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[Review] - Inside a Star-filled Sky


Kevnvek
  • Developed by: Jason Rohrer

    Published by: Jason Rohrer

    Platforms: PC

    Players: 1

    What happens when you cross Geometry Wars with Inception? You get a space shooter of epic, layered proportions. Inside a Star-Filled Sky is a space shooter unlike any other. I say space shooter for lack of a better term, as you're really in some odd, layered pixel dimension.

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There isn't really an objective in the game aside from maybe seeing how far you can go. You can play the game normally like any other shooter, flying around the levels, blasting enemies until you find the level exit. If you can't find the exit, you can stand still and a guide line will lead you to it. And when you get to that exit, you move "up" to the next level. Sounds simple enough, but the twist is that you can also go inwards, to find levels within enemy ships, power ups, and even yourself. The point of this is that you can alter the properties of the things you enter. Entering enemies allows you to pick up power ups within them to change their attack patterns. Entering power ups lets you pick up power ups within that power up to change it into a different one. And you can enter yourself to change what power ups you have on the current level, as you cannot use power ups on the level you get them, only on the one above it. Getting killed sends you into yourself automatically, but fortunately the level exit is usually very close by when this happens. What's more, there is no limit to how many things within things you can enter, changing power ups within enemies within yourself etc. etc. etc. Xzibit would be proud.

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I couldn't resist.

The concept behind this game is really cool. The problem however is that the higher the level you get to, the more imbalanced it seems to get. From what I've played (up to about level 118), the power ups I've found never seem to go much higher than level 10, and I never seem to have enough health to survive the barrages of enemy bullets. When you die, your last power up (you can hold three) is replaced by health, and you get more base health based on how far you go (for the most part it seems to go up by one every 10 levels until around level 60 or 70. I'm sure it must go higher, but I seem to be stuck at about 8 health, so maybe it starts going up once every 20 levels at that point). You could also pick up more health increasing power ups, but each time you lose health that power up permanently goes down by one, unlike most other power ups like rate of fire, ricochet, and spread.

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I got the sense that the risk far outweighed the reward. Going inside of a power up to change it to something to help you defeat some difficult enemies just makes you encounter even more difficult enemies within that you would still need more power to defeat. The last straw was when I entered an enemy and all of the power ups that you can pick up within to change that enemy for better or worse were around level 30, when I'm lucky to find level 10s for myself.

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You shall not pass!

All of this is not to say that it's a bad game, it really has some cool concepts behind it, but it just gets frustrating as you advance farther and farther into it. It's still pretty fun as a "quick fix" kind of game. Balance issues aside, there is fun to be had for the $8 asking price if you are looking for something different. And considering it was created by a single person, most of the issues can be forgiven in light of the more creative aspects of the game.

UPDATE: Following this review, I had a chance to speak with the devloper, Jason Rohrer. He was able to provide some good insights into the game's design. You can find the impromptu Q&A here.

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