Dustborn

The game is primarily built around player versus environment (PvE) combat involving the player using the power of their language and voices to combat enemies. The game also features Guitar Hero-style rhythm minigames.

In the game's alternate reality, John F. Kennedy survived his assassination and established the militarized police force, Justice, to protect the United States from domestic threats. Decades later, Samuel Ward became president and twisted Justice's original purpose to consolidate his power, allowing him to enact draconian laws on the United States, now known as the American Republic. In the year 2000, an event known as the Broadcast spread mind-altering "Echoes" throughout the country and turned a small percentage of the population into Anomals, Protolanguage-wielding people who can use unique powers known as Vocals to influence people and reality. The government enacted martial law and suspended presidential elections while Justice rounded up anyone discovered to be an Anomal.

In the year 2030, the protagonist Pax (Dominique Tipper) is an Anomal living in Pacifica, a country that was once the state of California before seceding from the Republic. Although she sustains herself with minimum wage work and small cons, she seeks to escape to a place where Anomals have rights. A scientist from the Weave resistance, Jacob, recruits Pax for a job to deliver Puritan Protolanguage data to the Weave in exchange for safe haven in Nova Scotia. Pax and her Anomal friends, Noam and Sai, team up with the Weave operative Theo in order to steal data from the Puritans.

Dustborn was announced at the Future Games Show conference in 2020 and slated to release the next year. The game's showcase featured a cast of culturally and ethnically diverse characters. After the announcement, the game received some negative feedback from people who believe developers are being forced to make their games more diverse, though creative director Ragnar Tørnquist denied the cast's diversity was due to outside pressure, stating that "publishers and developers are just understanding more that there's a wider and more diverse audience".

The game was developed using the Unity engine and the team wrote their custom shaders to accomplish the comic book-inspired look. Red Thread Games and Quantic Dream privately funded most of the game budget, with the developer also receiving over 13.6 million NOK (around 1.4 million USD) from the Norwegian Film Institute. Additionally, the game received a grant of €150,000 from the EU's Creative Europe project, and 300,000 NOK from Viken Filmsenter.

Dustborn received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic, and 47% of critics recommended the game, according to OpenCritic. In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 32 out of 40.

Malindy Hetfeld, writing for The Guardian, rated it 3 out of 5. Hetfeld noted the difficult balance as the game attempts "to alternate between fun moments, activism and drama – a balance it ultimately can't hit." Hetfeld enjoyed the game most when it "leans into the silliness of its supernatural storyline" calling it "the equivalent of an interactive Marvel movie, and that is OK." Rachel Weber of IGN rated it 7 out of 10: "Dustborn brings angst to a comic book caper about an alternate-reality America, and you'll get an emotional ride with a few exciting punk performances if you stick with it through a slow start".