Duskers

You play as skynet after the fall of humanity, travel from ship to ship and exterminate every biological lifeform and remnant of humanity left in the universe.

At least I think that's what the story was.

I named all my drones after movie robots and personal assistants 10/10

100% RECOMMEND

Always boss mode!

jimbob approved

Nice puzzles challenging you to think outside the box on managing threats. The aesthetic is exceptionally handled. Definitely recommend. Use of custom commands is highly recommended.

It´s fun, but difficult. Easy to learn, but hard to level up. Can play it all the time without getting tired.

It's being said that it gets monotonous. However, it never stops being entertaining. It's a gem that deserves to be tried, very unique, it's something special.

I really like this game.

It has that claustrophobic, creeping horror feel of the first Alien movie. It's fairly simple to understand the gameplay initially, but mastering it takes a good bit longer in terms of experimentation and refining tactics. It's been out for a long, long time now, but routinely still gets updates. It's stable as a rock - I've never experienced any bugs or crashes, and it's always been smooth to play even on lower-end hardware. AND IT SUPPORTS LINUX AND MAC -- thank you for that extra effort, devs!

The procedural nature of the galaxy creation for each run makes for a good bit of variety. And, I find myself getting attached to my little drones. The graphics are crisp and totally capture that Alien vibe, too. So absolutely, I recommend this game. The full price feels fair to me for what you get in the game.

And apparently the dev is tinkering with the possibility of Duskers 2 (WOOT!).

This is one of my favorite games. Equal parts frustrating and addictive. They hit the theme 100% on the head; I feel like I'm alone in the big dark of the Aliens movies. Very gritty, very real. At its heart it's a puzzle and programming game. You can move your little drones manually, but programming them to do their stuff is mandatory; there's even a meta batch file where you can create subroutines -- and you'll need 'em. I love that it's programming in 2 different ways: first, the straight-up coding of getting your little dudes to do what they do; second, the programming of utilizing all of their skills appropriately to survive. Tack on an awesome dark, lonely space theme and some very cool lore (which you discover as you go) and you've got a super fun game that I highly recommend!

Atmospheric. Tense. Just an awful feeling when you lose your favorite drone, balanced by the thrill of clearing a ship.

Masterpiece of a game.

Unique game - holds up today.

It has it's issues but it's definetly worth playing.

nice little game for cheap with a eery but not spooky athmosphere

Very unique idea but not worth full price, the actual game play can get boring long before you find the "whole story". It does require unique problem solving though (especially once you neglect to repair your motion upgrade...)!
Only issue is that the game play loop really doesn't change, its more of a delicate balance of balancing the durability of your mods to keep them from breaking lmao

A fun game.

Duskers manages to be a horror game without actually trying to be one. From the moment you dock your boarding party at one of the airlocks of a derelict ship or station you are faced with a degree of uncertainty.

What lies beyond the door? Will there be enough salvage to keep me going? Will all my drones make it back? These questions can sometimes be answered swiftly and violently. Despite, and perhaps even because of, the deliberately limited perspectives of the schematic screen, initially shrouded in the fog of war, and the grainy camera feeds from the drones (both of which can fail if not properly maintained) you are often placed in a position of anxiety as you try and make predictions based on the limited information available and choose a course of action.

Take your time, but not too long. Threats do not just come from hostile entities, but from the failing systems of a volatile wreck or the odd collision with an asteroid.

Maintain and customize your drones, or salvage new ones. Secure vessels that suit your needs, and commandeer them. Collect partially corrupted logs to unlock questlines and complete objectives to advance that particular storyline.

Be sure to wear your headphones and play in fullscreen for the best experience.

Highlights:
-A stylish, retro-futurist interface that relies exclusively on the keyboard.
-A massive universe, with a large variety of derelicts to explore and plunder.
-An understated narrative pieced together from recovered data.
-A mysterious setting that throws you into a universal graveyard where your only companions are your machines.
-Creative conflict resolution that relies on managing threats indirectly by powering and interfacing with derelict systems, and making use of a wide variety of drone parts from tow-cables to deployable-mines and even teleporter-modules.

I love this game. It's masterpiece of theme and verisimilitude in a unique text-based drone-controller space-horror rogue-like. Buy it. Play it. Enjoy it. It's a nice relatively simple palate cleanser to be played here and there. Strongly recommended.

Awesome game.

the base game is so good but their just isnt a late game the story doesnt get any big twists and the monsters dont get anymore dangerous at a certain point its like a demo a unfinished game play the game its REALLY fun but other then the base game their isnt much 7.5/10

Hope you don't have to log out in the middle of a run, you can't return to a ship and there is no saving in the middle of a ship run. That's just poor game design.

waged a meticulous genocide on the creatures hiding inside a derelict space barge. After savoring my victory, accidentally opened an airlock and lost half my drones - 10/10

This is a really awesome horror survival game that punches above its weight.

A very unique game with no equal, even still. Really captures the feeling of being alone in space with only your drones as a lifeline. The interface is lovably retro-atari looking until you look at your drones with the cameras and the graphics look modern. Has that creepy infested spaceship exploration vibe from the Alien universe. Soft of a puzzle game figuring out how to route enemies to different rooms, or avoid them, or kill them. Perfect example of a game that's easy to play, but hard to master. I never did survive long enough to figure out why everyone in the universe was dead. The game is challenging. Sometimes RNG just gives you bad options and you run out of fuel. Love that you can do pretty much everything with your keyboard. It helps to sell the idea that you are just a helpless hacker on a spaceship with only a keyboard and drones.

Why is this game not listed as a rogue-lite? I feel like that's important... because you will die. A lot.

10/10. Stay away from the vents.

This is the scariest game I have ever played, it gives me unparalleled anxiety and dread. I highly recommend you buy this masterpiece of horror.

Nice, immersive and creative console / "command line like" game.

fantastic, atmospheric game. great for laptops, needs minimal mouse input, played it a ton on road trips and plane rides.
there are some bugs and minor unpolished bits here and there but the overall experience is great.

Play for 20 minutes
Flies
Reset
Repeat

Great game, so many heart attacks.

Duskers is, by far, the scariest game I've ever played. Combined with near-Noita levels of difficulty, a fleshed-out story, and a unique artstyle, it's a true gem amongst the wilds of the Roguelite genre. Although RNG does play a factor in the success of a run, hubris and the flawed strategy that results will be your ultimate undoing every time. 10/10, no notes.

Don't buy this crap game. It messes up your game save.

What happened:
I finished the first galaxy and was about to jump to the 2nd. I thought "let me save the game first". So I went back to the main menu, which implicitly saves the game (the game says so in the menu). Then I hit "play" again, expecting to continue where I left just a second ago. I was at the star gate and ready to jump. That was correct. But the ship, the drones and all the equipment was from 6 hours playtime ago.

Let me ask you something devs: Are you insane? How the heck can you mess up something like the save feature? That is one of the most crucial things in a game (that offers a save functionality). How can you publish a game like this?

Scary

OH SHIT I LEFT THE DOOR OPEN

Hmm... game taste hard; crunchy... it okay. 6/10

Very cool.

I started off in drone view, I was a peon utilizing the arrow keys and only the most basic of commands. Then one day, I discovered the alias command. I became a god amongst drones. I am now a power user, with the fastest keystrokes in the universe.
In all seriousness, good game. Don't read any of the guides until you have to restart a couple runs. Half the fun is discovering new upgrades/enemies/ships... The story is a SLOW burn. If you're here for a narrative experience (or just an achievement hunter), I'd say you're in for at least 30 hours. The objective logs are long in coming.

game too scary, i did a poo poo in my pantsu

Really good and needs more attention. If you like scary/suspenseful games and coding, this one is for you.

THIS GAME ROCKS

I assume if you are even looking into a game like this that you are the kind of gamer who is all about the gameplay, and this game will deliver an experience like you never had before, how fitting that at the time of writing everyone is playing horror games around haloween, because this game will give you some crazy scares, and make you so sad when you lose your favorite drone, especially if you lose it to a stupid mistake like leaving him in a room with a turret and then turning on the defense protocol for the ship, I mean, only a complete plonker would do something like that ...
It does not have much in the way of sounds, no music, just really functioning sounds as needed, so I would suggest trying this with the OST for mechanicus in the background, I dare you to find a better soundtrack to go along with this.
Awesome game game for the kind of nerd who can appreciate such games, I am definitely one of them.

Cool concept, but I can't save and quit mid-mission which is insultingly impractical especially when you're evidently supposed to win by dying and starting over repeatedly. Sometimes I get tired of that and want to stop mid-mission, among many other reasons I'd want to stop mid-mission, but you can't. Also the text sometimes gets cropped, and there's a disappointing lack of programmability. This game is more true rogue/nethack than anything else in that you learn by dying and only retain your knowledge, and you will do that a lot to learn even the basics or you go read the wiki.

update: hoping setting the "UI scaling" to not be the default of 720p will help with cropping text, and Enemy Types Reset to reset will make it so i don't have end-game enemies at the start of every reset, Why would "don't reset" be a default?! I don't get to keep my drones or equipment, and I certainly don't know what the hell I'm doing.

update 2: still trying. It's better with the changed settings i mentioned, but new frustrations crop up: dooming a run because it doesn't mention in the manual that broken equipment cannot be repaired, and no way to drive a drone by hand without moving your hand from the home keys. The game should come with a demo copy of voice attack so i can open and close doors with my voice and drive at the same time.

update 3: I bought the upgrade for teleport which lets me teleport things. I did help teleport to see how to use it. See manual, it says. I check the manual, and nothing about how to teleport objects like this stun mine into the room that I want to check for an enemy. So I try something: I leave the mine alone in r1, move to r2, and type "teleport r1 r4" hoping it'll teleport what's in r1 to r4. NOPE. IT TELEPORTED MY DRONE IN R2 TO R4 AND THEN THEY GOT EATEN. WHY DIDN'T IT AT LEAST TELEPORT TO R1??! Ridiculous. Also ridiculous is that if you give a command to move to a room and the door is shut, the drone just sits there instead of moving toward the damn door. Swapping between terminal and the arrow keys is not fun, i don't want to do it. The drones should be marginally less dumb. They should make space for each other, they should move toward closed doors or at least have a command I can input to make them do those things. I think I'm done.

Absolutely engrossing but deeply punishing.

The biggest issue here is that the game is so randomized. There aren't exactly a big variety of methods to play this game, particularly in the early game. Which is fine., you're meant to be scrappy and inventive with random scenarios, I get that. The issue is that your random augments can make or break a run at level 1. You entered a ship with 1 scrap and no fuel, with monsters in every room, and you didn't have the Interface or Motion command? Sucks to suck. It's like trying to join the baseball team, but the price of entry is you have to get whacked on the side of the head without a helmet.

However, when the RNG stars align, and you get a good starting build with a solid initial exploration, this game really shines. This is like a slow-paced strategy that has minor moments of concern and anxiety, which is right up my alley. Any situation could be the most dangerous you've ever seen, or be very easy to handle. The fact that you never know what's next is the spice to this dish, and it's very spicy.

It really just comes down to how much you can tolerate failure. Because you're going to fail A LOT. Over and over, and it will be stupider and harsher every time you make the next mistake. If you're the type of person to lose self-confidence and beat yourself up over minor mistakes that ruin entire runs, this might not be for you. However, if the weird, post-apocalyptic sci-fi vibes and somehow riveting command-line gameplay is up your alley, it might be worth it. If only it weren't so random.

boring asf

Great game that lets you immerse yourself in a remote location. Good game.

I don't really know what to say, it's a great game. Very different from a lot of other things out there, but the atmosphere and story telling is fantastic somehow with the retro DOS style graphics it is able to pull you in.

it's really good for like 20 minuets and then it gets old

good

Creative and unique drone command game

Fun, and spooky. A simple, but enjoyable game. Can be challenging to get the hang of.

very scrumptious game more people should play it or i might lose control