[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If you like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote]
Ah yes, Starr Mazer DSP. The shmup prequel to an even bigger game called Starr Mazer which was going to blend point & click and shmup genres together. The game that became famous for what happened during its development. And the game I profoundly regret buying in its early access phase.
Let's start with what happened with the game, because I have more to say about that than the game itself.
[h2]The composer who took it way too far...[/h2]
The situation surrounding this game is a major, massive cluster ♥♥♥♥ with a bunch of unknown/undisclosed information and speculations. I am not in a position to explain everything in detail and offer my own thoughts about them, so let me just get you up to speed on what happened.
From what I know, the summary of everything is: The developer and the music composer get into a fight with each other over various topics including asset ownership. The composer tries to retaliate against the developer by any means necessary and becomes overly hostile, doing actions such as attacking other people/developers whom they worked with before and even sending false copyright takedowns to everyone who played Starr Mazer DSP on YouTube and Twitch, causing some accounts to be banned. All of those result in the whole internet going up in arms against the composer because what they did was truly out of the line. The composer repeats the acts later on, including copyright takedowns, despite what had happened.
The developer and the composer go the legal way to settle this matter. However, the latter's actions had given them a lot of infamy at that point, causing people to shower the developer with support to win the case including free legal defense, a GoFundMe campaign raising about $18,905 to cover the legal fees and countless copies of the game getting sold on Steam. Some time later, the case is allegedly settled and in favor of the developer.
However, I think no one expected what would happen next...
[h2]If you were in the Discord you would know there would be big news
- Some poor soul[/h2]
People expected the development of the game to get back on track after a while, considering everything seemed to be over. But... nothing happened; as if the development had been damaged beyond repair by all the trouble surrounding it. By the time of writing this text, the game has been in early access for about 9 years, and not getting a single update since 5 years ago. And allegedly, the entirety of the dev team have moved on except for one person... which I personally can neither confirm nor reject.
Through all these years, we were constantly told that the development is progressing well and the game is even getting completely overhauled, yet those words did not bear fruit. People would ask around on the official Discord server for the game, trying to find out what was going to happen with it, and the devs would always promise an update everytime and not delivering it. Until there was absolute, deafening silence... and the game technically gained the abandoned status.
[h2]Allow me to clarify something for you...[/h2]
I've seen a lot of people defend the devs on their improper communications, and I want to say something about it. If you are selling an early access game, you need to directly communicate with the consumers of your product. You need to give them clear info on how they can keep up with you and the news about the game, while posting the most important points and breakthroughs where everyone can see them. And as a lot of people will not or can not make an entirely new social media account just to keep up with you, you should post those important updates wherever most of your fanbase is located at.
Yes, there was a Discord server but pray tell, how can one even know it exists when neither the store pages nor the official website have a link to it? Not to mention all of the links people have posted are expired. Yes, the devs have said they are still working on the game but pray tell, why hasn't there been any footage or actual news released from the WIP stuff to reassure everyone that the development is progressing? Even WRATH: Aeon of Ruin did it despite going through a literal development hell.
DEVS, YOU ARE STILL SELLING THIS GAME AND EVEN PARTICIPATING IN STEAM SALES. PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW IF THE GAME IS TRULY ABANDONED OR NOT. IF YOU ARE INDEED WORKING ON THE GAME, THEN SHOW SOMETHING, AS SMALL AS A SINGLE SCREENSHOT. IF NOT, DELIST THE GAME SO NO ONE ELSE BUYS AN ABANDONED, UNFINISHED PRODUCT. [b]SILENCE IS NOT DOING YOU ANY FAVORS; ESPECIALLY WHEN ITS BEEN FIVE YEARS WITH ZERO COMMUNICATION.[/b]
[h2]Enough yapping, how's the ga- OH GOD[/h2]
I played all versions of this game, spending more time in the public build as that's the most updated one, and I'm going to be brutally honest: This game should have been released a decade ago. It's incredibly inferior to other recent games in the genre and will have no chance against them today if the final product comes out by a miracle and it's just more of this.
Starr Mazer DSP, in its current form, is incredibly boring to play. The enemy patterns are mostly just hordes of enemies coming at you to be mowed down; And this, in turn, has turned weapons with piercing stats more valuable than everything else. The whole mechanic of hiring pilots as extra lives with your accumulated points is interesting as an idea, but really adds nothing special to the game and honestly doesn't feel like a roguelike twist as devs have claimed. And finally, I'm not a fan of tying weapon level/damage to the special attack gauge.
Then there's the problems the game has, many of which being recurring problems in the shmup genre. [b]Your entire ship has an active hitbox for some reason[/b], which makes dodging some bullet patterns impossible as the bigger ships. The enemy projectiles have color palletes and shapes that make them easily blend with the background. You can't disable the unnecessary controller vibration, cinematic death cam (which goes on for way too long) or screen shake. And I guess I should have expected this with everything that had went on... but the music is pretty uninteresting and forgettable as well... IN A SHMUP.
[h2]TL;DR[/h2]
Survived an incredibly messy situation, just to stay abandoned after 5 years of constant broken update promises and "trust me bro"-feeling statements. Shame that the gameplay itself is not fun either.
