Starvester Reviews

Unfortunately… no. This game is kind of boring even by idle game standards, which, to be honest, is impressive in the worst possible way. It has a terrible user interface, practically no QoL, not enough automation, and requires way more clicks than a game of this genre even should. And I really need to know who decided that giving each planet a completely different user interface was a good idea in a game centered on production and optimization. Yes, it’s somewhat interesting the first time. The second time, it's annoying. The third time, it seems like the game is actively trying to hide information from you under the guise of 'variety.' Which would be bad enough on its own, were it not for the fact that the user interface also refuses to provide basic information that is absolutely essential in a game of this type. By how much does an upgrade actually increase TOTAL production? I have no idea. How much does each drone - or any of its specialized versions - produce? Apparently, this information was too valuable to reveal after the first planet. How long does it take to fill the production bar? Who knows. Certainly not the player. And that’s the real problem: this is an idle game where the whole appeal is supposed to be optimizing your economy, except the game hides the actual numbers you’d need to optimize anything. So instead of making decisions, you just throw resources at buttons and pray you happen to pick the least stupid option. On top of that, there’s a prestige loop that repeats itself quickly, along with challenges that feel as if they were designed by someone who harbors a deep grudge against the player. 'Click on 50 asteroids' would be a pointless, tedious task in and of itself, but these asteroids disappear at certain zoom levels and are barely visible from the start because they’re dark green against a black background. It’s unbelievable. I made it to Pistol Planet, looked to see what the game expected of me next, and immediately chose freedom. And as a final insult - there’s practically no variety in builds. You don’t experiment, adapt, or try out interesting strategies. Every prestige is the same. Also resources grant prestige points only up to a certain limit, and then the game pushes you toward a different type of resource, so your 'build' mainly consists of being dragged from one production objective to the next, hoping that precious prestige points will eventually brute-forces progress. If you make bad decisions, there’s no real way to fix them other than by prestige again, because apparently changing your specialization mid-run is a luxury. The only thing you can recall are satellites. Great. I’m glad this feature wasn't gutted. So yeah, I wanted to like this, but the game is buried under terrible UI choices, missing information, repetitive prestige systems, annoying challenges, and the complete lack of meaningful build options. It feels less like an idle game and more like a hostile spreadsheet with stage props.

Tower Wizard but worse lol. The entirety of the early game is copy pasted from Tower Wizard, and anything else added (aka the entire lategame) is not balanced well at all. I did like the visuals, but jumping around between all the planets and things was pretty annoying after a bit.\ Also, the Asteroid breaking prestige doesn't work on the gold asteroids so getting 1000 titanium challenge took forever.

[strike]Big bug where you loose all your drones when you quit and then continue the game.[/strike] Another game that should have been early access.

The demo set expectations. The full game buried them. What was once a promising experience is now dragged down by lack of content, poorly executed upgrades, a terrible prestige system, and more bugs than a broken ant farm. The execution feels rushed, unfinished, and nowhere near the quality the demo suggested. If this doesn’t get serious updates soon, the outlook is bleak.

The game simply isn't worth the money. The core idea is great, but the execution falls far short. The bugs are terrible and significantly ruin the gameplay experience. In the endgame, there are performance issues, translation errors, text scaling problems, and even basic game mechanics do not work correctly. The normal production process often produces inconsistent or incorrect results. In some cases, the correct numbers on planets only appear after reloading the game. Unfortunately, the loading process itself is the game's biggest flaw, as it affects all planets and generates supplies out of thin air.The game simply isn't worth the price, especially since there are many games available for the same cost that are superior both technically and graphically. I've played for nearly 10 hours because I wanted to give the game a fair chance. At this point, I'm only missing two achievements, but I have no intention of unlocking them because I won't be playing the game again. The game has a great concept, but the technical issues and bugs ultimately outweigh its strengths. Unfortunately, I can't recommend it in its current state.

The first third or so of the game is pretty good, and I would have given a good review for it. But after that the mechanics don't interact as well, and don't seem as balanced well. There are several parts that don't seem to be as well balanced. Twice near the end you are told "you need to prestige to continue." Doing so unlocks a new resource (unlike all the other times in the game where resources unlock naturally as you progress) that are only used for one specific thing (So it really comes off as just padding the playtime). The very last "planet" has you needing to wait for it to generate a new resource that lets you win the game. However, there is no indication what this generation speed is based on (it shares an icon with something on an unrelated "planet" but it's not clear if they are related. So you really need to just wait to let it generate and then you win. Even WITH those time sinks this is less than a 7 hour game (there are few other things that stretch it out unnecessarily, but are less obvious about it). It feels like the dev built the start of the game and got it refined to be fairly good, but only had the vague concept of what the rest would be and for whatever reason had to rush the rest. Very disappointing.

Overall a lovely idea and I am very glad that you made and published this game. The game starts out wonderfully and has many cool moments and advancements, yet gradually turns into a slog where more and more resources stop mattering entirely. There's a certain amount of jank going on which becomes less endearing as you play longer. Honestly, I DO recommend that you check this game out if you like things having to do with space or collecting materials throughout a solar system. And yet I have to at the same time NOT recommend you play this game because you'll find it's lacking polish more and more as time goes on. It's a mixed bag, but truly an excellent first release by the developer.

This game is beautiful. The concept is amazing too! However, the game is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boring I think it's bugged. There's a hard time gate and I'm quite literally sitting here for 30min with everything maxed out and there's nothing left to do but wait and I'm not even near the end. Every time you prestige, you have to do this again and again just waiting. Nothing makes the wait go faster as opposed to every point in the game prior. The Proxima Ares part of the game has you waiting X amount of seconds to generate two resources, Energy and Star Dust. Every X seconds, you generate 1 stardust. This is a hard time gate. However, the energy is EVEN WORSE. I believe the amount of Emitters you put on the star gives you X% of your current total Star Dust in your inventory. For example, I have 455 star dust with an energy generating modifier of 18,754%. You would think that you get 187.54x of your star dust as energy. Nope. You get 455. I've been sitting here watching the energy tick up by a few hundred by a few hundred. I finally unlock the next level, instantly max everything out, then have to wait an hour+ to get the required energy to get to the next tier........................ This makes the game even more unplayable as you need energy to gain prestige points to make other points in the game faster............... If you are considering this game please just put it on your wish list and return in like 6 months and maybe the game is in a playable state.

The demo was fun. The full game runs with that. However, if feels like non of the stuff past the demo content was planned very well and definitely not explained. The worst offender, and best example, is the last step you need to do. It is not explained that you need to summon a ship. You need to then pilot the ship using WASD and then, when you are where you need to use it, you have to press spacebar. And you know what, none of that is explained. It is so unlike the rest of the game that it makes no sense as it is never explained.

[h1]Demo-bait at its finest.[/h1] Demo-phase included everything from start to completing Oda's star (first sun basically). Every resource, [i]most[/i] of prestige upgrades, managing drone ratios between planets, all of that felt sensible, balanced, managable. You were always upgrading your "factory" (as game calls it) to keep progressing further, you always had something to do and check for. There's no synergy between newly added planets as it was in the demo. [hr][/hr] [h2]rant section, tl;dr past-demo is filled with timewalls[/h2] After unlocking next new planet - you're met with your first timewall. It's a drone maker planet. When maxed out-you will get 10 drones per 20 seconds and there's [b]NOTHING[/b] to boost it any further. This will be your main stop cap at the end-game. Next, a planet which generates "star dust" which boosts sun's currency (which you wont have any problems with after getting past demo-phase). It's capped at [b][i]1 per 4 seconds[/i][/b][i],[/i] and you will need [b]100[/b] to progress. You just wait and be happy. Then a planet which allows you to [i]buy[/i] star dust, but scaling goes so high - you will buy 20-30 at most. Next planet unlocks at [b]300 STARDUST.[/b] YOU JUST WAIT. AND BE HAPPY. Next planet just gets skipped past due to accumulated research points being able to max out the planet and reach the needed goals. Next, game [b]forces[/b] you to prestige because an """upgrade""" to progress is locked behind a prestige point milestone (it will happen [b]twice[/b] [i](thrice if you count the moment in a demo phase, but that was actually paced good)[/i]). Salt on the wound - it unlocks a resource which is used for factory expansion and then is obsolete. After resetting-[b]have fun waiting [u]again[/u][/b]. [b]Welcome to your end-game timewall.[/b] It's a "birth rate" meter, which increases [i]ever-so-slowly[/i], and you will be needing B I L L I O N S of lives, and you're gonna fill this bar TWICE because after unlocking a "planet" that helps with birth rates - you get [b]forced to reset again[/b]. It feels like game forces you to reset back-to-back rather quickly while reading this rant, but keep in mind, there's [b]a lot of waiting[/b] during these 4 lines of the review. After reseting for final required time - most of timewall'd planets are now unlocked, but its only because the final timewalls are going to force you to forget about the game and write a review. [b]It's a drone timewall. You need 500 of them. They're still capped at 0.5/sec. Have fuuuuuuun.[/b] Game's over. Only one achievement left. After getting the last "planet" - it generates a resource which can be traded for a prestige point. Sounds nice, but gen time is [b]abysmally slow[/b]. It's based off the birth rate, or lives rate, I DONT KNOW! [b]PROGRESS BARS DONT SHOW YOU VALUES![/b] All i know is its [b]minutes per one[/b], and you need [b]10[/b] for the final achievement. I'm writing this and its only 6/10 through. [h3]rant over[/h3] When i reached mid-game, i thought broken AltTab'ing would be the biggest issue. Useless mechanics (asteroids, not even worth talking about), useless/misleading/not-working-as-described-in-some-cases upgrades, bugs when restarting game, bugs when AltTab'ing the game, unbearable timewalls compared to how demo played out, [b]Everything past-demo is just waiting,[/b] wether its waiting for drones to be made, for """challenge""" completion, for factory expansion, for birth rate to climb, [b]you will feel the timewalls.[/b] There is [b]no more resource management, half[/b] of the demo-phase resources gets [b]completely obsolete[/b] when reaching new content. [b]DID THE ORIGINAL DEVELOPER DIE AND SOMEONE ELSE TOOK OVER???[/b] PAST-DEMO-PHASE IS [b]NOTHING[/b] LIKE HOW DEMO FELT. I gave this game a second post-endgame chance to see if there's actually a good way to play through sluggish parts/i missed something with all the prestige upgrades i got, and... yes... there's a mechanic where holding down a planet speeds up its production, which... doesnt work on new planets... I could've really used 5x faster drone gen/5x more drones generated/[b]5x star dust[/b], but as of release - [b]new content is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slog.[/b] [hr][/hr] [h3]This game is a literal bait-and-switch idler. Play the demo and leave it as is. [b]My dissapointment is immesurable and my release hype is ruined.[/b][/h3] [i] oh, no demo anymore?.. Wow. [/i]