Where Real Time Strategy titles are slow and measured, From Dust has an urgency and inherent playfulness; akin to a child building trenches around partially-built sandcastles to stave off the advancing tide. The analogy isn't far from the actuality: shaping bridges, defences and cutting waterways in Ubisoft's summer hit even had visual similarities to the beach-side childhood pastime as you let sand and mud run through your fingers. Just the viewpoint had been scaled out. It's God Versus Nature filtered through what looks like a next-gen graphics demo, yet broaches a tranquility in fertilising the land that makes it a strange second-cousin to the likes of Harvest Moon.
