Dustborn Hands-On Preview – Wordy Road Trip

Ragnar Tørnquist may not be among the most well-known game designers nowadays, but his contributions to the adventure genre cannot be overstated, as his works with games such as The Longest Journey helped the genre move forward when the point-and-click formula started dying out. After founding Red Thread Games in 2012 and releasing multiple entries in the Dreamfall Chapters, the Norwegian game designer is about to release, together with his development team Dustborn, an adventure game that tries to do things differently to present a better, rounded-up and more compelling experience.

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In Dustborn, players control Pax, an Anomal con-artist who has the power to weaponize language. Looking to create a new life in an alternate history America, she was hired to transport an important package to Nova Scotia, which she will have to keep safe with the help of a crew comprising a rather colorful crew with unique abilities. Despite the preview version I had the chance to try out was set a few hours into the adventure, my playtime with it made it clear how character development and interactions will be among the game's most developed features. Controlling Pax, players will have a lot of chances to interact with the other characters, develop relationships with them, and come to understand them better. These relationships are developed with a straightforward branching dialogue system that is pretty similar to similar systems seen in other adventure games.

When not interacting with other characters, players will explore a variety of closed-off, linear locations in Dustborn, controlling Pax from a third-person camera view as she searches for clues and objects to help her solve whatever conundrum she and her crew encounter. Much like in dialogues, players can make different choices that will shape the outcome of select scenarios, opting, for example, to ask for the help of a certain character