Starward Rogue: A fast paced top down bullet hell roguelike where you will most certainly DIE a few times. Great Fun!

No, seriously! As brutal as it is, it is the type of game designed to make you fail and requires several attempts to learn how to play it. Other recent similar titles (though in a First Person view) would be Ziggurat or Sublevel Zero.

You will die. You will die. You will die but live a little longer. You will die several more times. You will get to the end... and die. Eventually winning. My gaming session started at midnight, where my reflexes are not the best and I did... alright. I'm not usually playing fast paced titles but got further than I thought I would in this one.

Apparent you play a Space-Dragon head in a Mech suit. I'm thinking I missed something here. And you have to rescue Rodney. Okay.

Well, at least this is what the tutorial told me. Rodney's voice actor wonderful, but the reason for why all this is happening is not mentioned. You just have to descend 5 floors, with a single life, and rescue him.

Oh!, and the ship you are rescuing him from is half stuck inside a star.

I've no idea what any of this means. But I suppose it does not matter. Right now, it is a core action game that will appeal to a specific target audience and I imagine they'll really like this one.

My preferred Mech was one called "Flame Tank". The unlimited shot flame attack is rather powerful, but does make the bosses more difficult. When I finally made it up to 'The Warden' the combination of the flames, four orbiting companions, and Mr. Warden flooding the screen with bullet hell, I was no match and lost the few dozen HP I had accumulated leading up to it.

Other Mechs are: White Gloss, which I assume is the all-rounder. Indigo Dipole, which moved far too fast for me to control. Green Envy, which is meant to be a one where you aim for upgrade credits over anything else. Deep Blue, where I died within the first room each time. And one called Redshift. Redshift was rather interesting that the enemies only move when you move or shoot, which is as close as you'll get to RTWP in this game. Quite a fun one to play, and I'll be using it again next time.

As I don't normally play the faster paced games like this one (I'm more a 'The Pit' kind of guy) some downsides are not being too familiar with the genre. Take them as a positive if you wish!

There's basically a few scenarios where the enemies flood the screen too much, and the twitch movement works against the game.

The game was easier once I turned off momentum-movement, feels much more like a bullet hell than a bullet suicide game. Leaving it with the default setting of 'on' I found the mechs to slide around too much for my liking.

The mech also has a light(laser-0damage)/aim and a cross-hair. They don't line up. Personally I found this confusing, even by the 86min mark.

The good news is ArcenGames are usually more than great for the support on their titles, so I'm expecting this one to be tweaked over time.

Game Acquisition: Key from PR
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 24 January 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009

Windows XP SP2 or later
Processor: 2.2Ghz CPU
Memory: 3 GB RAM
Graphics: Screen resolution at least 720px high, and 1024px wide.
Storage: 400 MB available space