Dust & Neon review

I’m a cowboy…on steel legs, I stride.

Twin-stick shooters with roguelike qualities are pervasive on Steam. But with invigorating play mechanics, ample rewards for perseverance, and an aesthetic that balances style with performance, Dust & Neon aspires to stand out from the crowd. Largely, David Marquardt, the one-man studio behind apps like Pull My Tongue, Fluffy, Glitch Dash, and Hexaflip, has created an action game that’s a good fit for short but involving play sessions.

Starting a new run delivers a morsel of exposition, with dialog detailing a scientist named Dr. Finkel creating an army of cloned cowboys from the scrap of old body parts. Their assignment is to bring a halt to the proliferation of bots across a quartet of zones. Essentially, the Stetson-wearing assassins do all the killing while Dr. Finkel creates new technologies from the pieces of slaughtered robots. Sure, the motivation might be skeletal, but you’ll be quickly gunning down droids after a succinct tutorial. Less talking and more shooting is a virtuous design philosophy for a roguelike.

Keep the Chamber Filled

Much like 2018’s SYNTHETIK: Ultimate, Dust & Neon tasks players with manual reloads. After running out of ammo, you’ll have to tap a button several times to add new bullets or shells for your weapon. As such, firefights typically exhibit disjointed pacing. After a surge of red-hot lead is launched down your aiming marker, your cowboy should seek protection before launching his next barrage.

Fortunately, most environmental objects function as cover, allowing you to take a defensive position where enemy bullets will whiz innocuously overhead. Although you pop up and can fire from behind shielding, Dust & Neon likes to complement its humanoids with scampering aliens that will keep you from cover-turtling.

The Almost Great Train Robbery

Marquardt attempts to mix things up with mission objects that range from railroad heists, securing blueprints, destroying structures, or eliminating every enemy. But essentially, standard missions feel similar as you gradually push through a stage, removing any pugnacious bots from existence. That said, some divergence is found in Dust & Neon’s six boss battles. These often abandon the cover-based play for tense showdowns where you must figure out the best method for wearing down your adversary’s abundant health bar. The showdowns can be repeated to level up your cowboy, with each triumph increasing the level of challenge.

As a roguelike, Dust & Neon purports to have thousands of different guns. But they’re all just statistical variants on your basic revolver, shotgun, or rifle. Yes, there are just three Western-rooted weapon types despite Dust & Neon’s interpretation of the old West having computers and autonomous robots. In execution, you’ll notice that some guns have better qualities like improved damage, accuracy, or magazine sizes. But don’t expect firearms to feel radically different or have Borderlands-like elemental-based capacities. You’ll probably find and stick with an advantageous gun, recycling any newfound weapons into scrap. Another minor issue is the game’s hub and connected areas- why do I have to walk so far to start a new mission?

Send in the Cowboy Clones

You can upgrade your cowboy into a two-fold tech tree, as well as use collectible cores to purchase perks such as the distribution of rare weapons, a gunshop, single-mission boosts, cloning, and a tool that lets you materialize forfeited firearms. The last two elements factor into the game’s integration of permadeath, removing much of the sting of defeat. Mercifully, you’ll only have to relinquish any cash and cores acquired on the current mission in addition to your current loadout when you’re cloned. You get to keep all your character augmentation and stashed money, providing a sense of progress.

At present, Dust & Neon is enjoyable and plays proficiently on the Series S and X, exhibiting optimized 60 FPS/4K visuals. Elevated by high-pressure firefights that outgun many of his peers, Marquardt should be proud of his effort. Pleasingly, the release on Microsoft’s system brings down the game’s price, with $20 feeling like this should have been the price all along. This one’s just a bit shy of being a bullseye.

Dust & Neon was played on Xbox Series X with review code provided by the publisher.