Dust & Neon - Review/Thoughts

Dust & Neon is a a classically inspired top-down twin-stick shooter, powered by an upgradeable looter-shooter weapon system, and roguelite progression… and I believe a bug prevented me from advancing past the second or third level of the game. I needed to clear an area of enemies, before I could open a crate, before I could advance the level. The problem is, even after I cleared the area of enemies (multiple times, and after restarting the game several times), the crate still told me I needed to clear the area of the enemies. I’d have to guess this experience won’t be most people’s experience, but it was mine. I reported the bug and hopefully it is fixed come final release. Otherwise, a lot about the game feels familiar if you’ve played Dead Cells or Hades in that roguelite progression and ever changing levels each run kinda feeling. This game takes the top-down, twin-stick approach. It also felt slower than something like Hades… oh yeah, and you can take cover behind things as you fire away. From what I was able to play, the game seemed like it could be a lot of fun, though I imagine there will be a controller learning curve of sorts, and also the game’s reload mechanic (seemingly making the player push a button to reload each individual bullet) takes some getting used to. Something about aiming with the right stick when still, but then also being able to aim with the left stick when walking felt a tad off for me. However, because I wasn’t able to progress very far in the game, I didn’t spend too too much time with the game’s controls.

I was provided a PC game code by the publisher.