Starr Mazer: DSP

I never ever purchase early-access titles, because I work in a place where betatesters are paid for testing, instead of being charged for it. This, however, is an exception. By purchasing this title I'd like to support the developers on their fight against the troll that is currently abusing the copyright system for reasons only one with a twisted mind could fathom, and putting the livehoods of many legitimate content creators at risk in the process. Sirs, your fight WILL be won. Can't wait to see this title's full release; I love shoot'em-ups :-)

Full Disclosure: I bought this game to give a big middle finger to a certain composer that will hopefully be in jail within the next few weeks. Turns out to be a pretty damn fun game though, so bonus! Reminds me a bit of Life Force for the nes and has some nice retro graphics that have a very sega genesis feel to them.

Pros: * Very retro * Very hard * Fantastic music. Cons: * Mechanics are somewhat obscure, for example how the health bar works. But that adds to the experience somewhat because learning is fun. * A controller is a must. * No way to save your progress which is all done via a score meta. Alex Mauer recommended this game to me.

Bought this mostly to support the developer and my favorite copyright attorney as they wade through all the BS with the former composer. Contract disputes should be settled in court, not by throwing tantrums on the internet. This sort of game usually isn't my thing and I am absolutely terrible at it. I played less then an hour before I posted this, and I must have sent a hundred of these poor pilots to their horrible death already. I might actually be a bigger threat to humanity and it's survival then the g'ell at this rate. It succeeds beautifully in evoking that feeling of older arcade style shoot'em up games. I could easily see this in a retro style cabinet, eating my quaters as I try to fumble my way through learning the patterns of just one level of it. The new soundtrack fits the game much better then the old one. From the videos I saw of pre-pull gameplay, the soundtrack was competent but really slow and quiet for an action game like this. The new music has more pep to it, which matchs the action alot better. My advice: When you guys win the case, just let the old tracks rot and keep the new ones. All and all, its a good game. Its a step out of my comfort zone, but ended up being a good experience. Its got me looking forward to the point and click.

Look at the update tab. Tons of info trying to sell you the game, but the last actual game update? Nothing since. They blamed it all on Alex Mauer, and truthfully that person did cause havoc and added delay. Unfortunately, I feel the devs are just using this as an excuse. Again, no actual update since 2016. Let's go further: The game is extremely buggy, and most likely no fix is ever coming. Please see above. It won't run in 4k or on 4k machines, or even in 1080p on a 4k display. The bug is known. Please see above. Only one stage is playable even though they claim multiple levels are available in the beta tab. Which they are not. Please see above. The developer, IMAGOS, seems to no longer be working on this game at all. Don't waste your money. I bought this game to support IMAGOS as I backed the other version of Star Mazer and really wanted that to succeed. So far, that game has also been a no-show and is years behind schedule. Basically, it looks as though all Star Mazer content was a money grab for vaporware. That money is now being used to produce videos.....for E3.....for other companies. UPDATE. It's now June of 2024. No updates. It's my opinion that Don Thacker and Imagos made this throwaway ripoff to try and recoup money they embezzled on the original Star Mazer Kickstarter project. I will never support Imagos again, and I hope Devolver Digital stops working with them. Imagos is a scam led by Don Thacker, head scammer.

Rouge-light Shmup, When you start the game up and hit start you start off with 3 randomly generated ships/pilots. Each ship has 2 weapons, a main weapon that is usually your bread and butter, and then you have a Super weapon which drains your energy faster, but tends to do crazy damage or destroy enemy bullets. Once your first small squad dies you then use "Skore" you've earned to buy a new squad from randomly generated packs. Packs can also have special Legendary pilots that are based off StarrMazer(Not yet released) devs, and characters from StarrMazer lore. There are other mechanics to the game, but it explains those its self. For game length you'll eventually have 3 Acts. Each Act will have 3 Scenes (stages) Currently the first Act, is complete-ish (needs some cleaning up) And you can do the first part of Act2 while in its WIP stages. the final Act will be coming soon! Pros- Awesome art. Awesome music. A great pick up and play for an hour sort of game. Tight controls. fun weapons. Fair enemy patterns. Cheap for what all you get. Cons- You'll probably run into weapons you dislike often. The Cat Admiral gets a bit stale after a few runs. Only one of the legendary pilots has my favorite Super weapon. Dog pilot isn't in the current build. If you wanna poke at the dev's brains, or even chat with them live they hang out in here often https://discord.gg/QxuHj58 Over all the game is a beautiful blend of oldschool and current Shmup design. Excited to see more weapons, stages, and hear more music. Also the dev team is very open to ideas so if you have them drop them in the steam forums! As for a last comment. This game was made due to a love for a proto-type. This was originally a mock up for the Imagos Software team to test out weapon ideas for their main game coming fairly soon, called just StarrMazer. I highly suggest checking StarrMazer out on youtube and their own site. It is going to be a mixture of Point and Click adventure, with more tactical Shmup sections to it. A blend of ideas never done before!

Most of the reviews are talking about the surrounding controversy so I thought I'd write an actual review of this game. This is a normal shoot em up game like Gradius but what differentiates itself from other games of the genre is the roster. Once you die, you will then move on to your next ship with different stats (Chance of death on hit, ship speed and Carbomite attraction) and weapons. The score you get in the game from collecting Carbomite also acts as a currency. You spend your currency on more ships and you could buy one really high powered ship for 100k + or loads of different ships to have many lives but will generally be less powerful. The different ships also have different pilots. The pilots don't really do much but add character to the game. All characters have been voice acted but the voice seems to be randomly assigned to a pilot. Sometimes I will see pilots who look like a young girl but have the voice of an old man which is odd. Hopefully each pilot could properly be assigned a voice during development. There are many different types of weapons from single shot high damage guns to rapid fire machine guns or spread shot guns and more. These weapons wil be automatically upgraded when you collect enough Carbomite which drop from enemies. There are 3 levels of upgrades for each weapon. One stat you will see on different ships is Carbomite attractor. This determines how well you pull Carbomite towards you. This is important because you can pull two pieces of Carbomite together to make a bigger piece of Carbomite for a bigger boost to the upgrades of weapons and a bigger score. Bigger score means more money. More money means bigger and better ships on your next run. The controls are ok but can be very painful after the first level. Due to the movement acting like a digital input even when using a controller, this means that you can only move in 8 directions and always at 100% speed. This is only a problem when trying to manoeuvre through a barrage of bullets and it feels so much more difficult because you can't make small adjustments well. The HUD doesn't help with this since I have tried dodging bullets and flew in the top corner of the screen but I went behind the HUD and I couldn't see where I was and I got hit. Once you lose all your lives, you start back at the very beginning of the game but you keep your score to buy more ships. This is a really cool idea which I would be ok with if I could save my game somehow. I love playing the game but I have this small amount of dread when playing it. I would get to level 3, die and start from the beginning but with a huge score for better ships to help me on my next run. But if I want to have a break, play something else for a bit, I will lose my score and I will have to grind my score back up again every time I open the game. I could play for 10 hours and die but feel like I have to keep playing even when I don't want to just to keep my progress. If you aren't prepared to play the game for hours and hours non stop, you might as well just play something else which is a huge shame. Please save our score once we quit the game. The levels are very VERY difficult, at least for me. I have only made it to level 3 once, and I do not know how many levels there are. Once I reach the end of a level, it feels so satisfying despite having done the first level around 10 times. Despite the negatives, the game is still tremendous fun due to the great soundstrack and sound design, the varied ships and weapons, the cool enemies that work really well and the unique way of buying lives and ships. I think for £7 though, it's hard to be dissapointed.

Well.. I completed the game in less than 2 hours. It wasn't tough, it wasn't hard. It was a chore. The game starts out strong, kick ass music - nice beautiful sprites.. then- then what? It felt empty and lackluster. There were a huge and i mean a HUGE list of pilots, but they all started to feel the same.. Some had different weapons, which was nice - but ultimately added nothing to the gameplay. Some were stronger than others, given the money you spent on them. They act sort of like extra lives rather than buying a new ship that you OWN as a collection. This is a title that felt more like a mobile game more than anything else. The later stages become an eye-sore with hard to see projectiles blending in with the background. I get so confused and honestly - in the time that i've owned the game, it's probably only gotten an update once. (and i've had it laying around for well over a year). An early access game that sadly earns its title as 'one of those' early acess games.. Shame. I really wanted to like it.

Abandon-ware

Turned into vaporware, do not invest.