Dustborn FAQ

[Red Thread Games]

Latest update: 24 January 2025

What kind of game is Dustborn?

A third-person adventure game with branching conversations, choices and consequences, relationship management, exploration, some easy action and light puzzle solving.

This video is a good introduction and explainer to Dustborn’s game mechanics. You can also play the FREE demo on Steam.

What’s the game about?

A road trip across an alternate history North America with a band of musical outcasts. Check out the official website[www.wearethedustborn.com].

What platforms is Dustborn available on?

The game is available for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series S/X. You can buy the PC version on Steam, GOG, and the Epic Store.

The game is also available in a physical collector’s edition, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X only.

The game is coming “soon” to MacOS, and we’re evaluating a PlayStation 5 Pro update.

Has the game been tested for Steam Deck?

Tested and verified: Dustborn works great on the Steam Deck, perfect for a real road trip!

Are there any known issues with the game?

Nothing major that we’re aware of, but we continue to test and monitor the discussions. If any bugs pop up, it usually doesn’t take long for us to fix them.

Bugs can be reported in the Steam forum, and on our Discord[discord.com], which has a dedicated #dustborn-bugreport channel.

Will you continue to patch and support the game?

Absolutely. We’ve patched the game multiple times, and the team is committed to making improvements to Dustborn over the coming year.

We’ll continue to provide updates on our patch schedule and any new content through our forums and social channels. You can also check in on our public roadmap[trello.com].

Will there be any paid expansions or DLC?

We’re considering it. It depends on how busy the team will be working on patches and other projects.

Our regular free updates include new content and bug fixes, along with features that improve the player experience, so there might not be a need for paid expansions or DLC. But we’ll let you know!

Where can I follow the development progress?

The best places are Discord[discord.com], the Steam forum, and our public roadmap[trello.com]. You can also follow us on Bluesky[bsky.app]. We’re no longer posting much to X/Twitter or Facebook, so you might want to follow us in other channels.

What are the key themes of Dustborn?

It’s about hope and resilience, about how people communicate and the effects words can have on others, about friendships and how lasting bonds are formed and strengthened through conversation and companionship. It’s also about the origins of language and human consciousness.

Is there any long-term replayability in Dustborn?

Dustborn is a mostly linear game, featuring what we call “emotional branching”, where characters behave differently based on how you talk to and interact with them. Depending on your dialogue choices, in a single play-through you may unlock only 30-40% of the dialogue.

There are multiple endings for every major character, many puzzles have alternate solutions, and some scenes play out differently based on choices and NPC “Codas”. Whether that’s enough to justify another play-through is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

What are “Codas”?

Your crew members have different emotional paths influenced by player actions and dialogue choices. These Codas lead to different endings (also called “Codas”). In addition, the Codas influence how crew members act and behave throughout the game.

What accessibility options are available in Dustborn?

• Subtitles come in different fonts, and can be stacked, colour-coded, and scaled. You can also enable or disable character names.
  
• You can invert the X/Y axis, and modify camera sensitivity. You can also enable or disable camera smoothing.
  
• You can modify the interaction speed (i.e. how long you have to hold a button down for the game to react).
  
• QTE (quick-time events) can be simplified to make them easier to complete.
  
• There are three difficulty modes for combat.
  
• You can also skip combat completely, to focus on just the story.
  
• Combat banter can be disabled, to make action scenes less conversationally noisy.
  
• You can skip dialogue lines.
  
• You can pause conversations to scroll back through the dialogue log.

Currently, we don’t support remapping keyboard controls or changing control schemes on consoles. This is in the works for a future update.

If you have ideas or input on additional accessibility options that could be useful and helpful to our players, please let us know!

Who’s this game for?

Players who love narratives and adventure games, dialogue and exploration, and simple rhythm and action mechanics. The music mini-game is very forgiving; even if you’re “bad” at it, you’re never blocked from progressing in the story. In fact, the story responds and reacts to your (lack of) skills.

The balance between action and story leans heavily in favour of the latter. Don’t expect a huge amount of combat — and if you don’t care for combat, you can skip it completely.

If you enjoyed the Telltale games, Life is Strange, or Red Thread’s previous titles — Dreamfall Chapters, Draugen — you might like Dustborn.

Dustborn is a slower-paced game with a deep story that’s best enjoyed over time, which is why we divided the game into stand-alone chapters, framed as comic-book “issues”. The “perfect” pace to play Dustborn is probably over the course of a few weeks, rather than days.

Who’s the game NOT for?

Players looking for a pure action game, or a challenging game. Players who don’t have patience for long dialogues. If you don’t enjoy characters who talk at length about their feelings, you’ll probably want to look elsewhere. If you want realism, Dustborn might not be your jam. The game’s setting is a heightened, over-the-top, comic-book inspired alternate history world. It’s not for everyone.

Despite getting a physical release on consoles, Dustborn is not a triple-A game: it’s an indie game through and through, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Watch the gameplay footage, play the Steam demo, read the reviews. And if you don’t like what you see, that’s okay!

Will my progress from the demo be transferred to the full game?

Yes! If you play through the new demo and want to see the full story, you can purchase the game and continue playing where you stopped.

The demo has a playtime of around two hours. The full game will take you anywhere from 15-25 hours to complete.

Why does the game have a song about replacing white people?

That song ("We are the Dust Born") is not about replacing white people. It’s about “Anomals” (in the game’s parlance, people with the power to use words to affect others) asserting themselves against “normals” (people without vocal powers) who want to destroy them.

The songs in Dustborn, much like the game itself, are about resisting oppressive forces. The protagonists are refugees with special powers, and their music reflects their struggle against Justice and the Puritans. The line "we will eclipse you" is a metaphor for overcoming the forces of oppression.

Why do the lyrics in the song mention 'New Porn'?

“The new porn” is a phrase that, in this context, means “a new cultural obsession or a popular trend, to the point where it becomes widely consumed and addictive”. "The new born" are Anomals. What this song is saying is that “Anomals are new(born), and everyone’s obsessed with them”.

Was this game funded by taxpayers?

Most of the game's budget was privately funded, but like many games made in Europe, Dustborn received development grants. Here’s a full list of our public funding sources:

• The Norwegian Film Institute (NFI): 13.6M Norwegian kroner (NOK), equivalent to around 1.21M USD
  
• Creative Europe MEDIA: EUR 150 000 Euros, roughly equivalent to USD 157K
  
• Viken Filmsenter: NOK 300K, equivalent to around USD 26.8K

The total amount of grants was around USD 1.39M. That’s a significant amount of money, and we’re incredibly grateful for the support, but it's not enough to fund a game with Dustborn’s scope.

The bulk of the budget came from publisher funding, and from Red Thread Games itself, using revenue from our catalogue titles.

I read that the U.S. government funded a game about disinformation. Wasn’t that Dustborn?

No. Red Thread Games has never received funding from the U.S. government or state department, and no American taxpayer money has gone into Dustborn’s development.

The game in question (“Cat Park”) has nothing to do with us. It’s an innocent (and nonpartisan) little game about disinformation made in the Netherlands.

Will you make a sequel to Dustborn?

Eventually, hopefully, maybe.

We know where the story is going, and what kind of game “Dustborn 2” will be, but we worked on Dustborn for four years — all through Covid lockdown — and right now we’re ready for some new challenges.

For obvious reasons, the team would also like a change of scenery and a chance to take a break from all the drama and noise around Dustborn.

Hopefully someday we’ll be able to return to this world and do something new and interesting and different with it…and when we do, we’re sure everyone will have opinions. And that’s fine, maybe even exciting, because whatever Dustborn Part 2 may be…it’s probably not what you expect!

(Just, you know, don’t hold your breath.)

[Red Thread Games]

Originally posted by holdingsix:

Cool stuff! Two minor remarks:
"over the next year" - should probably be "over this year/2025"?
"known issues with the game" - even if there are no major, game-breaking issues right now, there are still a few unresolved bug reports in the #dustborn-bugreport channel on the Dustborn Discord. It could make sense to mention the channel in the answer.

Good points, we'll update the FAQ!

[Unknown Samurai]

Why do the lyrics in the song mention 'New Born' and 'New Porn'?

“The new porn” is a phrase that, in this context, means “a new cultural obsession or a popular trend, to the point where it becomes widely consumed and addictive”. "The new born" are Anomals. What this song is trying to say is that “Anomals are new(born), and everyone’s obsessed with them”.

Pax gets called out for the lyrics in the very next scene — and she immediately dismisses it, which feels shortsighted…and a bit rude. She was being irresponsible by debuting that song (which she JUST wrote) to the very people who are out to hurt them…

"The Dust Born" aren't meant to be a professional band. They're a bunch of people who have barely played together, and Pax isn't really a songwriter. We could perhaps have done a better job communicating this to players, but the idea is that their songs are scrappy and unpolished. We still wanted them to be catchy and playable, of course, but unlike the pop-song they sing along with in the car at the start (which was written by an extremely talented professional singer-songwriter), we decided to make the band's songs less professional-sounding.

(I've seen this comment pop up more times than I can count, so I figured I'd drop your previous responses here.)

[Red Thread Games]

Originally posted by Unknown Samurai:

Why do the lyrics in the song mention 'New Born' and 'New Porn'?

Thanks! We'd hoped this silly topic had been put to rest, but it's clearly a thing people will keep bringing up (for…reasons) until the end of times, so we should probably add it to the FAQ. Not sure it will make much difference! But still.

[Houseman]

Might as well add something about how the game was funded, since that's an accusation that keeps getting made also.

[Unknown Samurai]

Originally posted by Houseman:

Might as well add something about how the game was funded, since that's an accusation that keeps getting made also.

Oh yeah, that's popped up a lot too.

[Red Thread Games]

Originally posted by Unknown Samurai:

Why do the lyrics in the song mention 'New Born' and 'New Porn'?

Originally posted by Houseman:

Might as well add something about how the game was funded, since that's an accusation that keeps getting made also.

We've updated the FAQ with your feedback and suggestions. Thanks for contributing!

[holdingsix]

Originally posted by Red Thread Games:

The songs in Dustborn, much like the game itself, are about resisting oppressive forces. The protagonists are refugees with special powers, and their music reflects their struggle against Justice and the Puritans. The line "we will replace you" is a metaphor for overcoming the forces of oppression.

Does the song actually contain that line, though? I think the closest to it is "we will eclipse you", which some people might interpret as referring to a white-with-black replacement, even though the word "to eclipse" has a literal meaning that's closer to the spirit of the song:

"verb: eclipse -- to deprive (someone or something) of significance or power" (Oxford)

[Red Thread Games]

Originally posted by holdingsix:

Originally posted by Red Thread Games:

The songs in Dustborn, much like the game itself, are about resisting oppressive forces. The protagonists are refugees with special powers, and their music reflects their struggle against Justice and the Puritans. The line "we will replace you" is a metaphor for overcoming the forces of oppression.

Does the song actually contain that line, though? I think the closest to it is "we will eclipse you", which some people might interpret as referring to a white-with-black replacement, even though the word "to eclipse" has a literal meaning that's closer to the spirit of the song:

"verb: eclipse -- to deprive (someone or something) of significance or power" (Oxford)

You're right! Like with Dustborn's Echoes, the disinformation on YouTube and social media has poisoned our minds!

We will fix this immediately.