Starless
Starless Night is a single player RPG style closed world game. Follow the story of an average fisherman sent on an otherworldly quest to retrieve the missing pieces of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, and Lyra, the Harp to restore order to the Heavens. Solve ancient puzzles, hide from deep sea monsters, and fight famous constellations, all to once again bring light back to the Starless Night.
Features
-Starless Night features a single player story mode inspired by the night sky and the Greek myths behind the constellations.
-A ‘smashing’ two-player mini game.
-Explore the five oceans of the world, each with their own unique aesthetic.
-Solve a series of puzzles, each more complex than the last!
-Fight against Greek heroes and cunning crows.
-Meet a family of crabs who provide helpful hints to the player in times of need.
-Explore the colorful undersea worlds filled with gorgeous flora and fauna with the free range camera movement.
-Starless Night’s soft pastel and low-poly design, make it an appealing game for players of all ages!
Steam User 18
I have been waiting like over a year for this game and it's FINALLY out. If you like stealth puzzle horror or any combination of the three this game is absolutely worth the already incredibly cheap price.
Steam User 7
It's a fun homage to Aliens without violating any copyrights. I have about 10 hours of play in which includes a restart because I missed too much in the early game.
I enjoyed the atmosphere and the gameplay. The author was quite responsive when I ran into trouble.
I'd buy a game like this again. It was a good way to spend 3 days or so of game time.
Steam User 6
I bought this game recently and had much fun going to the end of its possibilities. It's humble-sized (around 3h for me for 1st playthrough, but please note that I'm pretty experienced in the genre) but very solid in what it does. Solo dev, much respect for the delivered work.
Overall, I enjoyed the game a lot. I initially saw it during one of the summer conferences and was interested by the genre and the art style.
It's exactly what it says it is, stealth elements, light puzzle elements, and mainly adventuring and story-driven, with a heavy dark sci-fi theme that triggered my interest initially. It's also shorter than what I thought back then, during the summer conferences, but when I bought it and saw it was a solo work, I expected a condensed experience. That was conducted well, no feeling of incomplete parts or uncontrolled mechanics.
I played through the game 4 times, partly to see if I could get a deathless run.
MECHANICS AND GAMEPLAY DESIGN
The stealth is moderate but ever present. It goes well with the setting and participates in the theme and the experience. Initially I was annoyed that there existed rooms with no hiding AND no safe beginning (door, etc), but there's a solution to that. I didn't see rooms where the initial placement of enemies would cause an unavoidable fatal encounter, so that's a good point.
The limited room for gadgets was also initially a bit of a hurdle, but there's also strategy for that.
The limited lives of the colonists is a good approach, and so is the respawn at a set point, making sense for story reasons.
A few rooms were frustrating during several playthroughs, until I weighted the decision to use consumables.
The energy consumption is a bit much, but looking back, it sets the challenge bar well, about where it should be. Power recharges are frequent enough between checkpoints to leave strategy options opened.
Overall, the paths options are perhaps a bit too linear. Considering the size of the game it makes sense. The pro of that is that it prevents from feeling overwhelmed by unknown options or feeling unfairly lost. The con is that there are few moments to gain an advantage by exploring, but nonetheless, there are some of them, and they're rewarding enough.
The UI is pretty good, the sound markers are clear, the controls are not overnumerous, controller support is a great addition. The only criticism here is that not knowing what inactive switches will do when activated hurts the strategy planning.
The game options are clearly lacking as there are none, not even sound, display or button mapping. This is lacking a lot in that area.
The save system is... debatable. There is only one save, and it clears after a playthrough. On one hand, this goes with the fact that colonists number is your lives number, so it would not make sense to allow easy reloading. On the other hand, it might clash with the narrative design of having few but key choices. It does not end up breaking the game because it is short, but it'd be a design clash in a longer experience.
NARRATIVE DESIGN, ART AND SETTING
The atmosphere is a strong point of the game. In less that 10 minutes, the immersion is complete, thanks to a short but sufficient tutorial part, and an art style that does an excellent job. The documents found accompany the run at a good pace, including the first documents, helping understanding key points of the situation quickly, then, later, diving into the "how" and "why" some things happen/happened.
The AI speaking also participate greatly in feeling immersed, breaking what would be a lonely experience otherwise, which would carry the risk of feeling disconnected from the events. They help maintain that connection.
The art is gorgeous and 100% hits the target of the dark sci-fi environment. There's attention to details related to the story of where some elements/places are.
The few key choices are interesting.
What may be lacking is a few answers at the end, but we get most of them.
GLITCHES AND ISSUES
I met very few of them, but there are some. None broke my game or my experience, as they are easily avoided after meeting one.
Steam User 5
Overall, I enjoyed this game and was looking forward to it since the demo but I'm a bit on the fence about recommending it as there are some negatives to keep in mind. First, the gameplay is a good bit of fun trying to sneak through rooms without being detected by aliens and robots and the various tools you get will allow you to try different tactics. As you have 250 colonists there's plenty of lives if you screw up. The endgame does provide an interesting dilemma for who to save as well.
However, it's a really short game that probably is about two hours to finish for a first play. There's replayability in trying different endings but the game's options only consist of New Game or Continue, and finishing the game deletes your save requiring a new playthrough to see different endings. These endings also only consist of a single screen with 2-3 sentences describing what happened. There's also minimal music in this game (I think only the intro/ending really has anything as the game itself is silent except for ambient sound effects and the short track that plays when a colonist is killed).
If the gameplay still is something you'd enjoy and these negatives don't deter you, then give this one a try.
Steam User 2
This is an excellent game for a few evenings. It is a top-down arcade with horror, puzzle and even roguelike elements. Your character is one of the colonists on a spaceship. She (all of the colonists are women) aims to save the rest of the colonists and reactivate spaceship engines after the death of the crew.
When your character dies, you will play as the next colonist. But all actions, which your previous colonist performed, matter. For example, you need to activate three panels in a room full of aliens. The first colonist can activate only two of them and die. After that, the second colonist has to activate only one panel.
You will find a lot of gadgets during the game. For example, you can find a teleport, a gun, a night vision device or a trap. You can choose gadgets based on seen rooms.
The main cons are controls, graphic design and music (or, more precisely, the absence of music). You can't change controls and it is a big problem. All of the controls are bound to the keyboard (for example, movement is bound to WASD), but gadgets are bound to a left mouse click. This feels disconnected and uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, this game is interesting (and even unique in some mechanics) and I recommend you to try it.
Steam User 2
This is a puzzle game, and is entirely simplistic in it's solutions but is heavily driven by it's aesthetics and a clear love for ALIEN (which sold me). I've now beaten it twice and thought for $8 I received my money's worth, but really the entire game is just solving to get to the next area without dying, so it's a puzzle game. It's also not particularly heavy on horror or jump scares but a few deaths got me in terms of the suddenness of it.
I think it's a solid 7/10, and I hope we see another game from the developer.
Steam deck compatible, game runs capped at 30fps and that's not a problem.
Steam User 0
Another nice little gem from the Indie game world, I only wish the demo was included as prologue in the full game, and suggest to still play it (it's not on Steam anymore but can be found on Itch).
The game plays wonderfully on controller, so I highly recommend using one.
Overall a satisfying little game, with great atmosphere, as well as the most unique spin on a limited lives system, and next objective for me is gonna be a deathless run!