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Dust Front RTS unfolds on a ruined Earth, a planet devastated by many wars and upheavals. The conflict you wage across the global map and in the battles described in the gameplay overview is shaped by this scarred world: a place of buried ruins, roaming horrors, and three powerful factions whose rare superweapons threaten everything that remains.
A Ravaged Earth
The world has been broken by repeated wars and upheavals. Beneath a thick layer of soot and concrete lie the buried remnants of humanity's former might, the wreckage of a civilization that once stood far higher than the dust now blanketing it. The battlefields reflect this: ash-covered, red-tinged expanses of broken concrete where the old world crumbles under the new war. The developer describes it as a world almost entirely stripped of life, wrapped in an industrial hell of metal and concrete dust that gives off a radioactive background.
There will be no peace on Earth while the Empire's enemies roam it.
The Empire's Viewpoint
The story is told from the perspective of the player's own faction, the Fourth Industrial Empire. Its outlook is grim and embattled: surrounded on all sides, the Empire questions whether its army is the only loyal force left standing. That doubt frames the campaign, casting your forces as a last line holding against a world that seems set on its undoing.
The Empire is described as militarists from over-industrialised regions who use force, might, and cruelty to carry out their plans. Most of its population consists of artificial people, described as synthetic human replicas, and its leader is titled the General Secretary Emperor, the Tsar-Sphere of the industrial lands, said to be merciless toward any race differing from the approved human blueprint. Rather than making the individual soldier stronger, the Empire covers that weakness with superior firepower and greater numbers.
Enemies of the Empire
The flavor text names several threats arrayed against the Fourth Industrial Empire, and the developer has shown the mutants evolving and the robots escalating in power over the course of the war. They press from every direction, and the war is fought as much against the world's horrors as against rival armies.
Enemy | Description |
|---|---|
Mutants | Countless mutated creatures roaming the wastes. |
Robots | Machines wielding technology far superior to the Empire's own. |
Rebels | Insurgents who strike from the rear. |
Conspiracies | Unknown plots working against the Empire from the shadows. |
The narrator wonders aloud whether the army is the only force that still remains loyal, a question that hangs over every front.
The Four Factions
The developer has since written up the powers of this world in full. Three factions predominate, and a fourth group exists in the gaps between them without ever having been a real faction. Full descriptions of each are on the Factions page.
Faction | Standing | Character |
|---|---|---|
Fourth Industrial Empire | Dominant; the player's side | Militarists of the over-industrialised regions, built on firepower and numbers |
Evolved Mutants | Dominant | A bioengineering project meant to carry humanity past its ordinary form |
Robotic Escalation | Dominant | Machines seen near the front lines, hostile to both other powers |
Armed Groups | Unofficial fourth side | Bandits and rebels, fragmented among warlords and slowly dying out |
Only the Fourth Industrial Empire has appeared under that name in an English-language post; the other three are rendered from the developer's Russian-language write-up, so the exact English wording may differ in the finished game.
Mutants and Incubators
Among the most distinctive threats are the mutants. Mutant beasts prowl the ruins, and the enemy maintains giant incubator structures that breed them, turning the wastes into a source of endless mutated foes. Destroying these incubators can be a battlefield objective, cutting off the supply of horrors at its root.
Their origin is not accidental. The mutants began as a radical bioengineering idea meant to adapt humanity completely to a world whose flora and fauna are gone, and their leaders hate the Empire and its own understanding of bioengineering. Almost all of their industry is biological rather than mechanical.
Named Factions in the Demo
Alongside the player's Empire, the developer named two of the world's other forces while presenting the game's demo. The Bandit Faction is described as a starting faction that operates in the gray zones of the global map, fielding light and fast units; it is the playable form of the armed groups the setting elsewhere calls rebels. The Mutant Faction fields heavy, armored units backed by swarms of worms and flies and tends to force close-quarters fighting, matching the mutants described under the army's wrecks and corpses.
These two are the combatants you can pick in the demo. They correspond to two of the four powers above rather than being separate groups.
The Three Powerful Factions
Three powerful factions contest the broken world, each in possession of a rare and devastating superweapon. Those three are the Fourth Industrial Empire, the Evolved Mutants, and the Robotic Escalation, and the wider map is divided into colored zones marking the contested territories they fight over. Which of them holds which weapon has not been stated. The weapons themselves are detailed under Superweapons.
Voices of the War
Events on the ground are relayed through an officer commander figure, a uniformed and gas-masked presence who delivers strategic advice and dialog as the campaign unfolds. Through this figure and the mini-dialogs of the global map, the world communicates its crises to you turn by turn, grounding the strategy in the voice of a war that never seems to end.