Gameplay

Basic Techniques

Movement

Each character can jump, dash, run on walls, and cling to/slide on the ceiling and walls to navigate levels. Characters also have air charges that they can use to either jump or dash in the air. Most characters have only one air charge (double jump), but Dustkid has two air charges (triple jump).

Jumping

Jumps only have two heights, a short hop and full jump. You can short hop by pressing the jump button quickly. Air jumps cannot be short hopped.

Different characters have different jump heights. Dustworth has the highest jumps (about 4 game "blocks"), Dustman/Dustgirl have average jumps (3 blocks), and Dustkid has the shortest jumps (2.5 blocks).

Dashing

Ground Dash

Grounded dashing will either increase your speed to the character's dash speed (note that for Dustworth this is below running speed) or it will maintain your speed for the duration of the dash if your speed exceeds the character's dash speed. Chaining dashes is a vital technique for going fast as it enables you to hold speed gained from a boost for as long as you are able to maintain dash rhythm. Dashes last for 12.6 frames. This means that dashing about 5 times per second is optimal however there is a frame of variance in dash spacing due to the length of a dash not being an integer number of frames.

Airdash

Airdashing is a vital air control technique that allows you to get to dash speed or maintain a boost while in air. Airdashing is also very useful when in confined spaces as it allows you to move while staying at the same height.

Wall Running/Sliding

Although characters have different jump heights, all characters seem to get the same height when wall running.

Characters can jump and dash off of walls without using their air charge. Most often this is used as a simple wall jump, but more advanced uses include:

  • wall dashing back and forth between two walls to refresh the ability to wall run
  • at the top of a wall jumping column, dashing off the wall and immediately air jumping to jump out of the column with dash speed

Ceiling running has a starting speed that depends on your speed when you reach the ceiling, but decays as you cross the ceiling. Ceiling runs have a minimum speed similar to dash speed, meaning that starting a ceiling run from a walk will actually start the run faster than you hit it. During a ceiling run, you will cling to the ceiling as long as you hold up, or until you have no horizontal speed (where you will fall after a short delay). While clinging to the ceiling, you cannot jump, dash, or attack.

While clinging to a wall, you can influence how quickly you slide down it by holding up or down. Holding up will decrease your speed, and holding down will increase your speed.

Attacking

Every character has a light attack and a heavy attack. Light attacks are faster, but they have shorter range and deal less damage (1 tick). Heavy attacks are slower, but have longer range and larger hitboxes and deal more damage (3 ticks). Heavy attacks also spread dust (or leaves, or whatever) onto the environment in the same direction as heavy upon killing an enemy. Note that heavy attacks cannot spread dust onto walls covered in spikes.

The damage values are based on how many hits it takes to kill the different enemies. For instance, a leaf ball has 3 health and can be killed with 3 light attacks or 1 heavy attack. A wolf (like at the end of Firefly Forest) has 5 health and can be killed with 5 light attacks, 2 light attacks and a heavy attack, or 2 heavy attacks.

Advanced Techniques

Air Dashjumping

An air dashjump requires pressing both dash and jump on the same frame. This will give you dash speed and you will jump. Note that this must be done in hover state due to how inputs are handled.

Heavy Cancelling

Heavy cancelling is a way to reduce the time spent stationary after an attack. By dashing or jumping as a heavy attack comes out, the recovery animation is cancelled. This allows many attacks in quick succession and also gets you moving quickly after cleaning an enemy. When grounded, this is generally done with dashes because they don't have the lengthy startup that jumps do. When in air, either is equally fast.

Groundboosting

Groundboosting is a technique where you hit flat ground at a certain speed to get a small speed boost. The easiest way of getting a groundboost is to do a full double jump on completely flat ground with Dustman or Dustgirl. When you land, you will have a small speed boost that takes you over the running speed of your character. If you combine this with constant dashing, it is possible to keep this boost across a long distance.

Groundboosts tend to require specific setups in each level due to all the different terrain each level has. Good examples and ideas for setups can be found in the top Cliffside Caves replays, as well as replays for other levels.

Spikejumping

Spikejumping allows you to jump on spiked 45° slopes and not die. To do this you must exhaust your aircharges and fall onto the spikes while holding down and jump. Spikejumping cannot be done if [state conditions]. Spikejumping is very useful for recovering mistakes and is one of 2 techniques that can be used to make kid hideout possible.
Spikejumps can also be done without exhausting aircharges however it is subframe perfect and therefore rarely used.

Jorfing

On flat spiked surfaces there is a 1 unit safe spot on the edges of the spikes. You can stand here perfectly safely and regain aircharges or get a boost. Jorfs are very inconsistent and thus are not often used outside of top 10 replays.
When in negative x coordinates, the left side of spikes will have a 2 unit safe spot however on the right side, [null jorf memes].

Tera Drops/Jumps

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