest difference Dustforce brought was
its focus on cleaning up the stage while racing through them. As I ran
through the stages, I would clean off the surface I touched, be it floors, walls, or
ceilings. Besides wall-jumping, the janitors could also quickly dash forward,
double-jump, and even super clean the entire screen once they accumulated enough of a combo meter. Occasionally, I stumbled onto enemies made up of
dust or animals turned evil by the dirtiness. By attacking these airborne
enemies, I not only freed them from the clutches of messiness but also my
janitor earned the ability to jump again to reach higher enemies or more
leaf-covered flooring. The major emphasis of this title was to clean off all the surfaces without stopping in order to keep the combo score increasing. At
the end of each stage, I was ranked based on my time, how much I cleaned, and
the combo score. Clearly this game was
designed more about mastering the combos than beating the stages, as they were
nowhere near as frustrating as other indie platformers out there such as Super Meat Boy.
However, I did have some difficulty judging my jumps and accurately using my cleaning skills. In
order to clean a wall or ceiling, I had to move the joystick in the direction
of the mess before I got there. This tended to throw me off, but it could have
just been poor reflexes.
The game’s graphical style was a unique blend of colorful
geometric forms. Rather than represent each character and leaf with realistic
detail, everything was simplified to simple vector forms of color, designed as if
everything was toon-shaded. The game also ran at a silky smooth framerate with
fluid animations, which complimented its fast-paced action. As for the game’s
audio, I sadly wasn’t able to make it out in the noise convention hall, so I will have to judge that at another time.
Dustforce, the ninja janitor platformer, was a joy to play,
but I could see that mastering each level is where this title is going
to push players. I do hope that the other regions in the game offer unique
platforming gimmicks to keep it fresh in order to stand out from all the other
challenging indie platformers. With its unique style and premise, I look
forward to give this title another go when it comes out on consoles.
Dustforce is available now on PC, Mac, and Linux, and it being ported to XBLA and PSN this upcoming January.
