Introduction
Dust Raiders, developed by Vixa Games and released on July 17th, 2025, is a challenging resource management indie. It focuses on a story-driven adventure about blasting through the wastelands and stocking up on resources and strength to defeat the infamous Sawblade. Overall the game runs well and is a lot of fun. My only gripe is the storyline that leaves me wanting more.
Narrative
In Dust Raiders you play as the wasteland's "good guy." Your goal is to seek revenge on Sawblade after he wiped out your enclave and murdered your crew. The game opens in the aftermath of the attack with your resources and convoy being decimated. While on your revenge tour, you travel the desert, going from enclave to enclave, helping the local residents survive in the post-apocalyptic nightmare. This includes battling raiders, locating resources, and later on transporting people to new enclaves. As you progress, you slowly realize that while you still seek revenge on Sawblade, you also want to better the new world. The wasteland may have monsters and evil that lurk behind every corner, but there are still settlers that want to rebuild for the good of humanity.
Gameplay
Starting out, you roam the desert on foot, exploring different wrecks looking for supplies to fix up the refinery. This is home base, where you can purchase repairs and gas for free if running low on funds. This is the start of your resource management. The game gives you a common ballistic rifle for your vehicle, and you are tasked with roaming the desert looking for new enclaves to better your gear, find new crew, and upgrade your weapons.
Once my convoy hit the road, I cut through the fog of war that revealed new enclaves that had a variety of resources to trade and new missions. The easiest way I found to manage funds was buying resources at a low price and selling them to an enclave with higher demand. This was the easiest way of increasing my funds to buy upgrades and defeat difficult raiders. Each new enclave had missions tasking me to find random encounters, restock low inventory, or battle an enemy convoy that was too close to the enclave.
Dust Raiders does a great job of making the player feel the resource scarcity of the wasteland. Every time I lost a battle and got recalled back to the previous settlement, I lost almost all of my built-up items. You can recover some of your resources, but it is only a fraction of what you previously had.
Dust Raiders features punishing combat that makes every battle a gamble for your resources. When a fight begins, it reveals a top-down grid with the convoy scattered and enemy vehicles swarming in. The game has a "bullet time" ability to help aim your attacks. As you progress, you can upgrade weapons and buy support vehicles to keep up with the increasingly difficult enemies.
To help determine if you are strong enough for a new area, the game utilizes a danger meter. Every time you travel to a different location, it shows how deadly the enemy is to help gauge if you should buy better equipment. If you don't have strong enough equipment, then you're advised to go back to the previous area and complete more missions to build resources and buy better weapons. The game uses a common color scheme to show item rarity.
Difficulty and Balance
I was not ready for how difficult the fighting mechanics would be. After reaching the first boss battle, I was losing every time no matter what I tried. Part of this was my own ignorance. Once I found the bullet time mechanic, the fighting became easier to handle. I still had to experiment with different weapons to see what had the most damaging effect. I had some difficult battles but found the upgrades matched the difficulty scaling. The game did require a lot of grinding and backtracking in order to progress the story. I recommend not getting comfortable with one weapon loadout due to the constant change in the quality of weapons that are available.
Conclusion
Overall, this game is addictive. The resource management aspect and the interesting battle tactic kept me engaged even though at points I would rage after a tough loss. The satisfaction after pushing through difficult battles was very rewarding and was in part what kept me coming back. It combines hard choices with steep risk/reward scenarios, and the ending felt satisfying yet still left room for a sequel. Dust Raiders was an enjoyable experience, and I look forward to a potential sequel. It’s available on Steam for $15.99; if you are looking for a budget-friendly, full-bodied experience, definitely give this a try.
