Star Shift Origins

[i]Star Shift Origins[/i] is an interesting mix of tactical battles (fleet and army) and strategic turn-based battles (main characters) in a sci-fi universe. It is a prologue to the upcoming and much-longer [i]Star Shift[/i] game. What I like the most about this game is its story. The story feels inspiring to me. I was immersed in it and eager to find out more. It looks like a lot of dedication and effort was put towards the creating of this. It is also great for if you wanted a taste of a game that has this mix of strategic battles that can be completed within 10 hours (or 4 hours, depending on how you play). There is also the skill tree system and the equipment mechanics, which adds to the strategy and thinking you might need to have during battles. This game might make you have to actually think about [i]how[/i] you are playing it, and if this is not obvious in [i]Origins[/i], then I think it will be in the upcoming game. I would call this a warm-up game that you can enjoy. I certainly did. I believe the developer meant for it to be that way; to give players a taste of the upcoming main game's mechanics and story. I think they did well on presenting that in [i]Origins[/i]. It might have certain things here and there that could be polished up more, but given that this is made by an independent developer with the skills and tools they have, I am impressed by the quality. I believe it will continue to get better. --- [i]** Just in case if it could be required for me to state this: I am one of the testers of this game. I received the product for free. I feel fortunate to play this great game before release; I think it is really worth the time.[/i] My play time for this game is about 13.5 hours at the time of posting this review; the numbers depicted from my Steam account is not my actual play time.

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This is the first time I've come across such a genre of a game. The first impressions of the game are good, but I did not think that it would be able to drag me into its world. Space is implemented well, and the gameplay is not difficult. Nice music sticks in the head, which gives a pleasant feeling after a long game.

Fun space-themed turn-based RPG. The graphics are real nice and the gameplay is catching. Might be a bit hard in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, it is a quite enjoyable game. The maps show a few minor error, which should be fixed, but nothing game breaking. I have played for about 90 minutes so far, and I didn't even leave the first area yet, so that promises many hours of gameplay to come. I'd say a 8/10. Nice work.

Pros: - Very well written science fiction story - 7 character party at once in battle [you almost never see that many in rpg games] - A lot of customization choices with the skill trees - Some tactical battles are thrown in, so it isn't only regular turn based Cons: - It's short. 4-7 hours I'd estimate. It ends. More Star Shift is required. And we're in luck, 2022 looks like a Star Shift Marathon year. I found a new series to binge through. 4.75/5 rating.

Someone part of the development team of Star Shift: Origins had reached out to me to provide me with a key so that I may feature the game on my streams. Overall, it's a possibly interesting game that is completely spoiled by poorly explaining things and a high difficulty floor. The stage is set pretty much at the start of the game when there is no indication as to whether you are playing or not. This is just small potatoes and doesn't really spoil anything about the game, though I do think it's just more evidence to validate that the game doesn't want to explain anything to you, the player. Once I realized I had control, I attempted to leave the starting room only to be told that I need to pick up weapons, tediously requiring me to pick up each individual weapon with a lore explanation of the weapon (but not a game-play explanation of the weapon). Once you encounter your first combat encounter you and your team mates will begin to get hit by attacks that do nearly 1/2 of your health. This is the first encounter. As you continue to progress through the very intro of the game you will pick up more and more allies before you have even had time to understand what your starting allies are capable of. The game begins layering complexity on top of itself without giving the player any time to come to grips with the game itself, and it expects you to understand the game because if you don't, you will die or bleed through all of your resources trying to keep your teammates a lot or reviving them; a cycle all too familiar to RPG players, and an irritating one at that where you spend your resources reviving someone just to have them die again within a turn to spend more revive/healing items to have them die again and that's it: you're stuck in the death spiral until you run out of healing items. All of this could have easily been eliminated at there been an attempt to 1) explain things to the player, and 2) ensure fair difficulty for new players who are still coming to grips with the game. Enemies that hit like a mac truck isn't really fun, especially when you are still trying to figure the game out. If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzR-y1PEemo p.s. I am recommending the game because a single negative review on such a small indie game can do a lot of damage.

First and foremost, this game is incredibly short. It took me literally 2 sessions to beat it, and I took my time. This isn't really a demo, it's more like a Prologue chapter to a larger game. Which is why I do recommend the game, but HIGHLY suggest you wait for a sale of some kind, or suggest the devs lower the price. At $7 US, that's still asking for too much for how little there is here to play. With that out of the way, I did like the game and wish there was more/am excited for the next game release from these devs (as well as the game this is a prologue for in November this year). Let's get the bad stuff out of the way: - No explanations or tutorials save for the ship combat explanation that attacking from behind deals extra damage. Tbf, it's not a HUGE deal, since most of the mechanics are things you'll have seen in other RPGs, but it did lead to me not fully understanding stats, taking some time to figure out how to level and a few other things that, in all honesty, might have taken longer to fully explain. - The length of animations is really too long. The first time you see someone teleport to melee attack, it's cool, but after the first 5 times, the animation is actually annoyingly long. And some of them are funny, like the way the pistols get whipped out and fired is actually unintentionally funny. I don't want to make it seem like this is a big deal, I understand it's a small indie studio and it doesn't really detract from the game in any major way. It's just a shame because the game is, otherwise, quite well done visually. - The way the dialogue is delivered in this start, pause, continue, pause manner is very irritating. If the it's done so slow readers can keep up, then put in dialogue speed options, but it would actually make me stop playing the game in a more standard length RPG. The "I'm not sure" stuff: * The skills/leveling system is weird. I like the idea of earning points towards the skill trees, but without traditional levels, you're relying on a few select skills and then entirely otherwise equipment to level stats, and I'm not sure how that would work in a traditional length game. And I like when games try interesting twists on standard concepts, but I think this one needs a LITTLE more work. Cool idea, just needs something else to go with it, like deeper skill trees, or ways to use the points on stats specifically (or both!). * The combat is also a hit and miss. It's standard turn based RPG stuff, but in this day and age, I feel like that doesn't cut it anymore. The skills are cool, but I found a select few skills to be just superior options for several characters because they didn't use a resource but dealt significantly more damage that even some of the other resource burning skills. * The UI is both a hit and a miss as well. The artwork is good, and the info inside the menu options are clear and concise, but too much screen is wasted on nothing. When in the general menu, the bars for health, energy, and charge take up like 4/5 of the screen, and then numbers are on the opposite side of the screen from the menu. If the shrank the bars to take up half that space, it would not only look better but be WAY easier to read, imo. The good: ++ The soundtrack! I cannot sing enough praises here. The music not only sets the mood, but it slaps, too! + The audio effects are also great. The sound of attacks and deaths and effects are almost all spot on. There's a couple that I felt missed, but maybe 2 out of the literally dozens of sounds in the game. + Story: It's hard to write a good story, and fit a game around that, and so I'm usually pretty easy-going on game's stories, but this one is pretty good. Nothing groundbreaking, nor terribly interesting, but they do a pretty good job of building a literal universe in a really short amount of time, without overexplaining or underexplaining anything. + Character design: same as with the story, there's nothing here that will make this game stand above the crowd, but their well-made, and despite how short the game is, you get a pretty clear sense of who everyone is and their goals. In summary, it's a good game, could use some more polish in specific areas, but the visual and sound design are fantastic, even if the game is super short. Which is why I do recommend the game, but suggest anyone interested wait for a sale, or for the devs to lower the price, since it's not even 1 $/hr of game even if you go slow.

Bought this on a whim and I'm pleasantly surprised. It's a neat sci fi spin on classic JRPGs with a pretty good story, decent world building and a battle system that is interesting enough to dig into, and no 'endless/random' battles which is a deal breaker for me and the JRPG formula. That said, it isn't perfect. The tactical battle system is good, but not as good as the designer thinks it is, and even though the battles aren't random there are A LOT of them so combat does become a chore like almost every JRPG. You'll find yourself crawling through long corridors of THE SAME ENEMIES doing the SAME THING. OVER and OVER and OVER. The hostile environments are *just* big enough that navigating them saps the fun out of exploration. If the game were longer, or the story less interesting it could easily be the sort of thing I lose interest in, but as it is (6 bucks for 10-15 hours of effort) was satisfying and the story kept moving. I'll keep my eye out for the next installment. The sci fi setting was refreshing and the ship to ship battle system good enough to keep my interest. I hope they scale back the amount of dungeon crawling but that seems to be inseperable from 'classic' JRPGs.

Absolutely excellent game. Major Points- -Wonderful sprites and graphics. -Menu is top-notch. -The skill that has gone into this is excellent. -Music absorbs you into the game. -Love the character designs. -For the price it's at, it's a steal. -So much content I can already see only so far in. -I LOOOOVE the battle system :) So far, I can easily see myself investing lots of hours into this and I'm already buying the other games before I continue. 10/10.