Dustbiters is a new upcoming tabletop card game from the Dustbiters Team, which actually comprises three veterans of the video gaming industry in the form of Terri Vellmann, Jan Willem Nijman, and Robbie Fraser. Vellmann is an illustrator and game designer known for titles like Heavy Bullets and Disc Room, and has also previously worked on another card game called Pusher Kings. Nijman worked on Disc Room as well, and also on other iconic indie games like Nuclear Throne and Minit, and is the only member of the team to ironically drive a bicycle instead of a car. Finally, Fraser is known for Broforce, an epic-scale action game that's a love letter to classic films from the 80s and the 90s.
Speaking of movies, Dustbiters has roots firmly planted in the themes and visuals of the Mad Max franchise, and Nijman even goes on to say that turns from the card game can be reminiscent of stills from Mad Max: Fury Road. After all, Dustbiters is a game with post-apocalyptic tones and plenty of unique-looking cars, where players have to try and leave the opponent with no cards left so as to win the game and escape the approaching sandstorm. Game Rant speaks with the Dustbiters Team about this and much more, including the game's Kickstarter campaign.
Dustbiters: A Quick Card Game With Strategic Depth
Dustbiters was first conceived on the most appropriate of occasions for its theme, and that's during a road trip that Nijman and Fraser took all the way back in 2016. Being game designers, they would spend the evenings playing a few games, but quickly that turned into making their own game, and the first idea they had was to make something like Rummikub and adapt it to be a single-player dungeon crawler. Dustbiters came into existence shortly after, and it was clear from the very beginning that it would be a tabletop game; something the team could make with just pen and paper, and a break from video games.
For us, to fix a bug, you pick a sharpie and you add something new to the text on top of the ugly paper card to test, and then you play again. Fixing bugs on the computer is a whole other hellhole that you have to dive into, so it was all very inspiring. —Nijman
Vellmann was brought on board not long after that, especially thanks to a conversation he had with Nijman, where the two decided that if they were to make a card game, they could do it together. Because the three of them were all busy with their own work at the time, there was a mutual agreement of working on Dustbiters whenever they could do it without worrying about deadlines, and this stress-free mindset carried over into the game as well. As a matter of fact, Dustbiters is an extremely quick tabletop game that features an average session of fifteen minutes, with a lot of potential for replayability.
It's not a game that you got to set things up, read the whole rulebook and have a lecture about how to play the game. After that it's just a really fun, really quick [experience]. Things turn around all the time. —Vellmann
Dustbiters has a very short and straightforward rulebook, unlike many other tabletop games where players have to learn the gist of it over an hour or two, and that's a conscious design choice. What the team wanted to achieve was a quick game that could be learned and explained in a matter of minutes, so that it could be played on the fly without being invested too much into every card's abilities because they can be quite straightforward as well.
There is still a lot of strategic depth to the game, with cars like the Mind Manipulator, which allows players to use the ability of any enemy car on the field. At the end of each turn, the car that is the furthest behind in the convo is eventually destroyed by the sandstorm, which means that players have to decide what moves to take and if they should let one of their cars advance or let it be destroyed. Overall, Dustbiters is a fun game that is designed to be a lighter alternative to other tabletop games, and it is all about cars, meaning no dice nor tiles.
Dustbiters is set to release in November 2021 for Kickstarter backers.