Stellar Warrior is an unfinished/broken game disguised as a SHMUP that is both impossibly difficult and mind-numbingly simple. The first level is a basic SHMUP where enemies can be fought and their bullets dodged. The rest of the levels are just thrown together without any sort of flow or guaranteed way out. The player is quickly overrun by enemies and even off screen enemies are firing well in advance. There is no indication of how much damage your bullets are doing and boss fights can last around 20 minutes while hitting them constantly.

There are numerous bugs that are just short of game breaking. Upon dying, the player is invulnerable for several seconds, but it also prevents the hit box from collecting pick-ups. There is no way to restart a level or get back to the main menu and the game must be force closed. The game states its saving checkpoints, but these are never used. Don’t plan on getting 100% achievements either as all of the level completion ones are broken. The leaderboards have their share of problems as well – there is an overall score one that is broke and I am still trying to wrap my brain around how the developer thought combining the scores of both players in 2 player-mode was a good idea for a single score leaderboard.

Then there are the controls, which require the player to hold down two buttons to perform a charged shot, another button for movement, one for the shield, and 4 keys at a time to activate all of the special weapons. So, if you want to have shields on while firing a charged shot and all of your weapons while moving it would take 8 keys being pressed down at once! In two player mode that could be 16 keys! I don’t even think the most expensive gaming keyboards can handle that.

This brings me to what this game really is. It’s as if the developer thought “I want to design a game where the only way to win is to mash 8 keys down at once through the whole game and I will label it as a bullet hell game.” That’s the secret to the game – because the shields are unlimited as long as you hold the button down the entire game and you also need to hold down the fire key to get past the bosses, but they are bullet sponges so you’ll find yourself holding down all of the fire and special weapons keys. I found that fortunately the game will let you configure the same key for multiple actions so I just mapped all firing and shield to 1 mouse button and held it down the entire game. I was able to make the game even easier by configuring both player 1 and 2 to use the same keys in order to control both for double-fire power. Not sure what I just played, but in the end it was not a SHMUP and sort of played itself.

Stellar Warrior is an unfinished/broken game disguised as a SHMUP that is both impossibly difficult and mind-numbingly simple. The first level is a basic SHMUP where enemies can be fought and their bullets dodged. The rest of the levels are just thrown together without any sort of flow or guaranteed way out. The player is quickly overrun by enemies and even off screen enemies are firing well in advance. There is no indication of how much damage your bullets are doing and boss fights can last around 20 minutes while hitting them constantly. There are numerous bugs that are just short of game breaking. Upon dying, the player is invulnerable for several seconds, but it also prevents the hit box from collecting pick-ups. There is no way to restart a level or get back to the main menu and the game must be force closed. The game states its saving checkpoints, but these are never used. Don’t plan on getting 100% achievements either as all of the level completion ones are broken. The leaderboards have their share of problems as well – there is an overall score one that is broke and I am still trying to wrap my brain around how the developer thought combining the scores of both players in 2 player-mode was a good idea for a single score leaderboard. Then there are the controls, which require the player to hold down two buttons to perform a charged shot, another button for movement, one for the shield, and 4 keys at a time to activate all of the special weapons. So, if you want to have shields on while firing a charged shot and all of your weapons while moving it would take 8 keys being pressed down at once! In two player mode that could be 16 keys! I don’t even think the most expensive gaming keyboards can handle that. This brings me to what this game really is. It’s as if the developer thought “I want to design a game where the only way to win is to mash 8 keys down at once through the whole game and I will label it as a bullet hell game.” That’s the secret to the game – because the shields are unlimited as long as you hold the button down the entire game and you also need to hold down the fire key to get past the bosses, but they are bullet sponges so you’ll find yourself holding down all of the fire and special weapons keys. I found that fortunately the game will let you configure the same key for multiple actions so I just mapped all firing and shield to 1 mouse button and held it down the entire game. I was able to make the game even easier by configuring both player 1 and 2 to use the same keys in order to control both for double-fire power. Not sure what I just played, but in the end it was not a SHMUP and sort of played itself.