Star Horizon Reviews

Whether you enjoy Star Horizon depends on what expectations you bring to the game. As a child of the 80s, I experienced the development of rail shooters firsthand, like Star Fox or Rebel Assault. Star Horizon follows more the footsteps of Star Fox. You control your space fighter, aim at targets, dodge shots, but always stay on the predetermined flight path. The first time I played the game was on an iPad around 2015. Of course, you can see Star Horizons mobile origins. However, I'm evaluating the game from the perspective of a Steam Deck user. Star Horizon runs natively on Linux, at 800p with ultra settings on SD OLED, delivering smooth and consistent 90 FPS. Unfortunately, you need to tinker a bit - the controls don't work out of the box on the Steam Deck, so I had to map keyboard functions to the buttons. Specifically, Q, E, SPACE, F1, and the arrow keys to the d-pad. That was the only tinkering required, to make the game fully playable. After that, I could dive into combat. Star Horizon is a nice game for an evening or a weekend. I bought it during Winter sale for 4€ and it entertained me well. Keep in mind, it's an Indie game! All dialogues are fully voiced, and from my perspective, the voice actors do a very good job. You blast your way through 10 levels, follow an interesting story, try to get 3 stars per mission - and then you put the game aside. The ship and all weapon systems can be upgraded with Credits. Those are earned by destroying enemies and completing a mission for the first time. I recommend finishing the game on easy first because the basic variant of the fighter is quite weak. Laser, missiles, ship, torpedo - that was my upgrade sequence. All in all: I was well entertained for 5 hours, unlocked 28 out of 29 achievements, and have absolutely no complaints for the money I paid. Personally, I find the PC version much better than the iOS version. Try it out during a sale. If you like Star Fox, you won't go wrong with Star Horizon.