Dexter Stardust : Adventures in Outer Space

Unfinished story. It's not made clear on the store page, and I wouldn't have bought it otherwise, not yet. Fortunately, this chapter (itself split into episodes, because reasons) is self-sufficient. What will come after the cliffhanger, if it ever comes, will be set in a different world. The game is better than its demo, aka episode 0, which is very short and simplistic. What follows gradually gets more meat on the bone, peaking at episode 3, which offers a lot of landscapes with a lot of things to do. A lot of backtracking, consequently, but never annoying, thanks to fast walk and fast transitions. Puzzle difficulty is low. That's neither a good nor a bad thing; you might prefer it that way. What is good is the clarity of objectives and processes The one bottleneck is a small hit box inside a large hit box, an unwelcome moment of pixel hunting that renders the Hot Spots key useless the one time it is actually needed. The Point n' Click gameplay is absolutely classic. The interface is perfectly modern, The art is clear and swell. The music is varied and well used. The voicing (English with sparse Spanish bits) is decent, although it could do with better articulation. The storytelling is a little strange, in how murder and even genocide are treated very lightly, as if the backstory was non-violent (the player's actions thankfully are.) The protagonist is likable, regardless of his odd obsession with tacos, his lies, his thefts and his constant mischief. Wholly typical, not particularly memorable, yet technically good and thoroughly entertaining.

Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space is a point and click adventure game where you play as the titular Dexter Stardust, living in a world where humanity has moved into the solar system after a devastating attack on Earth. Dexter and his best friend Aurora are on an ordinary delivery mission when they encounter an alien robot, who comes with a message and a mission. You follow Dexter as he completes missions and untangles the mystery of the robot, the aliens from Vrees (Planet X), and his family's past. As the story unfolds, you learn more about what life looks like for humanity outside of Earth and uncover the murky details of the conflict between Vrees and Earth and how Dexter's family was connected to it. I was pretty invested in the story and trying to work out what was really going on. Some of the reveals were pretty predictable, but the ending was surprising and heartwarming (although also a cliffhanger). Dexter is a likeable, complex protagonist, and I enjoyed his dynamics with the other characters, especially Aurora and Uncle Jedo. The voice acting was okay, except for a couple of low-quality, echo-y recordings. Most of the jokes are pretty funny and I enjoyed the little references to classic adventure games like Monkey Island or other sci-fi franchises like Futurama. A few of the jokes got a little repetitive but not to the point of being annoying. The gameplay and puzzles are pretty standard point and click inventory object fare. These puzzles were very easy. Most of the chapters were fairly short, with only a small number of objects and areas to explore. Even in the long chapters, the objects you have to use together were always fairly logical. This game also gives very direct hints in the dialogue. Characters often say exactly what you need in each area and important words or phrases are highlighted in the text. The game would still have been easy without the hints, but the dialogue hints felt unnecessarily hand-hold-y. I think I would have preferred them to be part of an optional hint system or lower difficulty level. The only time I had any question of what to do next was when I hadn't fully explored a couple of dialogue trees, and even then, it didn't take long to figure out what was going on. I would have preferred a game that was a bit more challenging. The game's pace is pretty uneven. Four out of five chapters are very short and somewhat cutscene-heavy, while one of the chapters is a lot longer and more puzzle-heavy. I didn't dislike the feel of any of the chapters individually but I would have preferred they feel closer to the same length. It's especially noticeable because the third and fourth chapters share a lot of locations but in the third chapter they often mention that you won't be able to use or do things until the fourth chapter. The numbering is also pretty confusing. They're labeled 0-4 instead of 1-5, but 0 feels like the beginning of the story and not a part that was added later or that can be skipped. There’s a lot to like in the first Dexter Stardust game. The story was interesting, funny, and had memorable characters and heartfelt moments. The puzzles are easy and logical but don’t present much of a challenge and have too many hints. The pacing is also somewhat uneven and there are a couple of places where it could be more polished. Even with its weaknesses, I still really enjoyed it, and I’m eagerly awaiting the sequel. 7/10

Pretty good, but... Why have 5 episodes (0 to 4) when only episode 3 is the actual game ? Episodes 0, 1, 2 and 4 are all extremely short and so incredibly easy that you instantly figure out all puzzles, there's no challenge whatsoever... Episode 3 was nice tho, and way longer than all other episodes combined, but still very easy (never got stuck at any point wondering what to do).

Ok, this is definitely not my favorite adventure game. I found it tedious at times, it had unnecessarily long cutscenes, too much handholding (seriously, hints were ALL over), unnecessary backtracking, not-that-great voice acting, awkward and at times very lazy fourth-wall breaking, and all-over-the-place pacing (along with a quite weird subdivision of the game into chapters with widely different lengths). It's the first of a series, so the ending is somewhat open, although I actually did like it. Other strong points: characters are nice, and the story is there, even when it's not told in the best way possible. Some puzzles are cool. Some cutscenes are very funny. I didn't like some dark moments that were present, but overall it was good enough to bend the scale and so I do recommend it (barely).

The game is awesome. It's highly polished, full of healthy humor, unique style, great music and fresh ideas. Some episodes are tiny and simple to finish, #3, on the other hand - rather long and not too easy to solve. Overall, playing the game was a tremendous fun. Can't wait to get my hands on episodes 5+!

This is a great point and click adventure. I loved the characters right from the start. I'm making my way through episode 3 so far, and there has been plenty of charm and puzzles to keep me interested!

It's a neat little game with an interesting direction, mostly geared towards kids I would say, Bonus points if you are Latino-US. The voice acting imo is fine, though Dexter's girl friend is kind of slow and awkward and sometimes the sounds, speed, sound levels are different. The puzzles in this point & click episodic adventure with parts of a visual novel when it comes to the story are fairly easy to solve for the most part. Episode 3 has a lot of backtracking with many puzzles and Episode 4 feels a bit rushed to conclude the game on a cliffhanger for its successor (a platformer). The episodes do state though how long they are, how much story and puzzles they contain, which is nice. A few minor bugs were encountered, like an endless walking loop towards the end of Episode 4 when walking to the cave panorama scene, easily skippable with ESC, or after each episode when it says click ABOVE text but actually means click THE above text and not above the text and other smaller errors. All in all for me personally I would rather give it a neutral rating, especially for 10$, I'd consider 5$ a better price point for what this and the abandoned planet by the same Dev have to offer, even if more work probably went into this title, but since steam for some reason doesn't let me do that, I will give a positive rating, since it's not bad enough to merit a negative one, imo. Btw would have loved for the full version to retain the small FMV elements as well, but they aren't in here anymore, as they seemingly were back in the early DEMO prototype. There are also low spoiler hint guides which I used once or twice to help you only with the current puzzle by nuzzling you towards the right direction without spoiling it.

Very solid adventure, not particularly demanding but with a very good design. The narrative and characters are also good. It's just a shame about the excessive quotation which can be annoying and cause the title to lose some of its personality

C'est un excellent point&click classique, plein d'humour et travaillé dans le détail mais.... d'une part il est pourri par la présence d'indices trop voyants (du texte mis en gras au panneau à lire donnant direct la soluce) qui gâchent certaines énigmes avant même qu'on se pose la question, et d'autre part je trouve totalement naze d'arrêter l'histoire en plein milieu pour la poursuivre dans un jeu de plateforme à venir. Autant le mélange des genres ne m'a pas gêné sur les Broken Sword ou les Steamworld qui offraient des histoires unitairement cohérentes au sein d'un univers commun, on prenait ou pas sans frustration particulière, autant forcer les joueurs de p&c à enchaîner sur du plateforme pour connaître le fin mot de l'histoire et les plateformeurs à se peler un p&c pour comprendre ce qu'ils sont en train de jouer... et bêh, ça me saoule. Ouais bon, y'a plus grave dans le monde. On va dire que c'est quand même un bon jeu, et même très bon si les 2 styles vous plaisent et que les épisodiques à suivre vous donnent moins d'urticaire qu'à moi.

So, I took a chance on this game because the price was right... and the art looked good. This is a point and click adventure for small kids. It's very Mexican... and the characters ramble on incessantly about tacos. Literally. The game is a bit confused as to whether it is a point and click adventure, or if it's an audio book. The very adult characters act like children... and as is standard these days, the male "hero" of the story is a bumbling man with little ability, while the female character has all of the brains and sounds more like a mother most of the time. The audio book feel of the very long cut scenes makes it seem like it's meant to be enriching for children, but then fails kids by employing the "boys are dumb" trope. The Puzzles are uninspired, simple... again pointing to the child player. The art is very good, the voice acting is OK to very good depending on the character... and the interface is well implemented. As a kids game, while flawed, at about $10 US, I can hesitantly recommend it.