Steredenn: Binary Stars (Switch/Steam)

[Shay Chaise]

This was lost in the deluge of Switch eShop releases but it deserves more attention.

It's a roguelike pixel-art shmup. Let's get that out of the way.



It stands out from the crowd in several ways, though, and it's a fun, moderately challenging game that I've dipped into pretty much every day. While I've mostly been on a mission with my Switch backlog, clearing games and uninstalling from the system with some commitment, I won't be uninstalling this any time soon.

I'm not a massive pixel art fan, and this looks quite generic and even a little ugly in screenshots but it works very well for this type of game. I prefer this bold clear design to, say, Neo Geo Pulstar (or the gorgeous Sine Mora Ex) which is so interested in showing off its pre-rendered background and sprite elements, it forgets to make clear what is scenery and what is instant death. Now that I see how well the pixel art serves the gameplay, it's grown on me quite a lot. It's nice and chunky and solid.

As for the gameplay, it's a side-scroller with quite short randomised stages, though repeating elements become helpfully familiar. At the end of each stage, you have a boss battle. Standard shmup fare but the roguelike element works pretty well to keep things fresh each run. You also pick up a wide range of quite unusual, sometimes zany, sometimes devastating powerups. I don't know how many are in the game but I've seen probably thirty or so. They all change your approach in some way. You always carry your standard blaster and you can then easily drop and swap powerups as you come across them. You can even drop, swap, try it out and then swap back if you prefer your previous weapon, which I enjoy as a mechanic. At the end of each boss battle, your health is restored and you're given a choice of perk, whether more health, more damage for specific weapon varieties, combo meter bonus and some other stuff. These can change your game quite a bit, too.

While I'm not sure how many unlocks there are, and if the item pool grows like in Isaac and Gungeon, it feels more varied and engaging early on than they do. It's less tough and cruel. It's very classic shmup action, no secrets or hidden mechanics and you're perfectly likely to get a really effective weapon within about thirty seconds which can see you through the game. It's more about your skill than your build, in the end.

Anyway, I'd comfortably put it in my top ten shmups on the system, maybe top five if it continues to get better. The Daily Run is the very least I play each day.