From what can be seen so far, Dusk is an ambitious open world survival horror game with an awful lot of potential. That potential has reportedly fired it up to second place in the Greenlight rankings with an 80% approval rating.
Parkour is a major aspect of the game, helping players both get around and escape enemies. Players will also be able to drive, befriend various animals, build defences around their chosen bases, craft weapons and customise both their own and their companion’s appearance.
Players will be, for the most part, safe during the day provided they don’t start wandering into dark places like abandoned buildings. During the night, they’ll have to hide, or run, or make use of whatever weapons they’ve collected while various sub-human creatures try to tear their skin off.
One of the most interesting gameplay elements discussed was the enemy’s ability to track you back to your base if you head there after dusk. Having found your base those enemies would continue to attack you nightly until you relocate your base.
The exact scope and implementation of a lot of these gameplay elements is still being decided, but it seems to be a solid base to work from.
The game’s designer is Marc Steene, a 21 year old graduate from the University of Bristol whose previous forays into the survival-horror genre are Slenderman’s Shadow, part of a series of games based on the popular Creepypasta and The Curse of Blackwater which was successfully greenlit in 2013.
Dusk seems to be a melting pot of influences. Just watching the trailer will give you flashbacks to I Am Legend, which Steene himself has said was a major influence before outlining how he feels “psychological aspects” like isolation are more important in the genre than gore.
Some of the parallels aren’t as intentional but may make players feel at home. Things like the construction elements will make you think of another Greenlight game, The Forest. Wandering around in the dark with a torch and that flight before fight mentality might make you think of Slender or Amnesia. The first person parkour might send you back to Mirror’s Edge or Dying Light; and the image of a lion wandering around an overgrown, post apocalyptic city in a tutu will just scream Tokyo Jungle to some people.
Dusk will be based around the Unity engine, which Steene has also used for his previous games. Although Unity is often the engine of choice for mobile games, it has been used to create several notable indie games including Kerbal Space Program and Wasteland 2.
Depending on the level of funding received, both an original orchestral score for the game and support for virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift may be added. These additions could make all of the difference as music really sets the tone for a horror game and virtual reality, done well, can only intensify the emotions these games make you feel.
Dusk is scheduled for a 2016 release, initially on PC, Mac and Linux with a potential move to consoles at a later date.
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