Star Vortex

First off, this game runs incredibly well on the steam deck and feels made for it.
This game is not only well polished in Early Access, it combines some of my favorite things from Hack and slash games as well as Roguelites.
It's really more like Diablo 3s portals though. You go to a new location with your upgrades, take down the enemy ships or complete the objective, grab your loot and upgrades, and then either head back or keep going deeper to the objective. And the customization of your ship is really well implemented and incredibly customizable.
The dev is also super engaged with the community and listens to their feedback, which bodes very well for the longevity of the game.

Very fun game. Dev is super active making updates.

Star Vortex is essentially a 2025 rehash of ShellCore Command mixed with elements of Star Valor and Reassembly. If any of those words mean anything to you, then you'll like this game.

The building system is one of the most fluid and easy-to-use building systems of any spaceship builder i've played - You drag blocks onto a grid, and you're free to place and order and color them however you want. Stats are determined by ship size and radius, thruster and weapon placement is (mostly) irrelevant.

The gameplay is pretty similar to shellcore but with heavy emphasis on debuffs. You strafe around and dodge enemy fire, firing a myriad and in a panic - using battery packs and nanobots to quickly regenerate lost hull. Most attacks are telegraphed, however some will do a lot more damage than others and it can be hard to tell sometimes what's going on, especially in the lategame with nearly hundreds of ships and thousands of projectiles. Some deaths will not feel like you did anything wrong.

The game has an in-depth upgrade and modifier system. There's many different builds you can do - coating the whole map in toxic fumes, using on-crit effects to stack up on armor until you have hundreds of thousands of effective health, covering an area in turrets, fusing modifiers together until you get a pulse with enough radius to cover an entire group of enemies... all the while taking modifiers on dropped weapons and equipment, and throwing it on your own to make a build capable of defeating enemies with 800% damage output in the lategame on the hardest difficulty.
The subtle changes in your abilities throughout progression are one of the defining features of this game - a 5% here, a rarity change there...

Nitpicks: I wish there was greater variance in ship sizes - A dreadnought, the largest ship size in the game, is only really about 5-6x the size of a little frigate. Larger ships do not really *feel* larger, they feel more like medium ships with how they control and move. You will notice throughout your progression that the size leap between a frigate and a destroyer feels huge, but the leap between a battleship and dreadnought isn't really that much.
In addition, there's about 6 categories of weapons and you'll absolutely feel that some (Pulses, beams, lightning, drones, AoE projectiles) are better than others (Projectiles, turrets, non-AoE projectiles) - this is because there's significantly more small enemies than large enemies. For every cruiser or battleship you fight, you'll have to fight a hundred frigates and destroyers. Weapons that obliterate elites and bosses will not see much use against the swarms of small enemies.

The asking price is sharp, but this is because the game is in development and will absolutely get more sectors and more action in the future.
And while it's not totally bug-free, I experienced zero freezes or crashes throughout my playthrough.
Overall, really nice! I'll probably look over this review and change this when the game is fully released.

So far this is best spaceship arpg i've tried. And it's nice to see it being activelly developed!
Hope to see more customization when it comes to building ship, like adding wings add speed, hull adds more hp, etc, because currently it's just visual.
When it comes to gear/stats and crafting, it looks good, but can be expanded with more crafting methods, more stats, unique gear like in PoE, etc
As PoE enjoyer, i hope to see this game having somewhat similar levels of customization and amount of content!

Played a bunch in the 0.6.X patch - Great game! Looking forward to the full release. Never thought I'd see a spaceship arcady ARPG, but here we are. The "just one more mission" is strong with this one :)

Can't recommend this game enough. The weapons all have their own feel, and the ship builder is easy to understand, and fun to mess around with. I noticed certain things that limited my enjoyment and kind of ruined my build idea; left a comment, and the dev responded. Those build restrictions have been removed. This dev listens to feedback, that alone is enough to support the project. Definitely telling my friends to pick this one up.

This is a fantastic one-more-turn shoot-'em-up with a retro feel and great mechanics. It's the kind of arcade-y game you can play for five minutes or five hours, having fun and making progress every session. The ship- and weapon-building are immersive, easy to use, and add an unexpected layer of depth to the gameplay loop. The dev managed to break up the normal grind of a game like this and made everything feel fast-paced and fresh. Star Vortex already feels like the kind of sandbox experience you can come back to over and over and always find something new and entertaining.