Reviews

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  CJ HUNTER

  Mar 18, 2022

  Not my kind of game, but some people might enjoy it.
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  ♥ Moxie The Tomboy Vixen ♥

  Jun 2, 2016

  Played for a while, found it pretty entertaining. Though I came about far too late to enjoy the arcade experience this game is trying to emulate, it's still an enjoyable scrolling shooter. I like the novel idea of being able to continue after your ship is shot down (even though it took a few seconds after it happened for me to even realize it; I should probably do more reading before I play a game).
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  BeamZappa

  Jun 3, 2016

  Expectations exceeded! Don't expect Star Drifter to play like a £0.79 game, everything is done very well and feels solid, the music is good, the graphics are good, the controls are good (given its key based). If you like high difficulty shooters and can get on with key controls, I think you'll dig it!
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  DeadlyDan

  Jun 5, 2016

  Good start so far... waiting for controller support. xD I'll see what features are added before recommending.
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  Miserable Little Pile of Secrets

  Jun 7, 2016

  I've been on a real SHMUP kick lately, and when I saw this was available for 50¢ I figured I couldn't go wrong, right? I wish. I'm not even sure where to begin in listing the negatives of this game, let's see... The scanlines on screen make everything super difficult to see, and cannot be turned of; they make the screen overall very dark, since 50% of it is darkened by their presence. This, paired with the overuse of bloom effects makes things on screen appear super super blurry and hazy. The game claims to harken back to the old days of space shooters eating your quarters all day in the arcade, boasting "hard, very hard" difficulty, but fails to capture anything close to the same feeling. Firstly, the camera feels zoomed in way too far because the developers thought it was a good idea to make the ship take up a full 1/7th of the vertical screen space while scrolling vertically--why they made a 16:9 game a vertical scroller in the first place is baffling--and on top of that they made the stages larger than the screen actually shows, so you have to push your ship to the edges to force it to move around even more, which brings me to my next point: Absolutely ridiculous deaths from off-screen objects suddenly running directly into your ship because you're trying to move somewhere that things are actually happening. The "randomly generated" stages often have huge sections of dead space, with not an enemy in sight... except for their bullets flying at you from the sides or bottom of the screen that you cannot shoot toward. Normally, in an arcade shooter, dead space is nice because it gives you some breathing room, but this game has experience points and gold for on-the-fly upgrades so you can't afford to have 10 seconds of doing nothing but dodging nearly impossible to see shots flying at you way too fast from angles you have no idea there are even enemies at. On the subject of the on-the-fly upgrade system, it is so poorly implemented as to be a joke: They force you to maneuver with the arrow keys, while firing your main weapon with X and secondary weapon with Z, and expect you to, in the middle of a stage, press O to pause the game and open the shop. And then when you buy new primary and secondary weapons, you're supposed to switch between them with N & M, and

  , while firing with Z and X and moving with the arrow keys. None of the controls can be rebound, and there is no controller support. Why did they not use keys nearer to Z and X for these things? Like A/S and D/F? Who knows. Why don't they let you rebind them? Your guess is as good as mine. I am a child of the '80s, I remember going to arcades and playing Galaxian and Galaga, I [i]enjoy[/i] shoot 'em up games and play a wide variety of very difficult ones. This game is bad, and hiding behind "retro graphics and difficulty" to shield it from criticism. It was not even worth the fifty cents I paid for it.

• 

  Quetenten

  Jun 7, 2016

  For $1 this shmup is a great deal! I had a quick play through and I'm really impress with the gameplay. Collect enough coins you can upgrade your weapons and ship and there are plenty of customizing available in the shop that can be access anytime during in game play. I also love the retro graphics with scanlines and the overall graphics is just amazing. This game isn't easy and you will die a lot. I like the challenge and the difficulty level is just right for a shmup fan. There's no gamepad support at the moment but Devs are working on it. Lucky for me I have a Steam Controller and able to map KB input. Also edit your S3DClient.cfg file to enable Fullscreen and set resolution.
• 

  Chizu

  Jun 11, 2016

  "Ehhh..." Just about sums up my feelings about this game. It completely lacks options to turn off the scanlines and other effects you may not want, theres zero controller support. I feel like with a bit more polish and attention this could have been a much more enjoyable title. I realize it costs next to nothing but I still wouldnt really reccomend this as it is right now. Give it some options and controller support and I'll flip.
• 

  The Abandonator

  Jun 30, 2016

  This game has so many issues that make it unenjoyable. Though I was a child of the 90s, thanks to a few local arcades that lovingly struggled to continue to exist during my childhood, I'm intimately familiar with the experience of playing the types of 80s arcade games this was meant to reproduce. It fails in soooooo many ways. FFIXMaster pretty much sums it all up in their scathing review. I bought the game at a very low cost but don't enjoy it at all. I probably won't be playing it again unless the developer takes some of the criticism in that review to heart and makes adjustments.
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  Corwid

  Jul 4, 2016

  Fix resolution problems (off-screen death), add mouse or gamepad control and this could be a very nice shmup. Graphics and music are nice and I really enjoyed it. Also often hard to see enemies projectiles, but maybe it's a matter of time.
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  Ryan Dorkoski

  Jul 5, 2016

  [b]Keep moving, nothing to see here.[/b] While [i]Star Drifter[/i] has some decent pixel art and a low asking price, it doesn't bring anything new to the table, and there are enough small issues to add up to overall badness. [i]Essentially, this is another space-shooter in a sea of space-shooters.[/i] Shovel it on the pile with the rest of them. To to go from 'meh' to bad, add in no controller support, sloppy-joe controls, and overall run-of-the-mill mechanics. [b]Pros:[/b] +Some of the pixel art is pretty decent. Too bad its often muddied up with that visual filter. This can often make it difficult to discern what is in the foreground (and therefore can hurt you), and what is in the background. +The asking price is low. [b]Cons:[/b] -No controller support. This is a big problem for this kind of game. -Lack of options in general; no full screen support, or rebinding of keys, etc. -It suffers from overall lag and poor performance. -Controls are fairly terrible. The ship steers like your grandmother's Buick from the 1950's. There is tons of oversteer and its just not as tight as it needs to be for this genre. -Every mechanic has been done exactly somewhere else; the shop, the energy bar, the primary and secondary guns, etc. -Overall just not fun. [b]I've said it before and I'll say it again - some indie games that are basement homebrew projects can be great fun, but most should really stay in the basement.[/b] This is certainly a great title for a small indie company that wants to show proof that they can finish a project to get funded for something more ambitious, but this alone is no gem. Peace,
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  Solid Snake

  Jul 15, 2016

  I didn't like this game. There's much better Galaga-esque games out there than this one. The intro graphics are pretty nice but the controls are so sluggish, I immediately stopped playing.
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  dawhoopmaster

  Aug 1, 2016

  This is one of the most boring games I've ever played. Its just a generic space shooter. Nothing else. Seriously, thats all I have to say. There are lots of other games on Steam better than this...or should I say more FUN than this, go spend that little amount on something better.
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  CrunchyToast

  Sep 7, 2016

  Imagine making some hommage to old shoot em ups and then only offer KEYBOARD CONTROLS, because that's how you play those games, right ? RIGHT ? Listing Xenon, R-Type, Galaga and what not...you know what those games had in common ? You could play them with a Joystick or Joypad ! Over 25 years ago ! What a novel concept ! In other news...Audiovisuals are the well known "retro" fad, but the weird scanline effect makes everything blurry and just...bleh..Much like the enemy ship design, which is just uninspired and bland. Ship controls are sloppy and awkward with your ship drifting to the side a bit once you stop pressing a key. There's also a side-scrolling effect, which always seems to pull your ship towards the center of the screen when you stop moving for a bit. Half the time I didn't even know what's a pickup, an enemy, just...background or a bullet. It all just meshes into one clusterflak of things on your screen and with you trying to fly over them, either picking them up, not interacting with them at all or dying :p Oh and the keys are not rebindable, which is especially great for Germans like me, who have to deal with an Y X instead of a Z X layout -_-
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  peremptor

  Sep 8, 2016

  The only redeeming feature this smhup has is to serve as an example of how not to design a vertical shooter. Just one horrible game that isn't worth your time at any price especially considering how many great SHMUPS are out there on steam and elsewhere for cheaper or free like the sublime Hydorah (google and enjoy).
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  ratpack

  Oct 15, 2016

  Positive: -Steam Cards Negative: -All the rest
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  SuperAyzeek

  Feb 26, 2017

  Super!
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  mrorange

  Apr 28, 2017

  No controller support. No possibility to change the key mapping. Unplayable. Do not buy. Not even for 49 cents.
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  Capitaine Pator

  Oct 9, 2017

  This game deserve a lot more bad reviews. A LOT.
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  Shadow Ops

  Aug 25, 2018

  Star Drifter fast game with modern day graphics with easy controls that moves from location A to B to C and so on. good game. Personal Suggested Purchase Price: $0.49 Or Less During Sale
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  Grimagin

  Oct 16, 2019

  Listen to your friendly negative comments. There is a reason why this game is always on sale for $0.49 when it only costs $0.99 regular.