Review by: William Abner

People like labels. They love things which are easily defined. This game is a shooter, that is an rpg, this other one is a sports game. So when someone tries to classify From Dust, the new Xbox Live Arcade game from UbiSoft and developer Eric Chahi as a ‘god game’, that term doesn’t mean a lot to a good chunk of people. Is it a strategy game? Not really. Is it a real time game? Technically, yes. Is it a sandbox game? It can be. What exactly do you do? Describing From Dust to an outsider takes a little time.

At its heart, From Dust is a puzzle game. You play “The Breath”, an ancient power of sorts which a lost tribe has summoned to help find their way. This tribe is suffering from a strange case of Amnesia it seems as they don’t know who they are, where they come from or why they’re there in the first place. It’s your job as this mystical Breath to guide them to their destination. You do this by manipulating the landscape, calling on totem powers, and leading the tribe from location to location after each area has been fully populated and conquered.

I’m sure it makes perfect sense now, right?

The Breath is basically a little black ball with a comet like tail which you scoot around each map terraforming the land to your will. You need to do this because the tribe members start each map homeless, needing to find these large, white pillar-like totems. You locate a totem, click on it, and the tribes people make their way to the totem to activate it. You never have direct control over the tribe, and thankfully the path finding in the game is mostly great, which is a relief as bad path finding would ruin the entire experience.

After five tribes people reach a totem they pray there for a second and then quickly erect a village. The goal of each map is to reach (and maintain) four totems and then guide five tribes people to the map exit.

Additionally, praying at a totem activates that specific totem’s power. These powers vary from map to map; one totem power may allow you to briefly turn the water on a map into jelly, which in turn allows you to easily scoop it up, allowing for magnificent partings of the seas as tribes people run across the sea floor while the jelly water waits ominously to turn back into liquid. Another power causes water to evaporate, and another puts out fires. There are many powers like this in this game and each map allows access to four specific ones (which are triggered with a D-pad press). These powers are timed so you can’t constantly use them but knowing when to activate them is a key part of the game.