Though Dodrill had some help with the voice acting and writing on the game, Dust is almost entirely a one-man effort, from the art and design to the programming. The level of detail drawn into every anthropomorphic animal character, combined with the silky smoothness of the animation and the surprisingly affecting voice acting and writing, makes the game feel like the kind of controllable animated movie I dreamed about playing as a kid. Everything about the game's design, from the Metroid/ Castlevania-style exploration to the fast-paced button-mashing combat and even the leveling system, feels like a loving homage to the kinds of 2D action RPGs that were common in the 8- and 16-bit console era.īut far from the 8-bit art style Dodrill says he initially envisioned for the game, Dust's scenes come alive with a wide array of huge, painterly, hand-drawn HD sprites and backgrounds that just wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago. If you had asked me 20 years ago what video games would look like today, I'd probably describe something like Dust. But the final release shows that those three-and-a-half years weren't wasted.
The version of Dust released looks remarkably similar to the 2009 demo of the game that won Dodrill $40,000 in Microsoft's competition shortly after he began work on the project.
Instead, Dust: An Elysian Tail turned into a three-and-a-half year labor of love that finally saw the light of day on Xbox Live Arcade last week.
#DUST AN ELYSIAN TAIL HOW TO#
When professional animator and illustrator Dean Dodrill set out to learn how to program by creating a simple game based on his "Elysian Tail" universe, he figured the entire project would take him about three months.