1.3 hours gameplay and that was with a restart because I accidentally went back to the title page while trying to figure out the save process. I liked the potential of the story a lot but it didn't really get fleshed out properly. Also, the insult that gets used for the antagonist? A little too 1990 for my comfort. The horror aspect was good, reminded me a fair bit of SOMA and there were some genuinely lovely/surreal/tense moments. Overall, I would recommend but I think the pricepoint is way too high. I am pretty passionate about paying for indie games but if a game is going to be this short, it needs to be made clear upfront so that consumers can choose whether or not it's a worthy investment.

This game has the look of a AAA with the feel of a poorly designed mod. There's not really much gameplay to speak of besides running down nearly identical cooridors over and over again and then being surprised by a monster that you either run away from...down a corridor...or around some darkly lit areas with lighting to either show you the way or completely get you off course - which essentially turns the game into a memorization game rather than a thrilling experience. The design mentality here appears to be, "Let's lengthen gameplay by killing the player needlessly -- or by introducing multiple mechanics simultaneously when death is on the line." The other issue is the clipping, which is fairly consistent. I've fallen through the floor a bunch of times and the funniest thing about it is that a sound effect plays when it happens and you're instantly killed, so the devs knew it was an issue and never fixed it (and in unity this is pretty unforgivable. Clipping isn't rocket science). With another 6 months or so perhaps this could have been retooled and made great, beacause the concept, while not original (I'll save you the spoilers) is still compelling and cool. I can't recommend this though. Buy Monstrum if you want a thrill from a small dev. It's a much more rewarding experience.

I bought this game yesterday before going to sleep and had a dream i reviewed it, so I'm reviewing it.

STARBO is an hour long walking simulator that offers a very dream-like experience meant to be played through in one sitting, that you really shouldn't get if you have photosensitive epilepsy or if flashing bright lights bother you. There are no weapons to pick up or combat, no stealth. Just walking, running, occasionally picking up keys to open locked doors so you can continue to run and a puzzle.

It has a good story, good soundtrack, good atmosphere, some really good moments and okay but still beautiful graphics. The gameplay part of it isnt as good, but i personally think it's worth it for the experience. I really like short walking sims like this one.

As of writing this review, the full price of the game is $8.99 which is pretty expensive for a game this short, but i got it at 90% off for less than a dollar and at that price it's absolutely worth it. If you get this game, play it the moment you have a free hour for it. Don't let it get lost to the depths of your steam library backlog.

I had high hopes for STARBO. I am usually a huge fan of the “walking sim” type games. Sadly STARBO fell short in many ways. Some of it’s issues could be chalked up to low budget and not enough manpower to relize the developers ideas but regardless they are still issues. It had great concepts and ideas and had it been a little more fleshed out I may have enjoyed it more. The developer has talent though and I do hope he is able to try again in the future.

STARBO didn’t really know what it wanted to be. There were parts where it was a walking sim but other parts where it tried to be survival horror. One problem with that is that walking sims typically want you to look around it’s surroundings and soak up the atmosphere where survival horror games are supposed to be tense. The walking sim part didn’t work because STARBO didn’t have surroundings worth looking at. That’s not to say the graphics were poor but it was just kind of barren, lifeless, rooms with nothing going on. The survival horror part didn’t appeal to me because it is the kind of survival horror I despise: enemies that can kill me with 1-2 hits and that I have no way to fight back at. I can just run, hide and try to escape. I prefer games like Condemned: Criminal Origins or Resident Evil 1-3 where the ammo and weapons are sparse but I can fight back. The story could have been a saving grace for the game except it had no real end and lacked context in many parts. No real resolution is given at the end and many parts make no sense because while the main character says stuff like robots and whales are from his childhood he doesn’t expand on that and we are given no flashbacks. The music was well done though and it had a great art direction.

STARBO never crashed on me at all but it had a huge glaring issue that has never been fixed: It has to be played in windowed mode on Linux. When you chosoe fullscreen mode it won’t allow you to click on any main menu buttons and you have to force close the game. I have tried the game on various distros, AMD and Intel CPUs, as well as both AMD and Nvidia GPUs and always had that issue on Linux.The game did run well and was almost always at 100+ FPS on my system. It had multiple levels for AA, a toggle for Vsync and a few other graphics settings to tinker with. Alt-Tab didn’t work though and my game settings were not saved. Every time I launched the game I would have to reset my options.

It took me 95 minutes to beat STARBO. I don’t mind the length. I have played games with similar lengths such as The Station which I loved and played games such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which I pumped over 60 hours into but was bored with. I paid $5.74 CAD for STARBO and felt that was a fair price for what I got. I played STARBO on Linux.

Overall I can’t recommend STARBO. It has too many flaws and issues to offset it’s great ideas and art direction. It needed a more fleshed out story and some technical bugs fixed at the very least.

My Score: 6/10

My System:

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.3.3 | Manjaro Mate | Kernel 4.20.11-1-MANJARO

You won't find jump scares or tasteless horror here, but instead a pleasant and sometimes frightening journey through a surreal alien world. Starbo is a short play, but its an unpredictable and somewhat moving experience that's worth going through in one sitting. Overall, I'm happy to have played it.

After playing for an hour im ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ raging, because the game just don't tell you what to do or where to go, while getting chased by an instant-kill-monster and the movement speed is spiking and lagging and you need to replay the whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scene after dying over and over again. It was starting nice, but this ♥♥♥♥? No thank you.

Honestly, the game tries to be a walking simulator, but doesn't have an interesting or well written story and tries to force in monsters for tedious running sections, where all you can do is move in the only direction you can.

Starbo does look really good for a Unity game, I feel the strong presence of asset store items and effects. The majority of the game is spent running around in the same hallway assets.
Environmental storytelling is close to non-existant, narration doesn't help with the tonal shifts of the story. The message and overall theme of the game remains unclear.

The only mechanic the game has is finding keys to doors, which is definitely something new, if you are from the late 90s.

demo of who-knows-what, sold as game.

For the record: I'm not a fan of walking sims and I despise The Stanley Parable.

This one was enjoyable for me, though. I want to get my hands on the soundtrack. Oh, and, play this properly — with your headphones (preferably, ANC ones).

blue whale / 1o

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The content in this game is padded out by overly-long cutscenes, slow running, and dozens and dozens of copy+pasted hallways. Avoid.