about QDUST

i am now doing things a bit differently here on patreon! firstly, i'm writing more regular updates for patrons. so if you're a patron, you will now receive news about projects and upcoming releases every month. if you're at the 10$ plus level, you will receive advance builds, exclusive media and various experiments.

and if you're /not/ a patron, you can still get access to new public facing posts and articles.

this first public post is about one of my current projects, "QDUST". QDUST is a gloriously trashy RPG. i mean "trashy" in a redemptive sense. the traditional approach when making an RPG is to take handfuls of time honored RPG components and meticulously arrange them into a gleaming temple. inside the temple are shrines to the item upgrade treadmill, min-maxing, careful tuning, and weighty decision making. QDUST does not do this. QDUST takes RPG components and unrepentently glues them into a huge, sticky ball.

the seed of this project was a video i came across of the 1985 game "Xanadu". it is a mesmerizing dirge of a game. all the versions are interesting, but the one that i resonated with is the FM-7 version. you can find the initial video which captivated me here:
https://youtu.be/OdfSO8sRppo

i was immediately transfixed. superficially, Xanadu seems like a simple, mechanically focused, shallow rpg. but through a combination of incredible skill and happenstance, the flow of the game ends up being thoroughly captivating. it has such an incredible sense of mystery and dread, such a sense of physicality. i love how heavy everything feels, the strange plodding feel of combat and pushing into chests to open them. it reminds me of trying to operate one's unresponsive limbs during a fever.

QDUST also weaves in aspects of several other falcom RPGs, the original 1986 version of "legend of zelda", and an older project of mine which some of you may have played, "tiny crawl".