Recent reviews by The Furious Charles Darwin

While the game pitches itself as a "Speedrunning FPS", I feel like it is better described as a "Speedrunning first-person puzzle platformer". While gunplay is a core part of the gameplay, enemies serve more as environmental tools to interact with as opposed to foes which will try to stop you.

As a result, if you want a speedy, twitchy action shooter akin to Quake, you will not find it here.

Instead, what you will find is a game that is all about creating a nice, organic flow through smooth controls, fun discard powers, and levels that, while they may feel telegraphed early on, means that the game is very easy to just chill out with. Individual levels are easy to complete, but scoring a gold or elite time (and further below that) will require you to polish each run to become as efficient as possible, and this is where the real meat of the game is. While the levels may have pretty telegraphed intended route, finding alternate paths, big skips, or even just moving a tiny bit quicker become incredibly compelling to those who have ever enjoyed chasing a high score. There is something very cool about shaving 0.3 seconds on your previous time, and watching you global rank climb by a few thousand places.

Some other points: The story is incredibly silly, and the script is all over the place, yet it is weirdly compelling. Props to the main voice cast who, given the wonky plot and writing, manage to give it some solid energy to give the script some life.

Giving this a recommendation with the caveat that this game may be polarizing. For a quick descriptor: it is essentially a mini Souls-like that is trying to emulate the sense of discovery from old school adventure games (both for better and for worse).

The usual Dark Souls structure is there: picking up your currency where you died last, melee combat with an emphasis on patience (mind you, it is much less difficult than most souls-likes), environments that loop between each other to create an elaborate world map, etc. This is all presented through a cute, minimalist art style with an isometric camera and an atmosphere that emphasizes tranquility and isolation, and the controls are all simple and streamlined. It's a strong loop that is extremely playable.

But here's the warning: This game takes a lot of pride in how little it tells you, occasionally to a fault. Throughout the game, you collect pages of "the manual" (it is literally designed to look like an instruction booklet from a GBA game), and even that is primarily written in a cipher that is not intended to be readable. In fact, every time you pick up an item (including consumables), it's name and description are written in that same code. This encourages experimentation, but it also means the early portion of the game can feel extremely opaque. On top of that, remember the isometric fixed camera? Well, the game has a lot of its exploration hiding around blind corners and through hidden passages that don't do much too hint at their presence. Finding hidden secrets around corners felt less like "Ah ha!" moments of discovery, and more disheartening as I felt like the game had trained me to just rub against every surface and cliff side I could see.

The game is a masterclass in subtle tutorial design, as the early portions of the game do an impressive job at guiding you to figure out the fundamentals on your own before handing you the instructions. However, it means that the game is built to force you to just "try things", and does not care to give the player context to know how much wiggle room they have. It took about 3 hours before I felt like the game clicked, and I could comfortably appreciate the game's rules. The sense of discovery and experimentation is a wonderful throwback to old school games, but can feel incredibly jarring for a modern release, even for someone like me who's been gaming for about 25 years.

TL;DR - Mini Dark Souls that tries to emulate the vagueness of old school games to encourage experimentation and exploration. It's well designed enough to help you figure it out, but the learning process can feel overly unclear at times. A well crafted adventure that may be a bit too proud of it's willingness to spit in the face of modern conventions.

Well, I may have just found a new obsession. In short, this game has one of the most tactical turn based battle systems I remember playing in recent memory, rewarding careful planning and good understanding of a huge toolkit of skills instead of just attacking hard and fast every round. If that sounds intriguing, pick it up. The game is not perfect, but the flaws don't hurt the main experience too much. Here is a full breakdown:

Pros:
- As I said, the battle system is fantastic. I won't explain how it works (check online for that), but I will say the battles and overall gameplay are quite similar to Darkest Dungeon.
- The different classes open up a wealth of strategic options, and each one feels incredibly distinct with what kind of niche they can excel in.
- Similar to Darkest Dungeon, this game puts up a meaty challenge. However, I found Darkest Dungeon felt like its difficulty came from steadily grinding the party down in a slow war of attrition, where as Star Renegades's difficulty comes from understanding the nuances of its complex battle system, and rewards you appropriately for doing so. The challenge to reward ratio feels very good.
- Animation and sound design are exquisite, and are a big part of why the battles are so fun. Even outside of fights, the sound, art and effects contribute a great deal to the experience.
- The characters all have nice designs and distinct personalities (if only they were written better).

Cons:
- The writing isn't bad, but it feels like almost every line of dialogue is trying to be funny or quirky. You know how the Marvel movies will have characters regularly spewing quipy one-liners? This feels like that with no other dialogue to support it. Some succeed, some don't, but it's such a constant stream of jokes on an otherwise serious backdrop that it gives the game a very flimsy tone. Luckily, the story isn't intrusive, so it can be ignored easily. It's a shame though, because the character concepts themselves are quite good.
- There is definitely repetition in the level design. You won't encounter much more than non-random encounters, finding loot, or the occasional random event or side dungeon. I understand that the combat is the core of the gameplay, and the semi-open world map is limited from a gameplay perspective, but I don't see why this game couldn't have added FTL-style dialogue windows to describe non-combat encounters. It would have helped mix up exploration more and given another avenue for world building.

Overall, this game leans extremely heavily on its gameplay and its presentation, both of which are strong enough to make a compelling, satisfying experience.

Can be played in 10 minutes, and is a very nice demonstration of mechanics as metaphor. If you like the idea of games being explored as an artistic and expressive medium, check it out. It's not gaming's masterpiece, but it's a cool little demonstration of what can be done.

I'm going to play it again just to see what my thoughts are the second time through. Show it to a friend, have a conversation about it, and leave it at that.

It's a cleaver little piece for what it is.