DustFall Beginner Guide — The First Descent, Step by Step

DustFall is a single-player descent roguelite shooter from LeoGame, released on Steam on Oct 1, 2026 for Windows and priced at $1.79 at the time of capture. The store page describes one loop from the top down: blast through destructible pixel terrain, stay ahead of the surface scan that sends hunters after you, and beat each layer core to fall into the next ruin.

What DustFall Is, in the Store’s Own Words

The short description calls DustFall “a single-player roguelite shooter beneath an alien-occupied surface.” Alien life has overrun the surface, and a scanning front keeps pushing deeper underground. Down is the only direction the game offers.

That framing settles the genre: a run-based shooter rather than a campaign picked from a chapter menu. The listing puts the game under Adventure, and the feature list adds Single-player, Steam Achievements, Steam Cloud, Adjustable Difficulty, a playable-at-your-own-pace flag and a playable-without-timed-input flag. There is no co-op or multiplayer entry anywhere in the feature list.

Launch fact	Value at capture, 2026-10-08
Release date	Oct 1, 2026
Price (US)	$1.79, list $1.99
Discount	10 percent off
Platform listed	Windows
Genre listed	Adventure
Achievements	29
Layers	six, each with a core boss
Steam user reviews	0, rated No user reviews

Two of those lines move over time: the price and the review count. The layer count and the release date are part of the product rather than a promotion.

The First Descent, Step by Step

The store text gives the order of play plainly enough to follow without guessing: pick a starting payload, dig, deal with the scan, then finish the layer. Nothing in that sequence depends on content the page has not published.

• Choose a starting payload — the two examples given are the Drill Round and the Grenade.
• Blast through the strata: ignite oil, detonate powder caches, or remove crucial supports.
• Watch the surface scan, which begins closing in at the start of every descent.
• Stay away from the upper layers or you will be detected and draw hunters.
• Reach the bottom of the layer and defeat its core.
• Fall into the next ruin and repeat, with the build you shaped along the way.

The destruction cuts both ways. The store text is explicit that every act of destruction may open a path to survival, or bring an entire ruin down on top of you, so the same shovel that saves a run can end it.

The Surface Scan, Detection and the Hunters

The pressure system is described as a scanning front, not a countdown timer. At the start of every descent the surface scan begins to close in. Stay too close to the upper layers and you will be detected, drawing increasingly dangerous hunters. Dig beyond the scan’s reach and you earn a brief moment of safety.

That is the whole published rule set: a spatial danger zone, escalation in hunter danger, and a temporary refuge below the scan line. The store page does not name hunter types, does not give detection radii and does not describe what happens after a hunter catches you.

Payloads, Upgrades and the Six Layers

Progression inside a run is described as three-way upgrades: enhance your weapon, gain passive abilities, or switch payloads. The feature line sums it up as roguelite builds with freely combinable payloads and upgrades.

The descent itself is split into six buried ruins. Each of the six layers has its own terrain materials, environmental reactions, enemy ecosystem and core boss, and the closing feature list repeats the count as six layers and six core bosses.

The narrative layer sits on top of that structure: the ruins and echoes buried in the strata tell of people who dug downward looking for somewhere to live, and the deeper you go, the harder it becomes to ignore the question of whether there is really a home beneath the earth.

What Is Still Unpublished

The store page is silent on several things a beginner would reasonably want. It does not name any layer, does not list weapons or payloads beyond the two examples, does not give upgrade counts or numbers, and does not publish a completion time.

• Layer names, layer order and any per-layer map: not published.
• Weapon, payload and upgrade tables: not published.
• Enemy and core boss names: not published.
• Completion time and difficulty tiers: not published.
• What carries over between runs: not published.

The core loop is broken down on How It Plays, the platform and store picture is on Availability, and the launch facts are on Launch & Demo.