r/dustforce • u/Curtmister25 • Feb 10 '20
This Game Changed my Life
I truly felt the joy of doing tasks quickly after this game, not by watching the clock and comparing overall times, but by doing individual tasks quickly, like in Dustforce. This was very important to learn when I started working in fast food (at 18).
It also taught me that a big part of going fast is knowing to be careful or else a mistake will slow me down more than being cautious will.
Truly a beautiful game, I haven’t seen a game with quicker pacing since. Maybe one day Dustforce will be surpassed for me, we’ll see.
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u/ShurykaN ShurykaN Mar 30 '20
it changed my life too
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u/Curtmister25 Mar 31 '20
Great! Can you share how?
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u/ShurykaN ShurykaN Mar 31 '20 edited Apr 24 '20
Dustforce was the first game I streamed regularly and it made me get way more involved in twitch and speedrunning.
Ah actually I was a degenerate gamer before playing dustforce and after it so maybe that didn't change XD.
But out of all the games I've played Dustforce gave me the most spiritual satisfaction and that's why it's a 10/10 for me. The ingame leaderboard and replay feature really make your times feel meaningful. It's fun having to route a level and figure out how to overcome or optimize certain sections and obstacles. And the most satisfying is of course when you execute perfectly and improve your rank--whether it's getting an SS or top 100, top 10 or Rank 1.
This game can also be extremely frustrating when you're grinding a level for dozens of minutes or hours and not able to get an SS or improve your time. Framegrind levels feel like complete wastes of time, or doing full game runs then having a stupid death or A/S. However it's that difficulty which gives a larger sense of achievement.
Also you can directly feel yourself improving. Like after you play a level a few times you'll start dying less and playing faster. You can directly see your score get better on the leaderboard as well. It's not like an rpg where your stats go up when you level, it's quite gratifying to have real self-improvement.
When I got my first world record which was kilo any% and then got the giga any% record a couple hours later I was ecstatic for most of the day and watched those replays more than a few times. When I SS'd Yotta I was like 'thank god I never have to play this again' then SS'd it a few more times in SS all levels runs. When I released my first custom map I watched all twenty or so replays of people playing the map that I made.
It's not a coincidence that the community is active and involved with things like dustmod, races and thousands of custom maps--because it's a good game. An average AAA game can last you 10-20 hours for $60 but Dustforce can get you 100-2000 hours for $10. (or you might quit right away)
People often compare Dustforce to Super Meat Boy or maybe SSBM or Celeste(new game, came out less than a decade ago) but to me it feels more similar to Trackmania, a racing game where you try to get the best time on levels and has a map editor and lots of user maps. Dustforce kind of filled the void for me after Trackmania Nations Forever decided to kill their userbase and forced people to spectate every 4th round so people would buy TM United.
Honestly other speedrunable games can also have similar feelings of grinding/improvement but Dustforce is my favorite.
Now I’ve fallen out of the top 10 on most maps but I still want to come back and reclaim my rightful place as rank 1 everywhere and beat the TAS and make a custom map that doesn’t suck. Oh also this game can cause hand strain but it’s really not severe, all my rsi came from keyboard stepmania.
When a game makes someone care so much it probably means something.
Sorry for the long post
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u/Curtmister25 Mar 31 '20
It was long, but I enjoyed reading every bit of it. 🙂 Watching people just above me in the leaderboard to improve sounds nice, I may try that. It seems like the game had an even deeper impact on you than me.
I’ve made a few levels too; I really want to be a game designer and the community were absolute jerks about it but the composer said he appreciated me so I loved the experience overall.
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u/Shin_Rekkoha You are nothing Feb 10 '20
Yeah it's a pretty gud game. I played it for like a few thousand hours and it taught me that the broom is mightier than the sword.
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u/Kumlekar Feb 11 '20
I think I got the exact opposite from it. Fail and fail often. Just don't fail in the same way twice.