If you've got it, whats your impressions so far? This one's got me curious...

Looks cool. Like the concept of dead leaf monsters.

I really like it so far. It's got a lot of style.

@smackifilia said:

If you've got it, whats your impressions so far? This one's got me curious...

I'm curious as well, on Rebel FM Anthony was raving about it

I've played 15 minutes or so and I think it's pretty fucking awesome. Well worth the $10 ($9 at the moment).

It has that addictive element where you'll replay levels just to get an S rank in each of the criteria (Finesse and Clearance? I think it's clearance) and also improve your time.

Try it out for yourself.

Saw the Castle Story dudes hyping it a bit. It looks awesome, artistically and gameplay wise. Kinda Super Meat Boy-ish?

Played it for a few hours. Heavily reminds me of Super Meat Boy. This is a good thing.

Just played it. Amazing style. Alittle tricky at first, but tons of room for mastering.

Played 2-3 levels so far and it's fantastic. Not as hard as super meat boy (in that levels are easier to finish, although I'm still pretty early on so the challenge might ramp up), but you need to have a near-perfect run of a level to unlock new areas. It's got that meat boy/trackmania vibe where you'll be constantly restarting the level at the slightest mistake you make because getting a perfect run is just that satisfying. The art style, animation and the soundtrack are all fantastic too, and the controls are surprisingly smooth for a PC platformer (there's no native controller support but I guess you could use Joy2Key).

Hopefully there'll be a quick look of this one so it gets some more attention, at $9 it's great value (50 levels, local co-op and a level editor on the way).

@MC729 said:

The art style, animation and the soundtrack are all fantastic too, and the controls are surprisingly smooth for a PC platformer (there's no native controller support but I guess you could use Joy2Key).

I was able to use my wired Xbox controller just by rebinding the keys. It recognized all the inputs as I switched em :)

@MC729 said:

Played 2-3 levels so far and it's fantastic. Not as hard as super meat boy (in that levels are easier to finish, although I'm still pretty early on so the challenge might ramp up), but you need to have a near-perfect run of a level to unlock new areas. It's got that meat boy/trackmania vibe where you'll be constantly restarting the level at the slightest mistake you make because getting a perfect run is just that satisfying. The art style, animation and the soundtrack are all fantastic too, and the controls are surprisingly smooth for a PC platformer (there's no native controller support but I guess you could use Joy2Key).

Hopefully there'll be a quick look of this one so it gets some more attention, at $9 it's great value (50 levels, local co-op and a level editor on the way).

The first 2-3 levels of Super Meat Boy are pretty easy. Don't tell me you found them difficult?

=P =)

@SomeDeliCook: haha no but just the vibe i'm getting is that a perfect run is the focus of Dustforce, whereas in meat boy it was about just getting through the level. also, there are pretty generous checkpoints, but getting through a level on more than one life gives you no chance of an S rank.

Echoing what others have praised Dustforce for, I love the music and visual aesthetic. Like Super Meat Boy, the controls are real tight. Unlike SMB, the game is pretty generous in letting you recover from small mistakes.

I really enjoyed running through previous levels again to get a perfect score (100% cleaning, no deaths, and a fluid run). The feeling you get when everything finally comes together and you just destroy whatever the level throws at you is awesome.

Bottom line: It's like less stressful Super Meat Boy. If you didn't like SMB, maybe check Dustforce out. If you did like SMB, definitely check it out.

Only thing I'm not a fan of (at least yet) is the hub world layout. I'm not ever sure where I am or where I'm supposed to be - I just run aimlessly until I find an open door. I haven't played a lot, though, so maybe I'll get used to it.

I've been playing it for a couple of hours now, even got fourth place in one of the secret gold key locked worlds^^ Absolutely love it.

It's kinda weird how it's set to allow checkpoints by default since unlocking new levels pretty much requires a perfect run (double S rank will get you a key) and having to remap the controlls for an Xbox controller manually felt a little strange. It also took me a while longer to adapt to the mechanics with the wall and roof running, once you get it though...oh man.

Protip: if you're mapping the controls to a controller make sure to remap the quick restart button as well so it's easy to access. I put it on Start and it feels really natural.

Now the music is no Super Meat Boy in terms of catchiness but it's servicable and fits. The artstyle is amazing though, absolutely amazing.

I like it a lot but I'm having serious framerate issuses. On the Steam forum they say they're working on a hot fix out tonight. But other than that I like the art, animation and music. So, when has mapping buttons become a hassle?

FPS is kind of choppy right now for me, but I love the pacing in this game, that combined with the more skill-based gameplay in this game makes this head and shoulders above Super Meat Boy for me. You need to use a pad for this game, if you don't have easy access to mashing the dash button, you're probably not playing the game correctly.

@MistaSparkle said:

Saw the Castle Story dudes hyping it a bit. It looks awesome, artistically and gameplay wise. Kinda Super Meat Boy-ish?

Sort of.

It's a hardcore 2D platformer--and a fantastic one at that--but I think there are some notable differences. Super Meat Boy makes it painfully difficult to finish a level. Dustforce makes it painfully difficult to ace a level. In that respect, it's almost impossible to not finish a Dustforce level, but nailing the double-S+ scores on each level requires a magical finger-finesse of dancing finger presses. In that way, Dustforce is almost closer to a rhythm game. And it's brilliant for it.

Played a few hours, and feel the points mentioned here pretty much sum it up. Really hard to die, super easy to finish a level, but the point is to master levels. So really the motivating factors are simply the score chase. If thats your thing I think this game would scratch that itch perfectly. Super Meat Boy drove me a little harder to play it, I think, because it made the difficulty beating a level and not so much mastering the level. Score chase in a platformer isn't so much my thing, but the levels are still really fun. The music is awesome by the way. It's cheap, fun, and totally worth it I think.

As someone who played a lot of Super Meat Boy (120+ hours) I don't really recommend this game. The mechanics are fine (though not as good as SMB), but the overall design has some problems. Starting with the second level the levels get really long (1+ minute). It's not hard to get to the end, but it's not satisfying either. The only way to make progress is to get a totally clean run which is quite difficult right from the get go. SMB was addicting because you constantly made progress, you constantly got better at the game. In Dustforce you're gonna have to learn the mechanics by playing the early levels 20+ times before you 'beat' them. It's not a problem with how the game plays, it's how the game is structured. This game actually makes me appreciate and realize how good SMB was even more.

Regarding the mechanics, I think they are pretty good but they're not super elegant. There are eight input buttons (SMB had four, yet still probably had more moves), I don't like the dashing mechanic because you kinda have to spam it. There's kind of a start / stop feel to how it plays. Your character is not very agile unless you keep hitting dust, so if you miss one piece then your character feels clumsy IMO. When you do try to pull of the same kind of precision jumps as in SMB it doesn't always work, for example jumping off a ledge and steering back to slide down a wall is much harder because you don't have as much air control.

I'm being too negative now. It plays well but SMB played amazing. You can't do infinite walljumps off of one wall in Dustforce, which I don't like, but stuff like that is probably just a design decision.

Dustforce is the best Sonic game that never was.

I don't really know why people keep wanting to draw comparisons between this and SMB. The platforming is very different, and so are the goals. If you're going into this expecting SMB, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

I find it enjoyable. The only problem is my fingers cramping from using just the keyboard.

@kyrieee said:

The only way to make progress is to get a totally clean run which is quite difficult right from the get go. SMB was addicting because you constantly made progress, you constantly got better at the game. In Dustforce you're gonna have to learn the mechanics by playing the early levels 20+ times before you 'beat' them.

If you weren't constantly getting better at Dustforce the more you were playing it, I'm not sure that's necessarily the developer's fault. The levels aren't introduced in a way that has you learning new mechanics that weren't already covered in the opening tutorial. Having to constantly repeat levels to beat them isn't even exclusive to either of these games, although the Quick Look for SMB makes that clear enough.

@BananaHace said:

I don't really know why people keep wanting to draw comparisons between this and SMB. The platforming is very different, and so are the goals. If you going into this expecting SMB, you're going to be sorely disappointed.

I agree, SMB and this game should not be compared. If anything, it's more N+ than Meat Boy, but that's not even a good comparison either.

@patrick said:

@kyrieee said:

The only way to make progress is to get a totally clean run which is quite difficult right from the get go. SMB was addicting because you constantly made progress, you constantly got better at the game. In Dustforce you're gonna have to learn the mechanics by playing the early levels 20+ times before you 'beat' them.

If you weren't constantly getting better at Dustforce the more you were playing it, I'm not sure that's necessarily the developer's fault. The levels aren't introduced in a way that has you learning new mechanics that weren't already covered in the opening tutorial. Having to constantly repeat levels to beat them isn't even exclusive to either of these games, although the Quick Look for SMB makes that clear enough.

I'm not saying I can't get better at the game, just because I'm talking about the difficulty doesn't mean I'm a bad who can't complete any levels. What I'm saying is that getting to the end of a level is trivial and therefore you don't learn how to play the game by just doing that. I would rather learn how to play the game at a more gradual pace because I'm not always in the mood for repeating something until I do it perfectly. If the only way to progress in SMB was to get A+ on every level then I would've enjoyed it less. I have A+ on every level now, but most of those I wouldn't have been able to get when I first unlocked those levels.

I've played two levels, double S'd the first and am struggling with completion of the second but damn, I fucking love this baby already. Shit's hard but I don't feel cheated at all.

picked up during Steam sale and have played two hours worth so far.

It might be that I'm using the analog stick on my 360 controller for movement, but I'm finding some things about it to be counterintuitive. The way the mechanics work for the ceiling run, specifically. It feels like you should be able to jump out of that in ways the game will not allow. Also, that run position is finicky with the analog stick position. In some cases when I'm running a 90 degree wall with a 45 degree overhang my character will jump from the 90 to the 45 and just stick there in an upside down crouch position.

I wonder how the game would play if you removed the need for the stick to be in up position to start a ceiling run. If the game automatically put you in ceiling run state (and also vertical climb state) whenever your character connects with the surface, leaving the player to only have to worry about left/right. Might tighten up the control feel a bit. I'm thinking sort of like the way Gish handles those surfaces in SMB. Something like that.

Update!

Solution for aforementioned control issue found. It occurred to me that this game allows mapping of any button to the directions as well as the buttons. So I mapped the 'up' direction to a trigger button. Problem solved. Feels much more comfortable for me.