"Dust to Dust" is a short, solid dystopian RPG made for the IGMC 2014. I've played version 1.0, later additions and improvements may be made.
It can be beaten in under an hour.

As the name implies, dust is the shortest description of the game. The world is infested with ghostly dusty human copies called "Dust People". They are spreading like wildfire, so own lines of work have developed to simply cleanse towns of them. And if that wasn't enough, a dangerous kind of flu is spreading as well and doctors are rare.
You are just a young orphan trying to find one of those doctors to cure your little baby-brother in the middle of it.

As it is the custom, you stumble into more than you bargained for.

The story itself is solid, it is nothing too unique or too special, but it does what it is supposed to do - the atmosphere is what this game makes good.
I would've liked to have more interactions between the team members. They are so very different, that it cannot possible run as smoothly as it did. They appear to remain randomly put together (except two) without a good consensus. One particular member should have gotten more lines to grow into the group, instead of waiting for the ending to explain that.
The last dungeon also has a couple of logic flaws.




They don't look too healthy..

The aesthetics are wonderful, deserts usually are the boring yellow hell of games, but this games pulls it off really well. The music is quite nice, and your characters including your bratty brat have been used well. It is one of those odd formations joined be the same cause.
There are many touches and details that are quite enjoyable, such as begging or the interactive battle system as well as different reactions towards different party members. In the same way, different party leader have different map abilities. More use of them would've been awesome, but I can't complain.

It was, however, a bit of a shame that you have little interactions in towns compared to the amount fighting. The NPC banter was very enjoyable and I would have loved to have had more or to discover more areas. Not to mention that there was an actual book to be read. Neat (although the scrolling was a tad too fast there, the opening sequence was fine).

The interactive battles I mentioned are a nice touch (timing properly for additional damage), although the battles themselves were too easy.
The different "elemental" properties needn't be exploited, nor did you have any difficulties in fights. As you regenerate mana in-fight, healing spells in addition to a huge life-pool are too strong. A tactic was never needed.
I did like the fact that skills were set to weapons and that you find weapons rather than buy them. But it also adds to the low difficulty, because all money you have can be spent on healing items (not that you really needed them, later on anyways, as you can be healed on-field).

It's a beautiful, visually polished game, but there is much room upwards and more substance to be had. I'm really looking forward to version 2.0!
Enjoyable ride altogether.