NOTE: This game was given to me by the developer for review purposes. This did not influence my review in any way.
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---------------------------------------OVERVIEW-------------------------------------
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According to its Steam store page, Stellar Stars is a "Multiplayer Online Roguelite Arena!"
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----------------------------------------QUALITY-------------------------------------
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Graphics - Stellar Stars has retro pixel graphics, as seems to be all the rage with indie games these days, and in some games they're really good. Unfortunately, in Stellar Stars they're mostly dull and a bit ugly, with bland colour palettes.
The title screen is quite nice, and the introduction to the "Challenge Story" mode is sort of charming for the first few seconds, but it goes on way too long, and the humour falls flat after the first mild chuckle.
Sound - Sound effects sound like old 8-bit sounds: the sort you'd hear in a game from the period this retro title is emulating. Music is better produced, but with a similar theme. Both are suitable for this title, but I wouldn't bother buying a soundtrack if one were available.
The sound in the too-long introduction is terrible, with text being preceded each time with a distorted bass thump that had me muting it until the game proper had started
Gameplay - Stellar stars plays like an old 8-bit or early 16-bit platformer, but unfortunately not a very good one. Your little character -- whatever it is supposed to be -- moves around in the air like he has jetpacks mounted to his body, and when he's on the ground he reacts like he's on a high-powered hovercraft. It's ridiculously hard and frustrating to try to do precision jumps on the normal levels, but once you hit ice, you may as well just stop playing. This game has the worst inertia and friction I've seen in any platformer.
Controls are via keyboard or controller. I tried both and suggest that you ignore the little screen saying that a controller is optimal -- sure, you have a bit more control over where your shots go and you can shoot upwards without jumping, but left and right controller sensitivity is way over the top and you'll find yourself flying out of control often. The keyboard controls are a bit more tame, but still extremely slippery.
To make controlling your 'thing' even more frustrating, every time you attack the game gives you a little pulse of force in the opposite direction: shoot once or twice on an ice platform in particular, and over the edge you go. And the icing on the cake is the poor collision detection, making tight jumps between platforms an exercise in RSI.
The game is played in a series of one-screen levels, or arenas. In single player, you kill all the baddies, collect the powerups, and move to the next level. The game claims that it is a 'roguelite', but I disagree. Yes, it has some sort of procedural level generation, but since each level is made up of half a dozen platforms and some enemies from a pre-defined pool, that hardly qualifies as 'roguelite' in my opinion. Oh, and the procedural generation will sometimes generate a level that you simply can't beat without taking damage: there will be an enemy or two on a tiny platform on one side of the screen that is blocked from access or attack other than jumping onto it and hoping you kill them before they kill you. Since health pickups are not guaranteed, it basically becomes a game of attrition.
Unfortunately the collectibles are not explained, and even after playing for an hour and a half I couldn't tell you what all of them do. There's a very limited tutorial (part of the introduction I mentioned), but it's too busy trying to be funny to explain anything useful. I managed to get my fireball spell to Level 2 twice, but I don't know how. The other two spells (a purple grenade-like thing and a more powerful version of your starting attack) stayed on Level 1 no matter what, as did the starting attack.
The game supports local and online multiplayer, too. The online multiplayer has five servers / regions: USA, Europe, Australia, Asia, and Japan. I'm not sure when Japan ceased to be a part of Asia. Unfortunately, I can't describe what multiplayer is like because I don't want to submit anyone I know to the pain of playing the game locally (especially not at the price they'd have to pay for it!) and I was unable to find any online games on any of the servers. I did notice two annoyances that have become quite common with indie games with online multiplayer: you can't change your in-game name (it uses your Steam profile name), and there are no server statistics available, so you have no way of knowing if anyone else is even logged in.
Finally, although the game has now been released, I encountered quite a few bugs in my 90-odd minutes of torture:
- weird black bar over bottom portion of the screen, hiding the bottom platform and everything on it (had to quit to desktop and reload)
- game sometimes freezes, requiring task manager to get back to the desktop to restart
- poor hit detection: can occasionally kill ghosts inside platforms, leaving spawned collectibles inside platforms
- broken text on level up screen after destroying first boss
- two characters to unlock for 50 and 99 stars both always say need 50 more or 99 more stars, regardless of how many you've collected (presumably it needs stars earned in multiplayer, but it doesn't say this anywhere)
- in-game text could do with a proof reader
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-------------------------------------PROS & CONS------------------------------------
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Pros:
+ Procedural level generation (but, see below)
+ Steam achievements (but, see below)
Cons:
- Controls are abysmal
- Mostly ugly pixel graphics
- Still very buggy
- Powerups / collectibles are confusing
- Very overpriced
- Procedural level generation produces more frustration than replayability
- Steam achievements are all multiplayer, and no one is playing
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--------------------------------------CONCLUSION-----------------------------------
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I was interested and even a bit excited to play Stellar Stars. That interest and excitement died fairly quickly after starting the game, and I couldn't even bring myself to play to the two-hour mark.
Not recommended unless you're a masochist and have masochist friends to play with, and don't mind paying a premium to do so.
[h1]3/10[/h1]
