Dustgrave: A Sandbox RPG Preview

Dustgrave: A Sandbox RPG's world is rife with political unrest and a mysterious plague — an era of turmoil that sets the backdrop for your custom character’s adventure. In this self-created journey, you’ll choose who to help, betray, and join, doing it all with your recruited party members by your side. They’ll help you defeat kidnappers and become a hero or rob a common townsperson as petty thieves; it’s all up to you. If you’ve ever wanted to explore a mediaeval fantasy setting with free rein to go wherever and do whatever, then you might want to keep an eye on this one throughout its Early Access period.

Duelist, Merchant, Soldier, Sorcerer, Theurgist, and Warrior are the six classes you can choose from for your character. Then, you’ll select two skill trees, deciding whether you’ll focus on combat, support, or magic, such as Finesse, Leadership, or Fire; you can’t pre-examine the abilities in the trees, but each one has a short description detailing what types of actions and passives you’ll get as you level up. While you can opt for a pre-made character and jump right into initial tutorials, I made two of my own: a Duelist with Cunning and Mobility skills who came from a criminal background in the Yarsa territory and a Sorcerer who specialised in the Life and Ice skill trees with a wealthy background from the Republic of Panavia. After trying both, I decided to stick with the Sorcerer, as the ranged attacks and heals complemented my early companions, all of which were primarily melee fighters.

In Dustgrave, combat is turn-based, and each character has two Action Points per turn. Abilities and movement cost AP, which limits what you and your companions can accomplish in a single turn; sometimes, getting closer to your target will consume all the points available. Once you’re in range, you can dish out an attack, causing your character to perform an attack roll, which will result in a Miss, Graze, Hit, or Critical. When you hover your mouse over the target, you’ll see a breakdown of percentages that suggest what outcome you’ll end up with, such as “Graze 50%, Hit 32%, and Miss 18%.” A majority of my actions ended in Grazes, making a Hit and/or Crit feel that much more impactful when they landed. Some actions can put a debuff on an enemy to make them take more damage, or you might be able to stun and/or root them to take them out of the fight temporarily.

So far, battles have been enjoyable, though it is a little difficult for melee classes, as I often found myself wishing that movement was separated from spending Action Points. That’s why I’ve been enjoying the Sorcerer so much more, as ranged attacks keep me from spending all my points running around the battlefield. In my experience, enemies come in large groups as well, so I’d prioritise maxing out your party with the three allotted companions before embarking on quests. Fortunately, recruiting party members is as easy as talking to them. When you enter a town, you can check the map to see if there’s a person-shaped icon, indicating a nearby NPC is ready to join your group. Once they’re in your party, you can control their equipment, use them in combat, and level them up like you would your main character. So far, it doesn’t seem like you can talk to them beyond the initial recruitment process, nor are there specific companion quests that I’ve seen. However, it is noted in-game that companions will be reworked throughout Early Access, so this process could change.

When you do find yourself going up against deserters or kidnappers out in the world, you don’t always have to fight your way out of a conflict. Before drawing your sword, you can choose to persuade another character via intimidation, logic, bribery, and more. However, similar to your attacks, you can fail, partially succeed, or outright succeed, depending on what dialogue option you select. From what I can tell, the difference between partial and outright success is how the NPC reacts. For instance, a soldier might do what you say begrudgingly if you’re only somewhat successful, but they lose the attitude if you’re completely successful.

Dialogue in Dustgrave isn’t currently a strong suit of this title. Grammar and spelling issues run rampant throughout the text, and for a game that relies heavily on characters describing various political factions and their relations via dialogue, that impeded my ability to absorb pertinent info about this world. Every character seems to talk in a brash tone, as well, and there’s little to no variation, making them all read the same.

I did enjoy exploring the world by pointing and clicking my character across a large map, watching the day change to night as I travelled to nearby towns and ancient ruins. However, I can’t comment on the overall quality of quests you find in these areas, as I haven’t experienced enough of them. I visited over 11 locations, and when I entered each new place, I could mainly just interact with characters by asking them about their faction or whether they wanted to trade.

After a few hours, I managed to find three quests, but I only finished one of them. The first quest had me track down a group of deserters outside a city, but when I tried to return to the quest-giver, my game would crash repeatedly (and the only way I could continue my playthrough was by not visiting that town). The second quest tasked me with killing a target to save a merchant, but I had already killed the NPC when I was travelling on the map, so that got locked, too. Finally, I was able to save a character who’d been kidnapped and received gold and EXP upon completion, but I haven’t been able to find any more quest-givers. After reading Steam discussions, it seems that there might be a bug causing them not to spawn, which I suspect I’d been dealing with. Although the most recent patch (0.4.09) did state that the issue was resolved, I didn’t see a change with my current character or with a new playthrough, so this early version might just be low on content.

What little I accomplished gave me a glimpse into Dustgrave’s event records, which is a pretty cool concept. Everything you do across your playthrough is noted, applying negative or positive points to your relationships with the game’s various factions, which you can see in the Factions Info menu. For instance, since the tutorial pitted me against some Red Vultures that destroyed my camp, I received -1 points for every minor character killed, -5 for every medium member killed, and an overall -75 for negative disposition. As such, the Vultures will be openly hostile to me until I find a way to improve my standing with them, which I suspect will be through quests included in future builds.

Dustgrave: A Sandbox RPG is currently available in Early Access on PC via Steam, and an official 1.0 release date is still to be announced. If you’d like to carve out your path in this world and be part of the development process, be sure to give it a look.