Starlight Alliance

This was a delightful hidden gem. For being made by one developer, the amount of content on display is inspiring. The experience overall is a bit unpolished, especially in regards to sound design and particle effects, but none of that holds it back in terms of gameplay and charm. Pros: - Content. The game just keeps GOING. Every time I thought it was about to end, there'd be another field, another town, another dungeon. And these weren't empty environments either, they had plenty of little secrets to keep things interesting. - Very few bugs. Kind of unexpected from a small indie game. - charming world design. Great use of color throughout to give off a vaporwave dystopian aesthetic. Love the massive circuit board buildings. - decent amount of puzzles and game mechanics to keep things feeling fresh. I was never bored. Neutrals: - The music is okay. It fits the vibe, but it's harder to listen to for long stretches. - You have two characters to control, one that shoots and one that punches. The punching wasn't useful for the majority of the combat since most enemies are airborn, which is fine since the shooting makes up for it, but I think that could have used additional fleshing out. Cons: - The unpolished bits really held this one back. There were too many times that sound effects were either completely absent or very repetitive, and nearly every attack (player or enemy) is the exact same colored sphere. - Honestly, sometimes there was too much content. It feels like a weird complaint, but the ending dragged on a bit long by throwing in one too many Hyrule field-sized expanses during parts that should have been a bit more climactic. The dev really showed his chops, but it's okay to hold back for the sake of pacing.

Starlight Alliance é um jogo de ação e aventura com elementos de quebra-cabeça e RPG. O jogo apresenta gráficos coloridos com um toque de desenho que descrevem um futuro distópico e sombrio. A trilha sonora original com um toque de chiptune adiciona uma sensação nostálgica. Há dois personagens jogáveis com quem você pode alternar a qualquer momento, cada um com seu estilo de combate: atirar ou socar. Os inimigos têm diferentes fraquezas, o que significa que diferentes estilos de combate funcionarão melhor para cada um deles. O jogo também possui elementos de fogo e tiros. Além do combate, há também quebra-cabeças leves que envolvem diferentes mecânicas, como uso de itens, pulos e tiros. Existem várias batalhas contra chefes e lutas especiais ao longo do jogo. O sistema de experiência e nível permite que você atualize suas habilidades e estatísticas personalizadas. Você também pode criar novos itens com materiais e obter blindagens, escudos e armas melhores. O jogo possui um sistema de busca para monitorar as coisas e missões paralelas, bem como um sistema de viagem rápida local. O jogo apresenta localizações variadas e muitas vezes estranhas, na Terra e no espaço, com mais áreas abertas opcionais se você gosta de explorar, e cheias de coisas valiosas para encontrar. O jogo oferece mais de 15 horas de jogo, proporcionando aos jogadores muitas horas de diversão e aventura.

this game is pretty cool! great world building and can't wait to dive into it more! A+ would recommend!

An [i]obscure[/i], rather than hidden, gem! I share almost the same sentiment as the other positive reviews, so additional things to say: [b]Steam Deck[/b]: This is where I spent most of my time playing. It was a mostly smooth ride after adjusting a few settings. The resolution was low upon initial boot, so I adjusted that in the graphics menu. I played around with other settings to see if I could hit 90fps consistently, but was not able to. Setting the deck to 60hz and then adjusting other graphic settings to personal taste, it was more than playable to me. Not a locked 60, but somewhere between 45-60, the lower end a bit more uncommon as 60 was what it felt like I was playing most of the time. You could drop the Deck down to 45hz (OLED) or 40hz (LCD) and you'd be pretty happy if you are a stickler for a more stable framerate, but can't quite remember if close to 90fps was possible if you dropped other settings. If it was, I probably did not like how it looked, most likely the lack of shadows, as I like to adjust for picture quality over high fps on the Deck. [b]Story[/b]: Reminded me somewhat of a Mass Effect mixed with Deus Ex. Don't expect the same quality as those since this is very much the definition of an indie game, but that is what I kept thinking as the story unfolded. It was also quite good despite it being a remix of a story you have most likely have already heard before. [b]Gameplay[/b]: an RPG-lite with some Returnal-esqu combat (much easier and much more forgiving than Returnal) and minor puzzle/platforming solving. Exploration of big, nearly empty levels, that flow and fit well with the world building lore and narrative being told. Most of the emptiness was worth exploring as there are lots of items to pickup that would help you along the way; killing enemies for xp, buff and health items, money and stat upgrades - be sure to collect as much as you can to help with unlocking a couple achievements! [b]Controls[/b]: At first, they seemed very odd. The tutorial does an OK job at explaining things, but I found a lot outside of the tutorial that was not really explained. At first it seemed like the game was buggy, but it was not! There was a lot of thought, planning and programming that was taken into consideration when designing how your character would interact with things and how the controls work, so after getting used to the mechanics it clicked in my brain and suddenly things made sense and I was having a blast. Kind of like when you discover how to properly utilize i-frames or parry mechanics, it was the same sense of joy and wonder when I finally understood "how to play" (this should really be a con, but I do enjoy figuring things out by myself). [b]Difficulty[/b]: Combat was quite tough at the beginning to the point where I could see the difficulty being a deterrent, so I changed it to Easy and starting pumping the stats on the playable character with shooting capabilities (highly recommend just sticking with this character as your main for the remainder of your playthrough). The combat felt like a casual bullet hell, but casual here is used loosely as the bullet hell genre can be very unforgiving in general. Even on easy I had to carefully keep an eye on my health in the first few hours. I could have changed it to the higher (default) difficulty, but at this point I felt comfortable with my casual play style to leave it on Easy. [b]Achievements[/b]: despite there only being 8, they are not really progression based and require some actual effort. Even after having played the game once, I am still missing three. There are no guides out there and there are two that I am uncertain how to unlock with the last one just requiring to grind more. Is this for achievement hunters? Depends if you want rare achievements or easy ones. [b]Bugs[/b]: I can honestly say I did not encounter any game-breaking bugs! That is very rare for a game of this scope. There was only one bug that I encountered during my entire playthrough and that was getting stuck inside a world object due to how the game jumping mechanic work and how barriers are erected when you get into certain combat scenarios. Getting stuck between the edge of a jumpable platform and the barrier caused my character to simply fall through the platform object after combat ended and I got stuck inside. Simply reloading my save was enough, but luckily I manually save quite often. [b]Overall[/b]: Despite there being some parts that seemed to drag on (honestly impressed with how long this took me to play through), playing on the Deck allowed me to put it to sleep whenever I felt like I needed a nap after a long day, which can easily be confused as boredom. I can honestly say that being able to play it in short bursts like this immensely increased my desire to continue playing and sticking to it until I finished the story. Those last three achievements though, not sure if or when I'll continue with figuring out how to unlock those...