The game: Stardust
Genre: Platform, Arcade
system : Nintendo Switch (also for PC and mobile)
Developer|Publisher : Pixel age rating orange
: EU 3+ | USA All
Price : UK £7.99 | EU €9.99 | US $9.99
Publication date : 7. January 2021
Revision of the code with a big thank you to Orange Pixel
Happy New Year
Stardash gets a special star from me for my first review of 2021! Orange Pixel continues to publish its game catalogue on the Switch. While we’ve seen the company’s talents so far mainly in the Rogue Lite genre, Stardash tackles the platforming genre with some great Game Boy references for a good measure. If you like hard and brutal platform games, this game can be added to your Switch library.
Billy’s Story
Stardash forces you to play the role of an unnamed boy who is looking for the right side of the screen to complete several small levels of platforming. Since there’s no story, it’s time to add my own, because that’s what I do.
Stardust let you play Billy. After an argument with his parents, he runs off with his old GameBoy. When he finds a clearing in the forest, he takes a break and rests under a tree. He dreams of becoming a GameBoy character. But the game is incredibly difficult. He just wants to finish the levels, but there are all those nasty enemies and traps that keep killing him and sending him back to the beginning until he has mastered them. He soon realizes that the house isn’t that bad, and after mastering the levels, he goes home to apologize to his parents, clean his room and not to touch the GameBoy for a whole week.
How Billy deals with the dilemma
Roughened platform
Back to the current game. Stardust falls into the brutal rigging business. The operation is simple, you can move left and right and jump, that’s all. For the first levels, things seem pretty simple, just go to the right and reach the exit. However, it won’t be long before you trample the heads of your enemies, dodge bullets and make perfect jumps to the nearest pixel. Not far away, there’s also the stress and anger that comes to mind when death comes first. Luckily you charge right at the beginning of the level without any charging time. This means that you can be almost at the end of a long and difficult level, only to fail at the last hurdle. So be very careful if you tend to throw a controller.
You have to be the perfect pixel on the platform.
Gameboy Love
What sets it apart is the Game Boy’s aesthetics. The whole game has this beautiful monochrome atmosphere, and even pays tribute to the enemies of Super Mario Land (also on GameBoy). It’s amusing that independent developers like the GameBoy era do more than Nintendo itself. Stardash looks like a game of our time. What I mean is you get better by playing and dying over and over again. Of course, nowadays it will be a design that will scare off a lot of players. I sat down for half an hour to play this game, but I often had to stop after ten minutes to save my mental health and blood pressure.
Gameboy graphics are a distinctive feature
Quite difficult, but
If the main game wasn’t hard enough for you, you can get three stars per level, each based on a mini-objective such as collecting coins and completing a level within a certain time limit. In addition, for each level you can collect a hidden key that unlocks an even more difficult level of the temple. Finally, the game also has a flip mode where you flip through all the levels from left to right, which seems to be a total folly for long-term platformers fans. Although I was able to unlock a few stars and find a few secrets, I didn’t have to play the levels over and over again to unlock everything because the basic game itself was quite difficult. If you are the kind of player that wants his platformers to be sharp and cheeky, then this game is for you.
Left to right seems crazy.
Control cabinet
Stardash is the ideal impulse purchase if you just want to dive into the action of the platforms. But it is difficult not to notice that the game is much cheaper elsewhere, it costs only £1.99 on the mobile phone and a little more on the PC. Although the game works well on the Switch, you can wait to buy it before you make the jump. You can also buy the game on your phone and then on your computer, and then buy another copy for a friend.
Don’t try to get run over.
Controller hold
Stardash is a simple right turn and a platform finish. It will be difficult to achieve this. If you don’t like this kind of stress, it’s probably best to throw a switch or a candy bar once in a while.
The reference to the Gameboy is cool, but the game is not fundamentally different from the genre. That’s the definition of what I call the coffee game. Something to sit and play with in short bursts, taking care not to throw the switch over the room.
Final verdict: I like her.
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