Another Utah indie game has hit Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight. This time we are looking at Legacy of The Elder Star, created by Kickbomb Entertainment. A side-scrolling mouse-driven Shoot ’em up. Before I get further into talking about it, I’d like to let everyone know that the game I played was in its alpha state, so this is by no means a review or at all reflective of the finished product. Elder Star definitely seems like it’s going to be a really solid game. First, off the way, the controls feel really great. 
One of your attacks is slicing through enemies with your guy. You can draw lines through the waves of enemies to kill several in one go. It’s pretty interesting to switch between your primary shooting and dodging bullet hell-style attacks, to tracing through the patterns of enemies as they appear on the screen. This can get especially hectic, and fun during boss encounters.
The bosses in this game, from what I’ve played, are definitely the highlight. Huge gunships with massive weapon arrays constantly firing. Here’s where the real bullet hell happens. However, the boss’s patterns are intuitive and consistent enough that you really can get the hang of them pretty quickly and just have fun going through the motions. As I mentioned before, one of the bosses had ads during the fight, that was better dealt with by drawing through them. So switching between that and shooting the boss, created this really interesting, kind of artistic dance with the boss. As a matter of fact, the whole game felt a little like that. Everything in the game is so fluid. The whole look of the game is gorgeous. The art style really makes this game unique. All the characters look Fun and unique. And the soft hand-colored look of the backdrop really makes the levels a joy to play through. Thinking about the fluidity of the game, all the environments look like they were water-colored. Which is an interesting way to tie together the mechanics and art style of the game. And I think it an amazing idea if it was planned that way. The demo, however, was fairly lacking. There are sections that are completely removed that I’m interested in knowing more about. The game will feature a crafting system, and I’m a little curious as to what you’ll be crafting. New Weapon choices? New costume changes for your little guy? (Honestly, that would be really awesome. I love costumes in games.) There is also a section for Archives and bounties. The latter I believe will be various challenges you’ll have to complete to gain special rewards, and the former will be special quests that you go on to catalog enemy types, do some exploration, or try and find hidden points in various locations. I’m not sure how these things will work out, but they all sound like they’ll add to the robustness and re-playability of the game, which I am all for. Legacy of the Elder Star sounds like it has massive potential, and I will be following its development. If what I said about it sounds interesting follow them here.
-Jordan Kamm-
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!