A Review by Paul Harrington
Download Here
Disclaimer:
I did not finish this game.
I played for around an hour, and couldn't find any more areas that I
could access aside from a tower that seemed to go on forever.
Star Quest is a large, open world adventure game with Atari era graphics and some really nicely chosen MIDI songs. You play as an amnesiac Spaceman exploring a strange new world full of talking snails, sombre robots, and arcade games. From the first screenshots I saw I knew that I'd love this game's visual style; almost every sprite uses only one color, but has plenty of personality. Visually, this game delivers 100%. Everything from the heroes to the NPCs to the blocky environments are greatly stylish.
Star Quest is a large, open world adventure game with Atari era graphics and some really nicely chosen MIDI songs. You play as an amnesiac Spaceman exploring a strange new world full of talking snails, sombre robots, and arcade games. From the first screenshots I saw I knew that I'd love this game's visual style; almost every sprite uses only one color, but has plenty of personality. Visually, this game delivers 100%. Everything from the heroes to the NPCs to the blocky environments are greatly stylish.
There
are a ridiculous number of NPCs to
talk to throughout the game's world, most of which give you bizarre,
surreal messages. I never figured out what if anything was going on,
but I really enjoyed the atmosphere that the game's text gives you.
There's an underlying sense of dread about it, in spite of the cutesy,
cartoonish graphics. And, of course, there are plenty of farm animals.
Unfortunately,
for all of the style Star Quest
has going for it, the
actual gameplay seems kind of broken. The gameplay revolves around
dungeons and arcade games, both of which have their problems.
I completed two of the game's dungeons, one where you have to explore an enormous tree full of empty hallways to rescue a princess, and one where you have to avoid a fishman to rescue a king. The Great Tree dungeon involves a whole lot of walking, and if you're not using the engine's F1 debug key to look at the dungeon layout every now and then you're going to waste a lot of time doing nothing. I had no idea that there was even a princess to rescue until I looked at the walkthrough on the game's site, because it gives you absolutely no guidance. I'd be fine with that if the gameplay were fun, but since it amounts to nothing more than walking down long, long, long hallways and avoiding randomly spasming NPCs it feels like a waste of time more often than not.
The king's dungeon is shorter and more logical; a monster chases you, and you can rely on friendly NPCs to block him. Unfortunately, because of the random nature of OHR NPC movement, this isn't reliable and requires a lot of luck to get just right, since the monster can outrun you and even touching him diagonally, even through friendly NPCs, kills you. It's a good concept, but it feels sloppy in execution, in part due to the hit detection of the engine.
These dungeons weren't FUN, but they were completable. As for the arcade games, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, with the exception of the Space Invaders world, which took too long and was too frustrating to be fun. You have a Rally-X styled world, where you cruise around avoiding enemy cars, but I'm not sure what the goal was. The map's enormous and covered in buildings that you can't access, and you can only see a map by, again, using debug keys. I successfully managed to avoid the deadly black cars, but could never figure out where, if anywhere, I was supposed to go. Also, if you don't walk south as soon as this game begins you won't find the car that you need to drive and will quickly die. I'm not sure why the game isn't scripted to place you in/next to the car when it begins.
Then, there's a Pac-Man (and Ms. Pac-Man) game, where you're chased by both Pac-Man and a whole lot of ghosts. I assumed that the goal here was to pick up the power pellets you see throughout the stage, but touching them seems to do nothing. The walkthrough alludes to a secret exit, but I didn't find one. Likewise, there's a game where you're surrounded by annoying pink rabbits who shout internet speak at you, and I have no idea what if anything you're meant to do there.
In the Space Invaders stage, you're immediately assaulted and killed unless you know to walk south and enter a spaceship. I have no idea why, again, you don't begin the game in the ship already, or why a simple on/off tag isn't used to keep the Invaders away until you enter the ship. Once you get in, you make a mad dash away from swarms of Invaders while navigating around blocks along the way. This is the only really interesting arcade game that I found, but the Invaders are so much faster than you and the map is so long that once you've died enough times you really don't feel compelled to keep trying.
The last arcade game I found was Laser Blazers, a game where you walk down a hall filled with identical looking bouncing laser NPCs, some of which kill you, some of which don't, all of which are very difficult to avoid.
After I gave up on the arcade games, I turned off a computer in a power plant, making robots inside the plant disappear. I don't know if this affected anything else in the game. Then, I walked up a tower for a good 20 floors, couldn't tell how much longer I'd have to walk, and gave up.
I completed two of the game's dungeons, one where you have to explore an enormous tree full of empty hallways to rescue a princess, and one where you have to avoid a fishman to rescue a king. The Great Tree dungeon involves a whole lot of walking, and if you're not using the engine's F1 debug key to look at the dungeon layout every now and then you're going to waste a lot of time doing nothing. I had no idea that there was even a princess to rescue until I looked at the walkthrough on the game's site, because it gives you absolutely no guidance. I'd be fine with that if the gameplay were fun, but since it amounts to nothing more than walking down long, long, long hallways and avoiding randomly spasming NPCs it feels like a waste of time more often than not.
The king's dungeon is shorter and more logical; a monster chases you, and you can rely on friendly NPCs to block him. Unfortunately, because of the random nature of OHR NPC movement, this isn't reliable and requires a lot of luck to get just right, since the monster can outrun you and even touching him diagonally, even through friendly NPCs, kills you. It's a good concept, but it feels sloppy in execution, in part due to the hit detection of the engine.
These dungeons weren't FUN, but they were completable. As for the arcade games, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, with the exception of the Space Invaders world, which took too long and was too frustrating to be fun. You have a Rally-X styled world, where you cruise around avoiding enemy cars, but I'm not sure what the goal was. The map's enormous and covered in buildings that you can't access, and you can only see a map by, again, using debug keys. I successfully managed to avoid the deadly black cars, but could never figure out where, if anywhere, I was supposed to go. Also, if you don't walk south as soon as this game begins you won't find the car that you need to drive and will quickly die. I'm not sure why the game isn't scripted to place you in/next to the car when it begins.
Then, there's a Pac-Man (and Ms. Pac-Man) game, where you're chased by both Pac-Man and a whole lot of ghosts. I assumed that the goal here was to pick up the power pellets you see throughout the stage, but touching them seems to do nothing. The walkthrough alludes to a secret exit, but I didn't find one. Likewise, there's a game where you're surrounded by annoying pink rabbits who shout internet speak at you, and I have no idea what if anything you're meant to do there.
In the Space Invaders stage, you're immediately assaulted and killed unless you know to walk south and enter a spaceship. I have no idea why, again, you don't begin the game in the ship already, or why a simple on/off tag isn't used to keep the Invaders away until you enter the ship. Once you get in, you make a mad dash away from swarms of Invaders while navigating around blocks along the way. This is the only really interesting arcade game that I found, but the Invaders are so much faster than you and the map is so long that once you've died enough times you really don't feel compelled to keep trying.
The last arcade game I found was Laser Blazers, a game where you walk down a hall filled with identical looking bouncing laser NPCs, some of which kill you, some of which don't, all of which are very difficult to avoid.
After I gave up on the arcade games, I turned off a computer in a power plant, making robots inside the plant disappear. I don't know if this affected anything else in the game. Then, I walked up a tower for a good 20 floors, couldn't tell how much longer I'd have to walk, and gave up.
I
like this game's aesthetics a lot. The
graphics, the music, the writing, these are all great, but... there's
not really a compelling game here. Open world games are only fun if the
smaller tasks within them are fun, and the only fun part of this game
is talking to NPCs. The maps are too large, empty, and aimless, and I
don't know if there's any way to figure out how to progress aside from
luck. I really went in wanting to like this game, but I can't recommend
it in its current form.