“From Dust” is a different game… it was created by Eric Chahi, the mind behind “Another World”, one of my favorite games of all times (and one of the most influencial aswell).
At the high-level, it’s a god-sim in which you control a worm-thing that enables you to modify the environment around you. In the beginning, you can pickup sand and drop in other places, but as the levels progress, you get access to more elements (sand, water, lava) and the interactions of those elements. You have to use those powers to lead a primitive nomadic tribe to the home of the Ancestors.
The thing that’s more evident in this game is the physics…. It’s amazing:
Everything reacts physically as you’d expect, but it’s just gorgeous seeing the water flowing down and then changing the course of the river with some lava or sand. The effect of a tsunami hitting your village when it is protected by a “water shield” is epic, to say the least!
And it all looks great… one thing that really impressed me (although it might be simple in implementation) was the skin rendering of the characters… the parameters/textures of the skin shaders were just right, it seemed to react to light exactly as I’d expect.
The game is not without his faults… the AI is sometimes appalling, specially the path-finding, but those small glitches can be forgiven (although they become frustrating sometimes).
The game has a slow pace, almost zen-like and (for me) the correct length (although many people on the Internet have complained of the short length of the game – for me, if the game was longer, I’d be bored). And after you finish the campaign you also have some challenges, and some of them are just plain diabolical (in a good sense!).
Overall, this game reminds me of Peter Molineaux’s “Populus”, but with modern technology and reduced to the point of almost minimalism, and I believe is a must in any god-sim fan’s collection. Just make sure you choose the console version (PS3 or XBox360) over the PC one, if you have a choice… it seems the PC version is weaker than the rest! 9/10.