Dustline

Build an outpost. Hold the line. Survive the swarm.

Dustline is a work-in-progress sci-fi colony survival strategy game with pixel-art visuals. Explore alien worlds, expand to fresh salvage deposits and defend your colony against escalating hordes.

Dustline v0.35

Solo play and up to three-player internet co-op. Everyone must use Dustline v0.35. Download the current full game for your platform below; no separate patches are needed.

New in v0.35

• Creature shadows now follow their feet while moving, fixing the detached, floating appearance.
• Clearer combat-mech muzzle flashes and firing bursts, with machine projectiles launching at weapon height.
• Survivor now gives eight minutes before the first horde, up from six. Other difficulties, later wave breaks and saved countdowns are unchanged.

Enemy factions are determined by the world seed: dens have fixed identities and waves rotate through all three. Scout dens or power radar to identify threats in Operations.

Faction and frontier strategy features

• Three visually distinct alien factions: pale cyan Glasswing, armoured Iron Carapace and green-glowing Hollow Raiders. All eleven creature roles have faction artwork, for 33 animated variants.
• Eight-frame walking and attacks, plus eight-frame Siege Brute slams and Brood Engine spawning. Creatures and their offspring keep their faction identity through combat, saves and co-op.
• The Operations window brings expeditions, Threat Reports and team requests together. Scout dens or use powered radar to identify the enemy.
• Timed priority expeditions reward exploration. Teammates can acknowledge requests with On My Way.
• Four additional research choices: Fortress workshops versus Combat engineers, and Signal analysis versus Salvage expeditions.
• A run timeline and colony resource totals help you review how your outpost survived.

Also includes the refreshed terrain, compact interface, unified settings, control groups, idle-unit cycling and factory overview from v0.32.

Vehicles and mechs

Includes the scout buggy, missile rover, combat mech, siege mech and giant Titan, with dedicated factories, timed production, personal factory selection, rally points and twenty vehicle and mech research projects.

• Save your colony: three manual slots, autosaves and recovery copies. Resume co-op with a fresh lobby code; returning keepers retain their squads through their saved identity.
• Choose your frontier: seeded worlds with size options, plus First Landing, Twin Rivers and Ash Basin handcrafted maps. Choose Settler, Survivor or Siege difficulty.
• Explore and specialise: capture expedition facilities, earn research data and choose mutually exclusive research doctrines for your colony and weapons.
• A clearer battlefield: construction progress and completion cues, boss attack warnings, squad destinations, directional hit indicators, team pings and a shared spending/activity log.
• A more living world: environmental ruins, subtle colony activity and an original adaptive score that moves from exploration into horde combat.
• Help and comfort: in-game How to Play, optional first-colony guidance, player-panel symbols alongside team colours, reduced decorative motion and separate music volume.

Build a colony worth defending

Connect your power grid, staff farms and protect food deliveries. Recruit specialist troops, research upgrades and shape the battlefield with connected walls, gates, garrisoned towers, bunkers, lasers, mortars, missile swarms, slowing gloop and flame weapons. Finite salvage encourages expansion. Rivers and hills create choke points; alien nests threaten your perimeter. Survive the campaign and continue into increasingly difficult endless waves.

Later hordes mix armour, runners and ranged acid artillery. Spitters fire visible projectiles; Siege Spitters lob splash attacks over walls. Watch the landing markers and boss telegraphs, move vulnerable troops, and protect more than one approach.

Download and start

• Windows 64-bit: extract Dustline-v0.35-Windows.zip and run Dustline-Windows/Dustline.exe.
• Linux x86_64: extract Dustline-v0.35-Linux.tar.gz and run Dustline-Linux/Dustline.x86_64. Keep executable permissions when copying.
• macOS Intel / Apple Silicon (experimental): extract Dustline-v0.35-Mac.zip and open Dustline-Mac/Dustline.app. This universal build has not been tested on a real Mac and is not Developer ID signed or notarized; macOS may block launch.

Keep the whole game folder together. Unity is not required. Windows–Linux three-player internet co-op has been tested with either platform hosting, including disconnect and rejoin. Linux graphics were tested through WSLg; native Linux hardware and audio still need playtesting. The included START-HERE.md explains controls and systems.

Play with friends

Choose Internet and host a world. Share the code from the paused lobby with up to two friends. They enter it in the Internet menu; when your team is connected, press Start Together. The host must keep the game open. Guests can rejoin a running host with the same code.

The host can save with F5 or Settings → Saved Colonies. Resume a saved colony from the main menu and share its new lobby code. Returning friends should use their original computer/profile. Saves are local; automatic host migration and cloud saves are not included. Resumed colonies are unranked.

Leaderboards in v0.35

The existing solo, two-player and three-player boards are read-only in this release. New ranked challenges and score submissions are temporarily disabled while the new vehicles and mechs are balanced. Regular solo, co-op and saved-colony play remain available.

Online features use Unity services. Your keeper identity, settings and saves remain stored locally on your computer.

Controls

• WASD: move your keeper. Space: centre your camera.
• M: map overview. P: power overlay.
• Select troops and right-click to move; right-click a friendly tower or bunker to garrison. Select a garrison and press U to unload.
• Use the bottom menu to build, recruit and research.
• Alt-click the map or world to ping your team. Choose Defend, Attack or Supplies beneath the minimap.
• F5: host quick-save. Settings includes saved colonies, display, audio, gameplay preferences and exit.

Feedback

Please include your build version, seed or map name, world size, difficulty, solo/co-op mode and wave number when reporting problems. Screenshots help. Balance and features are still changing.

Development and artwork

Developed with AI assistance, including generated sprite artwork, original synthesized music and coding assistance. Screenshots show actual gameplay in staged test scenarios.