Cheats Used
Infinite cash (poke or cheatengine)Save-scumming (partial)
Online Guides (Steam Community, wikia)
(Note: This review is spoiler free, but the story CAN be spoiled.)
Playing as Intended:
In Duskers, you play as (possibly) the last surviving human, searching derelict spacecraft for clues as to what wiped out mankind. The game has two modes: An exploration/ship menu, where you manage resources like scrap, fuel, and equipment, and a top-down real-time tactical mode, where you control drones as they clear and strip derelicts.
The exploration and ship menu is pretty simple. Ships and world objects are represented as names, icons or silhouettes, and stats. Menus are very minimal with blocky terminal text and are controlled through hotkeys. The map is divided into galaxies, systems, and derelicts (ships, outposts, and space stations). Moving between derelicts and systems requires fuel, while galaxies are traversed for free via stargates. Ship customization isn't as involved as equipping drones, and it's often beneficial to ditch your ship in exchange for a derelict if you can clear it of threats.The tactical boarding is where gameplay shines. You control up to four drones (depending on your resources) manually or from an overhead map of the boarded vessel. The graphics are abstract and glitchy, with the drone view looking more like schematics and sonar readings than a direct image. Interference and signal loss are common. Drone movement is controlled with arrow keys, but all drone abilities and interaction with the derelict (opening doors, powering rooms) are done through a command line prompt. Commands can issued in both the drone and overall views (with some limitations) to allow for quick switching. The command interface is deep and enjoyable to master and fits the aesthetic perfectly.
A lot of the tactical game is slow and puzzle-like, using various sensors, traps, and well-timed door openings to explore rooms and avoid hazards. You can lose drones (with all their equipment) to various baddies, radiation, or just an ill-timed airlock opening. Your drones can salvage scrap (the game's currency and crafting material), fuel, equipment, and sometimes even rescue a drone buddy for your collection.
The story is communicated through messages you receive when boarding ships, allowing you to investigate multiple competing theories of destruction by completing increasingly obtuse tasks (e.g., hunting down specific ships based on sketchy info, capturing difficult ships and dragging them to derelict outposts, etc.). Each derelict can only be boarded once. It's possible to halt your progress by landing on a target ship before receiving an objective (unless they've fixed this.) Even then, I had times where I had raided every "easy" derelict of a certain type and had to find much harder ones to complete an objective. The game can be "reset" and keep story progress to get around this, but you'll be right back in a starter ship.
Resource management is key. Drone and ship equipment degrade and often have limited charges, costing scrap to maintain. Jumping from system to system requires precious jump fuel. Propulsion fuel lets you travel between derelicts within a system and recharges with every jump, but this baseline will only allow you to hit two or the derelicts before you start eating into your (collected) reserves. Hitting more derelicts is a gamble because it burns resources and risks drones, but you need to hit at least enough ships to keep you flying.
Cheating for Cheating Cheaters
What you can get rid of: Resource management, scraping for equipment, drone fragilityWhat is still fun: Tense ship-boarding tactics, commandeering, the obtuse-ass story missions
Cheats
Adding infinite scrap (cash) with a hex editor is really simple if you're familiar with the process. You'll have to set it again each time you travel between galaxies. I recommend setting your scrap to the ship's maximum capacity and locking the value to avoid error messages.
This eliminates much of the resource management grind: you can use scrap to buy as much jump fuel as you want from any trading station, and you can keep your ship and drones in top shape. (... Assuming you remember to repair each time). Unlimited jump fuel also means unlimited in-system fuel, because you can just jump back and forth between systems to recharge it.
When you don't have to worry about equipment degradation and charges, the scavenging becomes much more about acquiring the right combo of equipment to fit your playstyle AND accomplish mission objectives. One developer post claimed that there was no rarity system for equipment, but I found interfaces (quest-required) and drone turrets hard to come by. You can also upgrade drone health from the default (~100 hp) to a maximum of 500 hp using scrap. Most enemies can chew through 100 hp in seconds, making any mistake fatal; 500 will usually buy you a second chance. Bountiful equipment makes the tactical game more puzzle-like and less tedious, but the tension is still palpable and the chance of failure is very real.
The really bizarre mission requirements also keep the missions challenging, especially if you don't have complete info for some of the objectives. This can be frustrating and bizarre, but in a pretty satisfying way. (I mean, you know, that feeling you get from roguelikes.)
Survivability and lasting equipment make drones less precious. Losing a drone in intended play can be a game-ender, so having spares and a good stock of equipment takes the edge off of this. By the late game I was regularly scrapping spares in the hopes of finding rare 4-equipment-slot drones.
If things go belly up and you start losing multiple drones (and you're a filthy cheater like me), you can partially save-scum by alt-tabbing and closing the game in Windows BEFORE returning to your ship. (NOT through the menu!) The game autosaves when you board a derelict and when you return. Closing the game will mark the ship as boarded, but it will not save anything that happened on-board. This also means that you can't commandeer the ship and might miss out on objectives.
Online Guides
Sometimes it feels like the missions are bugged, but they're often functioning as intended and you may just not have found the right communication. Docking with random derelicts can reveal new info and open up new theories to investigate. You will also need to find and read supplemental logs that appear in the quest section, as some have key info like derelict names and locations. I had often acquired all the supplemental logs before getting far into objectives, but this might be because I felt safer boarding lots of derelicts.
The developer has been active on the Steam Community and answered several questions with minimal spoilers, but BEWARE googling this: Other posters were not so considerate. It also seems like the dev's answers might be from previous patches (it is a 2 year old game), so take their bug suggestions with a grain of salt.
The fan wiki has decent but incomplete info on many of the game mechanics. It WILL.spoil the story if you read the entire page of each quest. You might be safe looking at the next objective, but be careful of scrolling too far.
Final Thoughts
I admire the use of mechanics, graphics, and objectives in Duskers to set the tone. This game is about desperate, hopeless scraping, trying to uncover the facts about a world that has already ended. It feels like you're constantly pushing the limits and risking everything to unlock these secrets, but even your failures don't matter. You can always hit the reset button and blow through a new ship and an empty map to continue the story.
You might think cheating out the resource management would detract from this mood, but the tense tactical combat and bleak story are still plenty to engage you as a player. I honestly couldn't imagine playing this vanilla. I've managed to play most of the missions out to their conclusions in 24 hours of play, before hitting a point where I would need to reset the game. Doing all this with occasional deaths and tedious resource management would take forever. It would probably take me another 10 hours to complete the last few quests post-reset, since I would have to rebuild my inventory and fully map out the re-rolled universe. I probably won't put in the effort, however, because some angsty folks on the Steam Community boards spoiled the endings.
With cheats, if you can actually figure out how quests work early, you might be looking at around 30 hours of gameplay.
Would recommend.
