Star Hunter DX

top tier shoot em up! great graphics, music and gameplay it's challenging, but you have enough mechanics to survive 2 1CC guys: - please, add cloud saves - don't use game buttons like shoot to navigate the menu, it feels really awkward after key redifinition

I have only given this game a thumbs up because Steam does not have a middle ground option. Read up or skip to the end for a TLDR to get a better understanding of how the game is. Star Hunter DX is a competently made shmup. Gameplay-wise, it features three characters with different shot types and ship stats, with a rather interesting scoring system that encourages (or somewhat even forces) playing very dangerously for a bigger score boost. It is pretty fun to play, if I may say. The game also looks and sounds great. The developers have nailed the visual and audio design of their game, making sure none of them feels out of place in presense of the other. But unfortunately, the game's looks are its greatest weakness too, as the visuals introduce a rather infuriating issue: Bad visual clarity in some stages. In some of the stages, visual clarity turns into a serious issue and it becomes quite hard to distinguish between projectiles and the background because of similar color palettes. Enemy bullets are bright pink and come in various sizes. Guess what else can be bright pink? THE BACKGROUND. The game works fine when the background consists of darker colors. But when the background slowly starts to get brighter, that's when all the clarity issues start to show themselves. And this is something that could have been remedied with an option to dim background. Not only that, there are times when other visual elements can cause clarity issues. This is a shmup game where enemies swarm you with bullets. So you'll be firing your weapon most of the time to deal with them, resulting on a lot of bright projectiles getting shot at them. There's also a bullet time mechanic that during which, the bullets from any enemies you destroy will be converted into gold cubes; cubes that vary in size and can cover various elements on the screen for a while before you collect them (10th screenshot on the store page shows them covering parts of terrain). If all of these happen at the same time (which is not as rare as you might think) you basically have multiple fast moving, bright objects cluttering the screen which can easily make you lose track of enemy shots and hazards you have to dodge. Considering the game's difficulty, this can become quite a nuisance. There's a reason why under %9 of this game's players have beaten the game according to Steam achievements: It's very punishing. Even the lowest difficulty is very challenging, despite stating it is meant for the beginners. But that's only a part of why the game has such low completion rates. The game also has rather questionable choices when it comes to the number of credits and the lives system. No matter what difficulty you choose, you only get three credits to beat the game with and you cannot extend this number. So you either play well, or get ready to constantly see the game over screen. Not only that, getting an extra life requires actual effort in Star Hunter DX an the game is rather stingy in this regard. Simply doing your best isn't enough; you need to play really well and make perfect usage of the game's scoring system and your ship's abilities, while avoiding a continue as it resets your score. Your work is not done when you finally get that extra life though, as your hard-earned chance to live a bit longer actually appears in the level as a floating item that needs to be collected. Actually, making great use of ship abilities is mandatory as the game becomes twice as hard, if not impossible, without them. Despite the store page claiming the game as being "old school", I really don't think the gameplay can be considered as such; because the abilities are not there as an option, but more like necessities. There are enemy patterns in the game (especially in the fourth and fifth stages) that look very hard to get through without using bombs or bullet time. It kinda feels like the game wants you play it the way it wants you to, not how you want to. The only character that can kind of get past this requirement, is the first unlockable character that has powerful homing shots. Overall, I'm very torn on Star Hunter DX. It is a very good game, but the situational clarity issues combined with a gameplay system that requires near-perfect usage of abilities to succeed, make it hard to recommend to general audience. Star Hunter DX seems to be a game that people who can put a bunch of hours into and perfect their gameplay can make the most of it. As for the rest of people (including myself) who have limited time and just want to enjoy games for a short while, they might want to look elsewhere.

I Love this game, Amazing Bullet Hell Shoot Em Up with gorgeous bright and colourful pixel art work, great controls and quite challenging game play, cool music, Awesome enemies and bosses, if you love retro/modern style shoot em ups like this one, highly recommended, buy this game you will not be disappointed and Fantastic work guys, Both thumbs UP!!!

Star Hunter DX is a shoot them up game set on futurist planets, destroy enemy and defeat challing boss in this bullet hell game. Graphics (7.5 / 10) : The graphics are really nice, simple but really futurist and neon atmosphere, in 6 differents levels. Gameplay (7.5 / 10) : First easy level to really hard last levels, the game is really challenging, but you have 3 differents characters to control (2 to unlock with progress), each ship have a primal shot and a secondary one, with bomb to use and bullet time to slow down the game, the gameplay is pretty complete but also quite challenging. Price (5 / 10) : With around 6 levels for 8.99 euros, the game cost too much for the content and we can see a big part or the game in around 1-1.5 hours, a problem that many shmup also have ... Story/Music/Optimisation (7/10) : There some story, and translate in French !!! that rare and good for non-native english speaker :) The sound and music are cool, good with the neon-futurist graphics. Don’t get any optimisation or freeze during gameplay (played on a i5, 2Go VRAM and 8Go RAM) Final Note (6.8 / 10) : Star Hunter DX is a nice shmup game with good graphics and gameplay, but also quite hard and pretty short for the price, recommended for shmup fan. + : - Good graphics / Differents atmospheres in each levels - Good optimisation - Easy to learn, hard to master - : - Too high priced for the content - Maybe too hard after level 4, cool be hard to unlock the last level.

excellent stg

I'm not a big fan of horizontal shmups but I enjoyed Star Hunter DX a lot. It plays, looks and sound great. All needed options for hardcore players are here. Game is quite difficult even on easy level. No signs of "euro shmup" - truly amazing game.

Don't ask me why.