"There's just not enough content and too many restrictions for the game to be truly engaging. It keeps the player at arm's length, removes any motivation for feeling responsible and, at its very worst, annoys with persistent feelings of helplessness and characters who couldn't tell their arses from their elbows. The power to shape mountains and carve waterways would make for a wonderful gimmick in a more fleshed out game, but as a central concept it's just not strong enough to build an entire experience around. All that said, in the "moving bits of dirt from one location to another" genre, From Dust is thoroughly uncontested."