Nukezilla Review: Star Dash

For today’s review I thought I’d give you a little insight into how we decide who reviews games here at Nukezilla. When someone wants us to review one of their Indie Games, they send us along a code for said game. That code gets put on a list of all the Indie Games we’ve ever received and reviewed. Anyone looking to do a review can simply go to that list, choose a game, take the code, and be on their way. Seeing as we had a few games backlogged I thought I’d take one to review for today.

Rather than look into the games to see what they’re about, I decided to choose a game based entirely on its name. The first entry to come up was Star Dash. I thought I’d hit something interesting here; this could be some sort of space-based shmup, or an adventure game staring a Ristar-like character. So I took it thinking it would lead to something interesting. What I got was a basic platformer staring your XBL Avatar. Needless to say I wasn’t enthralled from the get-go.

Star Dash has you (technically your Xbox Live Avatar) jumping through various stages while the screen pans up. Your task is to get to the checkered flag before you fall below the screen or before time runs out. 25 lives is all you have to work with as you go through the game; lose ‘em all and you’re kicked back to Level 1. Along the way the levels are filled with differently colored stars, which net you points depending on size and color. After finishing a level you’re told how many points you picked up.

Aside from stars there’s also triangles that slow down the speed of the screen and numbered circles that add time to the clock. (these items also give you points, usually much more than the individual stars). For the first few levels of the game I was horribly bored. There’s nothing to do but basic platform jumping, which is incredibly easy at this point in the game. Later you get platforms that you can pass through, springs, and moving platforms to change things up a bit more.

As I continued though, the challenge (and my interest) in the game grew. Stages get a little more varied, your time limit becomes a constant worry, and jumps get harder and harder. More often than not I found myself watching hopelessly as my avatar failed to make jump after jump, forcing him to fall below screen or waste enough time to run out the clock.

The pretty aggressive difficulty curve got to me and I would constantly wind up getting about ten levels in before losing my final life because once again I was one or two seconds from finishing. This lead to me wanting to get better and better at the game while seeing how tough the levels could get.

Obviously Star Dash ain’t Super Meat Boy. There’s nothing pretty about it, and the music is kinda catchy at best. Also more than a few glitches cost me lives, especially when your character would sort of stick to the ceiling when jumping against it. It’s rough around the edges, but still has value (not least when it clocks in at 80 MSP). If you’re looking for a simple platformer to tide you over until your favorite platformer releases new levels, you could do worse than Star Dash. Just don’t let the name excite you.

Disclosure: We were sent a review code for this game from the developers