Dusk ’82

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Dusk ’82 is a character-based Puzzle game originally revealed on April 1, 2021 and naturally thought to be an April Fools’ joke, only for the game to release later that year on PC, much to the surprise of many, with a port of the game coming to Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game is loosely connected to the retro-style First-Person Shooter Dusk, but players expecting an experience that’s even remotely similar to that action-packed game will likely be disappointed.

At the very least, one trait the two games share in common is having a retro-style presentation, but where Dusk aimed for the early days of true 3D First-Person Shooters with its aesthetic, Dusk seems to be aiming for the early days of PC gaming, with extremely simple 2D pixel art visuals that are adorably nostalgic, albeit not much to look at. These visuals are backed by an absolutely terrible chiptune soundtrack that will have players quickly reaching for the mute button.

The gameplay here is good, but has none of the intense action of the game it’s spun off from. Instead, players move a character around from a top-down perspective in levels where they’re tasked with taking out all enemies, with said enemies only moving when you do, as you tend to find in classic Roguelike games. Early enemies can be taken out with a simple shotgun you find early, but soon enough you’ll encounter enemies that need to be lured into traps or near explosive barrels.

The gameplay here is good, and the level design is well-crafted enough, but this definitely feels like a game from the era it’s imitating, and it doesn’t really do anything extraordinary to set itself apart from numerous other somewhat similar games like Boulder Dash and Chip’s Challenge.

For only $5, I feel like players looking for a very retro-style Puzzle game will likely enjoy Dusk ’82 well enough, but this game certainly wasn’t designed to appeal to players of the First-Person Shooter, and even fans of this genre won’t find anything truly extraordinary here.

tl;dr – Dusk ’82 is an extremely retro-style character-based Puzzle game that tasks players of clearing levels of enemies that move when you do. It’s decent enough that fans of retro-style games might get a kick out of this, and the $5 price tag seems fair, but this game does little to set itself apart from countless other games like it.

Grade: C+

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