Astra And The New Constellation

The reviews for this game go to show that Steam reviewers should never be believed under any circumstances. At least one review has given this game's music a positive review. Unironically. So no Steam reviews, including this one, should be trusted. The music is absolutely horrendous throughout. At best it's tolerable, but that's in the second level, meaning it's all dross thereafter. I'd recommend muting and listening to your own music to improve the overall experience. Which is a shame, because the PICO-8 can produce some mellifluent noises in the right hands. What about the gameplay? It's very okay. Not brilliantly engaging, but a surprising amount is done with surprisingly little. Everything is bound to two keys/buttons, so mechanically, everything is pretty simple. Some of the levels are plain annoying, others have small sections that don't quite work as intuitively as you'd think. None of them really give that dopamine hit of a job well done. But I will say it's interesting enough, just about varied enough, and I think the difficulty is about right - any harder would have been a mistake. I did go into this massively underestimating difficulty, thinking it was going to be a cakewalk I'd 100% in about an hour. it wouldn't have taken me as long as it did were the gameplay more engaging - I did find myself switching off mentally (the music really didn't help) and then trying to force my way through it. It's one of those games that probably should be a "maybe". But I think more people than not would get just enough out of this (buying it on sale) to nudge it into the "would recommend" category