Why The Lost Town – The Dust was developed for DSiWare, I have no idea. It’s an indie production with some great ideas under the hood, that is also severely hampered by the limitations of the platform.
It’s a game that can be broken into two – quite literally day and night. The game features a clock that runs along at a snappy pace. During the “daylight” hours, the girl with the ‘tude wanders about the town, killing zombie monsters milling about and collecting experience points and weaponry as she rescues villages. Come “night,” those milling enemies suddenly become a lot more aggressive and start bee-lining towards a central refuge in waves, which you need to protect, so there are two ways to get the “game over” screen here – dying, or allowing enemies to break through into the refuge.
Problem number two is the aesthetics. This is the kind of game that should be creepy. The music does a reasonable job of setting things up, and the premise is not so far from those B-grade horror zombie films that are so much fun to watch, but the game plays from a top-down perspective. That means for the entire game all you see is the tops of your character head, attacking the top of the enemy’s heads. Circle vs. circle is not an exciting or creepy design choice – this is why the industry moved to isometric perspectives a long time ago.
There’s also some irritating bugs to deal with. Pathfinding is terrible – enemies and characters routinely get stuck on walls and debris, and collision detection is wonky at best of times. Smashing those pots never happens on the first attempt.
There’s a lot to like about the game – it’s simple fun, but it’s addictive, and the mixing of tower defence elements with action RPG is an inspired – if safe – path to take. It’s just a pity that the end result is a game of missed opportunities. Hopefully a sequel can take better advantage of the opportunities this game gave itself, and perhaps on 3DS (or iPhone/ iPad) the game can make use of the softer platform restrictions to build a better fleshed out experience.
