Dust: An Elysian Tail – Trailer

By: Xander

On: August 6th, 2009

Dust is just one of a number of projects being created under the ‘Elysian Tail’ franchise, which includes an independent animated feature film and of course this very pretty game. Dean Dodrill is the man behind the animation, and the programming, and the sound and.. well everything except for the music.

There isn’t much to go on currently beyond this trailer, but it seems to divulge a fair amount of the gameplay, where the majority of the action is reminiscent of a side-scrolling beat’em up with a dash of platforming thrown in for good measure. So far it looks pretty damn exciting, with special note of course going towards the animation which just makes everthing look wonderful, even if you find the character designs a little offputting at first.

Definitely the biggest barrier the game will face will be trying to cross that strange ‘furry threshold’, as so long as the controls and hit-detection feel satisfying this could be the one of the best games to hit.. actually, what is it coming out on?

As it is being entered into the Dream Build Play competition it maybe a full Xbox Live Arcade title. If not though it may end up as an ‘Xbox Indie’ title. No official word, but expect more soon!

(Source: Destructoid.com)

Posted in Action, Games and Art?, Windows, Xbox 360 | Tags: DeanDodrill

RayRayTea

That idle animation looks awfully familiar… Maybe a Street Fighter or Streets of Rage? Or maybe something from NeoGeo?… can’t remember.
http://lumberingdream.com/ !CE-9

RayRayTea: I’m fairly sure it’s Paws Of Fury 2: Paws of Furry
zork nemesis

I’m almost crying right now guys. i’m so proud. I wanted to be the first to shit on that run cycle and several people beat me to it. The internet hasn’t lost all hope after all.

And why are the character portraits drawn like some terrible webcomic? Did the original artist quit at some point? Did their budget run out? Complete stylistic discordance.
Gutter

So is this a running joke around here or something?

Furries are bad, and always have been bad, WHEN THEY ARE SEXUALIZED. The whole furry backlash started when people started pretending to do dirty, dirty stuff with antropomorphic characters.

They aren’t bad in themselves, and they aren’t bad when put in a quality offering like this one.

But why do I explain this, as it has to be a running joke. TIGSource dwellers aren’t as ridiculous as that, aren’t they?

//I had to look up “sexualized” to make sure that it was a real word, and GIS confirmed it with this : http://contexts.org/socimages/files/blogger2wp/Gender-SexualizedFoodchicken.jpg
Xander

Yeah, I get the feeling maybe the character portraits are placeholders. At least I hope so, they don’t match the quality of the rest of the art by far.

I also hope someone convinces him to change the walking animation, I hadn’t really noticed it but it’s kind of weird way to move around.
http://studioeres.com Paul Eres

looks nice. i’m not sure i agree about it looking better than odin sphere, but it’s certainly up there in the nicest-looking 2d games category
FishyBoy

All of the animation is really nice, except the run animation which looks completely out of place. All of the other characters moves have weight and feeling to them, and his run animation looks like his just swinging his front leg back and forth and somehow gliding forwards.
Jay

I’d just like to contribute that here be furries.

NO!!!!!!!
beatsme

Pretty, but ultra cheesy-synth BGM.
JW

this is ironic and true:

fucking furries
Xab

Nice hand-drawn characters and backgrounds, cool graphics, smooth animations.. I’d rate it higher if only that orange pixie thing wasn’t hypersexualized.
gc

Has a lot of potential and already has a lot right but the bug-eyed (Pokemon) anime kills it for me. Just a personal beef though. Not my style.
Kevin Gadd

Tremendously fun game. The animation definitely looks on par with Odin Sphere’s when you see it in action at 720P – I don’t know if I’d say it’s *better*, since it lacks a certain… something. But it’s really well executed and it doesn’t hurt that the game itself is actually pretty fun too.
Cappell

Looks fucking fantastic. Odin Sphere was an amazing game, and so was the Jazz Jackrabbit series. I hope it doesn’t become an xbla title and stays on xna…. 15-20 is too expensive
Carl (Small Cave Games)

Tough crowd – looks stylistically brilliant to me. I agree with some of the others, it’ll come down to making the sidescolling combat interesting and not just flashy. Even if it does that just OKAY, still worth a look on production value alone.
http://www.g4g.it Firesword

http://www.elysiantail.com/image/screens/2004jan25.jpg

lol
zork nemesis

firesword: the worlds first cartoon made in GIMP???
pandafresh

everything looks pretty coool…..save for that running animation, that’s all sorts of terrible.
negative zero

excellent animation, though my only gripe with it is his run cycle; looks odd, but still pretty good. the whole furry thing is a slight turn off for me as well, tho all i need to do is be reminded of Star Fox and i’m good to go.

man, i love seeing games created by 1 man armies.
http://studioeres.com Paul Eres

also impressive is that this guy apparently only learned programming 7 months ago, and this is his first game, and he’s doing everything for it except the music (art, programming, sounds, writing, etc.)
zork nemesis

paul: I don’t know if that impresses me or worries me. I hope it’s not littered with bugs and glitches. ALTHOUGH I will say that XBLA generally does a pretty good job of making sure games won’t destroy your xbox before sending them out. So I guess that means I’m impressed!
Sergio

This seems so much in the spirit of Jazz Jackrabbit to me that I think I’ll enjoy it.
Anthony Flack

Looks cool, except for, yeah, that weird running animation.

I couldn’t care less about people’s furryphobia; yeah the character designs aren’t to my personal taste but not so much as to be a deal-breaker.

But I must have missed the memo about Odin Sphere having impressive animation – it’s mostly just segmental rotation isn’t it? That’s like saying Earnest Evans had awesome animation.
http://studioeres.com Paul Eres

Earnest Evans had awesome animation
Bob

Paul: I’m pretty sure that the guy said that he already had programming skills, but just hadn’t done any for a long time.
http://www.g4g.it Firesword

zork nemesis: eh?

lol
FishyBoy

Oh, by the way guys, Cave Story had furries too, you know.

WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW
Sparky

I’m pretty impressed at the scope of this, considering it’s a single developer effort. Someone’s got a great work ethic.

I could nitpick, but honestly it would just be my jealousy doing the talking (but damn- fix that run animation!). Okay, I’ll stop now.

Best wishes in the competition!
Anthony Flack

“Earnest Evans had awesome animation”

Guys, it really, really didn’t.
Phasma Felis

“However, since the furry fanbase is very small, I donâ€™t know how profitable the game will be”

Fortunately it turns out that it’s just Internet People who actually pay attention to the OMG FURRIES wanking and wailing. The huge majority of gamers just, y’know, like to play games that are fun.