No spoko spoko

I understand that this may be this person's first videogame but that's what Early Access is for. As a finished product this is a glitchy unpolished mess. $4 may not be a lot but I've played way better Metroidvanias for free. At the very least, get your collision detection right. How these peopel thought that this game was ready for release is a mystery to me.

This game is real rough around the edges, has tons of questionable/odd design elements, a completely unnecessary story that seems like it was written by a highschooler, and a lot of heart. You can tell that it's from an inexperienced dev who hasn't figured everything out yet, but I'm liking it for what it is.
There's lots of odd collision issues, bizarre nonstandard controls, a lack of decent accessibility options (ie no rebindable controls, etc), but it's not terrible. It could use polish. Lots of it. I don't understand why your character shoots on the button's release rather than press or why you can air jump if you walk of ledges regardless of if you have the double jump ability. I like how the levels are designed to be somewhat circular rather than overly straightforward like a lot of modern Metroidvanias. The music is alright. Yeah. This game is alright.

I've enjoyed what I played so far and will likely play more of it.

I have played quite a few NES games- I have hundreds of cartridges. I'm used to playing crappy NES games- this is definitely not one of them. The level design and game play execution are top notch- among the best 1st party Nintendo games. I feel like I'm quite jaded at 30, but this game still astonishes me in its competence and ability to instill wonder with well intended weirdness. That is, programming aside. Tons of bugs to work out in future patches. But still- I'm an adult and legitimately having fun having forked over the price of a sub sandwich. A+++ would play again

I can't recommend this to anyone who have enjoyed games like Megaman, Castlevania and other old school platforming side scrollers. The idea is there. Execution, not so much. Hope it gets better in future.

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How Metroidvania is it?
High Fit – The map is practically useless, but the game world is large with lots of reasons to backtrack (including being required to progress.)

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I was giddy as a schoolgirl when I first started this game up, but that could have just been the contrast between this and the last game I played. Legends of the Universe - Starcore (which I'm just going to call "Starcore" from here on) starts off with fast pacing and a lot of promise. Part of what made me laugh out loud was the sound design; Starcore heavily uses synthesized percussion for its soundtrack, and your hint companion sounds like an old Jazz Musician whenever he says "Hey... Listen" - I thought it was part of the music at first. But of course this game has style, because it unabashedly rips a lot of it from Mega Man, a series which had a character designer so good that people were willing to follow him straight into the garbage bin. But, what could have been a passably fun game is bogged down by a lot of game design decisions that should have been caught in play testing or eliminated through expert planning.

For the most part moving around the game's world is fluid and fun. Moving horizontally is a blast, especially once you get the speed boost upgrade. I spent most of the game flying through levels and jumping on enemy's heads with exhilerating velocity. As soon as you have to move vertically though you gotta waaaait, and it feels so slow by contrast.

But that's really just a nitpick. Where the game falls apart for me is some of the level design decisions. While I appreciate the labyrinthine structure, the map system is completely inadequate to support it. In fact, it actually worked against me in my final play session. Because of life I was unable to play for almost a week, and I simply forgot what I had been doing. I was in the middle of a quest to destroy the Starship's primary systems, and though the game shows you a checklist whenever you destroy a part, it doesn't store that checklist anywhere you can reference it. While a quest log of some kind would have been convenient in this situation, the lack of one really isn't my complaint. My problem was that in my efforts to brute force where I was supposed to go, I checked the map of each area for the red box that indicates where the boss was. Having checked every red box room, I had wandered longer than I wanted to and started looking outside of the game for advice. Ultimately I realized that each system had an achievement attached to it, and I figured out where I was supposed to go by looking it up on the store achievement page. As it turns out, the one system I hadn't destroyed yet was located in a boss room that was not marked red like the rest of the others.

And this kind if conveyance issue caught me a few other times as well. Early in the game if you don't complete each area in a specific order, you might not have the power up needed to exit other areas, meaning my normal approach of "Sequence Break Every Metroidvania" was punished with having to Alt-F4 and reset the game. It's the kind of thing that would be easy to do if you design your levels stream of conscious style - but that approach to level design doesn't really work very well in a Metroidvania (at least not without a diligent playtester to be your "editor".)

The game's simplistic combat also doesn't really help my opinion. It works, but Mega Man it is not. Early game enemies go down quickly enough that their basic patterns aren't really a problem, but at some point halfway through the game they all get an HP upgrade that makes it much more efficient to take damage and run through them during the i-frames rather than deal with them.

There is a lot to like about Starcore, though I'll admit that my love for the Mega Man series makes me want something like it to succeed. The story is cute in a childish cartoon sort of way and I love the general style - the game design just needs a bit of work to make it a recommendable experience. I think LunarCore Games' heart is in the right place, and that they have a lot of potential. It's just not realized in Starcore.

Based on the game's ending though, there's more to come, and I actually look forward to it. Hopefully in whatever LunarCore makes next though there's a good recap, because this one is pretty skippable.


2 out of 5

The concept is there, the developer stated his dream was to meld Metroid and Megaman into one game and he did just that. The game has a nice thing going, from the first scene you can tell it's got personality and what looks to be well developed characters.

The problem lies in the game's optimization and unpolished performance and this is a bloody shame. The game is not in Early Access, yet plays like a title in its pre-alpha state due to framerate issues, collision detection issues, the keyboard controls are really bad (best use an Xbox 360 controller if you buy the game) and other frustrating things you'll find.

I tried the game on three different pc's and they had the same results in low framerate issues. The best pc having a 980ti 8gb, the lowest pc having an 860m 2gb. The game needs alot of work but is it too late? The developer has already started to work on multiple projects so you probably shouldn't expect these issues to be resolved anytime soon.

Great old school game. Love the story and the music. The game play is great too!

Great little game here. Definitely a little rough around the edges, and a little too easy, but hey, fun is fun and I had fun playing this.

The game had a few bugs that caused crashing. got stuck a couple of times in unmovable positions.
HOWEVER. I LOVED THIS GAME. I love pretty much anything megametroidvania and this was it SPOT on.
I wanted more even after beating the game. Although I will admit I got lost and backtracked quite a bit but that's one of the drawbacks of a less than linear approach and also whTat makes megametroidvania what it is. A bargain at twice the price.