Starnaut preview: A surreal trip through a quickly growing genre
It’s not often that I find myself so puzzled by a game that I wonder “Am I actually understanding this?” Feeling bamboozled for the longest time, staring wide-eyed at a game, and thinking that maybe my 41 years on this planet have rendered me a massive boomer because I just don’t get what I’m seeing.
That pretty much sums up my first couple of hours with Starnaut. My little robotic astronaut character wanders through an arena that slowly fills with bizarre enemies, who may or may not appear with dashing little hats, as they try to kill me. There was a short narrative intro before I took on the first level but it was so strange and opaque that it went in one ear and out the other.
I could see, as I played, that I was killing enemies who then dropped coins that could be spent in a roaming shop, that was also a robot(?) and buff my stats. I could invest money into armour, speed, health, and the usual stats.
After a few levels of this, I went over to the Steam page for Starnaut to see how the developer classified this game that was, at this point, mad as a box of frogs. It’s described as a “3D action game that includes the elements of Roguelike.” Then it clicked.
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This is a 3D ‘Vampire Survivors-like’ except it features a convoluted story making it seem like something else. I’m all for throwing some story into games that could essentially live on their gameplay alone, but after going back and watching the intro a few times, I still couldn’t tell you what the game is about. There’s something about this astronaut character we control, launching rockets filled with memories, to save the Earth. Or something.
When I ignored the narrative and got on with the action of the game, I felt like I evolved from an unknowing boomer to a knowledgeable millennial. I started to find weapons I liked, I could anticipate the enemy attack patterns, and I figured out that I had to help launch these rockets by punching them - just like NASA. I was still confused, but I was adapting.
It should be acknowledged that Starnaut is made by the developer of El Shaddai, an equally bizarre game. However, while El Shaddai is more often brilliant than bonkers, the same can’t really be said for Starnaut. It too often felt obscure for the sake of it. What defines this new genre is its simplicity. Most of the time the player is only focused on unlocking weapons and synergising them with others in order to clear out enemies faster. In Starnaut, I often found myself overwhelmed by possibility.
I did enjoy how much the game leaned into being properly bonkers, with each level looking more like a fever dream or a hallucination from the drugs you get at the dentist. The enemy designs are weird and out of place, while the arenas could be filled with broken pieces of technology, or long tentacles, because why not?
There isn’t the same wow factor you get from a 2D version of this genre, the dopamine slot machine effects of bombarding numbers are lost in 3D, although the sheer number of enemies is still a sight to behold.
Starnaut will have its fans, and as the game is only in early access, there’s plenty of time for it to evolve and grow. While I didn’t click with the game during my preview, it’s definitely one that I want to return to and see what changes.
I love Vampire Survivors and the whole genre, I’ve spent more time playing that than any recent RPGs because the gameplay loop is so satisfying. With Starnaut, it felt like I was waiting for my run to end, rather than excited to see how far my build could get me. This could be due to the sheer amount of information on the screen, it could be because the formula doesn’t quite click when transposed to three dimensions, or it might just be that I’m the wrong audience for this surreal experience.