Star Impact

Review

Welcome, Stella Striker. You have been assigned to pilot the Icarus II, the last great interstellar starship and mankind's last hope to explore the galaxy. You must stop to collect the matter needed to power your ship’s star impact drive as you journey through space. Each of the planets you visit is filled with primeval creatures & deadly environments; you will have to negotiate past them with the game’s unique mechanics at play. You can only move in one direction until you hit an energy vortex & reverse; the only actions are jumping on easy difficulty, then on hard difficulty dashing is added. These are the only things you have to control while you play. It is noteworthy that you can short jump and long jump by how you hit and hold the key. You will be blasting through barrels that send you flying through the map at a furious rate, much like many of our favorite games from back in the day. Solve environmental puzzles to collect all the matter scattered throughout all the levels to compete for the high score on the leader boards (I am currently #2 :O come at me bro :p). So, get suited up pilot, you're humanity's Last Hope!

Released & self-published on Mar 26, 2019, by the developer Me Games, this indie title is their first release on Steam. It’s a casual to difficult platformer, featuring 3 difficulty settings - easy, hard, and pro – and some of the most unusual mechanics I have seen in a while for a platformer of this type. It has a vibrant colorful old school graphic design and a nice mix of unlockable audio tracks, and you can choose your faves for use in a custom playlist in the game. There’s also a built-in death counter – yes, you get to watch your death counts rise visual every time you die! At the end of the levels, your stats are given on times you died and matter collected.

There are not a lot of settings for the game, with Master Volume and Music Volume sliders, Fullscreen/ Window, and Quality allowing for resolution settings of 720 x 480 all the way to 2560 x 1440. You can also view the credits and click a support contact that opens in your browser.

Partial Controller Support had an issue for my Xbox 360 controller - the jump key was non-functional for jumping; it would start the game up fine though. I have posted to the discussion's forum on the issue, but have not received a response; yet to learn more. I have no other controller types to test as all we use are Xbox 360 controllers (I consider it the go-to controller when testing for controller support). I had my son test the game as well, and we both found that there was a slight jump delay when pressing any of the assigned keys, which is why I wanted to use my controller. With practice, it wasn't too hard to get used to, except in the small multi-jump areas where you had to time it perfectly (which adds to your death count!). With a few attempts, you will master the problem areas and move forward.

I have found the game to be fun and a bit frustrating at the same time (explained above). I simply loved the level design and startling mechanics behind the title. It has a clever design that I would say is quite unique to the genre with multiple influences from games of the past. The climbing was a fresh notable mechanic. I was worried about all the jumping I knew the game contained, but was pleasantly surprised in the way the game handled this part of parkour. It did take me a bit to tell my brain, “No! You cannot turn around and grab that matter on the ground behind you that you missed along the path!” I have currently beaten the easy difficulty and am working my way through the hard difficulty. With the addition of the dashing features come fresh challenges from the environment; I am also getting used to using it alongside jumping and getting the timing right to make it through the parkour. It is a great little indie title for the amount of gameplay you get for the price line.

Achievement hunters will want to note that you need to beat it on all 3 difficulties to 100% the game.

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!