Star Waker Reviews

The early levels are quite fun and I like how you gain skill points by completing objectives. But there's a gamebreaking bug. The default controls are, somehow, QSZE instead of ASDF. You can remap them- but A and W appear to be used for using your consumable powerups, and you CAN'T remap those, so you just spam them as you're moving. Honestly it's a shame, because the controls are therefore too awkward to play.

great game, has a indie feel to it but the upgrade system and game mechanics were really fun and fluent, story was pretty good, overall no complaints

Game is a fun shmup. I like the characters and the story they've got here, and the challenges make it interesting. I recommend it, if you're hankering for a SHMUP.

Claims controller support, but it seemed almost non-existent. Could not remap shoot to a trigger or change which stick controlled movement/direction. And you have to change the "accept/reject" mapping just to be able to use the A/B buttons to do anything else.

Star Waker is a nice Shooter with a compelling story and some RPG elements. The upgrade system in particular is very well done, rewarding you for achieving bonus objectives and the skills changing the way you play as you unlock them. The story is nice but some times the good ideas are a bit held back by a somewhat poor delivery. Gameplay wise while there is some cases of annoyance due to "unlucky" inavoidable damage (but the game seems to be built with that in mind), the fatastic boss fights were definitly worth it as for some of them I was feeling like I was fighting a boss in a souls game. All and all Star Waker is a enjoyable shooter with replayability through bonus levels and the two difficulty levels, while not the perfect game ( but is it even possible ) if you like shooting things in space it's definitly worth getting.

It has potential, but it misses the mark in a lot of really important ways. With some tweaks from the dev I could see this being a great game, but as it is right now (v1.2), it's just not there. I really didn't like the way most of the upgrades worked. The first damage upgrade is just a flat 40% bonus, but the second two upgrades in the tree either increase the damage again at the cost one of your three health bars, or cut the original bonus in half to get a fourth health bar. After you go a few nodes down any branch of the tree, it felt like I was more focused on mitigating all of the penalties I had accrued rather than actually improving my ship. The game balance feels a bit off. I spent all of my upgrades increasing my damage at the expense of everything else. Even with that, everything still takes what feels like ages to die. I'm constantly having to deal with multiple waves at once because I can't clear them fast enough, and the screen is just blanketed with enemies and bullets. When I respecced for health instead of damage, it was even worse, and I couldn't even kill the first enemy before I blew the time goal. It also baffles me how a developer can put in the really nice option of restarting just the boss fight and not the entire level before it, but have that skip bring you right up to an unskippable cutscene. The restart boss option is great, I wish more games had it, but even skipping the dialog portions it's a full 20 seconds from hitting restart to actually engaging the boss. The last issue I have with it is that it frequently wants you to make really precise, minor adjustments to your positioning, but it doesn't really give you the tools to do so in a way that feels good. Some of the boss patterns, and the ring sections at the end of each level, expect you to navigate very tight spaces, but you ship only has one speed, and that speed is tuned for dodging the bullet hell parts of the levels. There is no button you can hold to slow your movement speed, so you have to quickly tap back and forth to keep from drifting into things, and try and tap for a few frames longer in one direction so when you balance out you're a bit more to one side. For $10 there are much better games in this genre out there, and even on sale it's probably not worth it unless you've tried everything else.