'From Dust'

I have recently purchased 'From Dust', a new summer release Xbox Live Arcade title. For those who are not familiar with the look or feel of the game, it is a game that has the view of the older real time strategy games such as Warcraft, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer etc. You have the ability to zoom in closer to the map to make more accurate additions with your spherical cursor or have the camera farther away which gives the ability of moving to another section of the map quicker.

Your goal is to lead your small tribe to different totems around the small map. For every totem you activate, your tribe will create a small village that will grant you a power that will aide you in completing the level. (infinite land, jellify water etc) After activating all of the totems, your exit stone will be highlighted and you must lead your tribe to it. As the game progresses, the levels become slightly more difficult by adding elements of lava and tsunamis that arrive/activate every time the countdown in the top right corner reaches zero. To battle these elements you can send your tribesmen to specific rock-like relics that protect your small totem village, the red preventing lava and fire damage and the blue preventing tsunami damage. The secondary mission in every level was to create enough plant life in the map to unlock more of the story and challenges. There is a small percentage bar to show how close you are to getting to 100%. The way to do that was by having a water source somewhat close to your totem villages so that your lush vegetation could spread over fresh earth.

I had a lot of fun when I first picked this game up. I found myself moving earth and creating my own landscape, reforming sand mountains to my liking around my tribe's village. The way the terrain moved around reminded me a lot of the map editor in the Far Cry game series. As I went in to the later levels I had to adapt a different strategy each time, my main strategy was to isolate my totem villages from dangers of water and lava by using the lava to create taller mountains. One of my huge downfalls on some of the maps, was forgetting about brush fires. All it would take was a slightly misplaced lava drop or lava flow to ignite the vegetation and slowly making its way to my village until it burned it to the ground and had to be rebuilt. I have enjoyed this game so far, but the farther I get in to the game, the more I feel like there are some things missing. I feel like there could be way more natural disasters and more elements to the game. Worrying about fire and water was getting a little old after 6 levels, I wanted more. Animals? Earthquakes? Other Tribes? I don't know if the addition of any of those would make it better. It almost seemed like the creators of the game wanted  to base it around those two main elements of fire and water. Whatever the case may be, I feel like it needed more.

 As much as I felt that there could be a lot more to the game, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and I'd recommend at least a demo of the game to people to see if they like it. This game was amazingly unique and unlike anything I have played before. The idea of the game is what really sucked me in, I love when companies use something that that has not been done before. Hopefully they can build off this game and use it as a stepping stone to a much better game in the future.  Final Rating 7/10