Разработчик: Jason Rohrer
Описание
What if you could change an enemy or a power-up from the inside? What if you could enter and change yourself? What if these levels inside levels inside levels went all the way down---and all the way up?
Inside a Star-filled Sky is a hard, procedurally-generated shmup built around this core concept.
Key features:
- Unique recursive gameplay
- Enter things---enemies, power-ups, and even yourself---to alter them for your tactical advantage
- Procedurally generated levels, along with a massive bullet combo system, offer limitless tactical variety
- Dozens of ways to approach each challenge---reflex your way through, blast your way through, or think your way through
- Dynamic soundtrack is procedurally generated based on moment-to-moment gameplay
- Plant your flag throughout an infinite level space to mark your discoveries, and see flags planted by others via a global flag server
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS: Windows XP
- Processor: 900 MHz
- Memory: 40 MB
- Hard Disk Space: 10 MB
- Video Card: Onboard Graphics
- Sound: Standard Audio
Mac
- OS: OS X version Leopard 10.5.8, Snow Leopard 10.6.3, or later.
- Processor: 900MHz Intel
- Memory: 40 MB
- Hard Disk Space: 10 MB
- Video Card: Onboard Graphics
- Sound: Standard Audio
Отзывы пользователей
One of my favorite relaxation games. I've had it for over a decade, always installed and ready to play because it's so lightweight. It goes on infinitely in every direction and I find that incredibly relaxing. 5 minutes in this games unwinds years of stress for me.
Pretty fun level transition gameplay. Reminds me of Disgaea Item dungeons.
Weird, no instructions, and doesn't make sense. It has a bunch of things (eg "temporary flags", "permanent flags", etc) which are never explained, and *sometimes* appear to do something. But also, sometimes do absolutely nothing. And there's no way to save a game, restore where you were up to, etc.
Seems like there's some useful concept here, but it's just so frustrating to run around and have no friggin idea wtf is going on. All it probably needed was better explanation/instructions. :(
Takes awhile to get into it and fully grasp the concept, but once you do this game is incredibly unique and fun. Can be super hard at times but you gotta think through the best way to navigate the situation, really adding a new layer to things. Definitely recommend!
I love this game so much.
I played it as an innocent 21 year old 10 years ago and it gave me my first existential crisis. So from that perspective, I recommend it.
It's like the incarnation of the concept of a fractal in game form. An infinitely complex shape with no real beginning or end.
You go inside yourself. You go inside enemies. You go inside powerups. Why? To give yourself an advantage and make it to the next level up. But where does it stop? Every level inside anything is the same. It repeats forever. All the way up. All the way down. There is no end. No beginning. No goal. No objective. Just forever complex. Yet simple.
Maybe you go inside an enemy, an attempt to tweak it make it weaker so you can get past it. But you're finding it challenging in there too. You can't just exit, you need to beat the level to make it back up. So you go inside a power up, to upgrade it and make yourself stronger. Find that challenging. So go inside yourself. All so you can get past that one enemy in that one level. And then, when you do get past the level, there's another level above that. Forever. Without end. It never stops. In any direction.
It's amazing. It's horrifying. Can't recommend it enough.
I had to ask myself why I was playing this game, if it didn't have a goal, or an end. If it didn't have something to work towards. And that made me question why do any of us do anything? Is there a point to life? Why do I play games at all? Do achievements and goals and points really mean anything anyway?
Typically for a Jason Rohrer joint, it's much more interesting to read about this game than to play it, since it's a high-concept idea with no follow-through. He could simply tweet his game ideas instead of releasing them on Steam, but writing a whole 280 characters might be more work than he's prepared to put in.
I actually think this is an absolutely brilliant concept, and wish somebody else attempted it. Unfortunately, as far as I know nobody else has.
This could be a good game, but a few things are wrong:
1) There is no point to playing the game, since things go infinitely backwards and forwards you might as well have never tried doing anything. There is no reward for continued play.
2) Bullet patterns are mostly undodgable and relies on your health bar to tank hits. A lot of shmup games do this and they usually suck. You can do this thing where you enter an enemy to make them suck more if they're giving you trouble, but it takes so long it's not worth the time. (but then again there is no reward for continued play so do whatever you want)
3) Some levels aren't even related to the thing they spawn from. This usually happens in powerups, where you get in real close and randomly some open area spawns out of a design. It would be much more impressive if you always could tell what you're inside, and sometimes you can- but most of the time the screen is too zoomed in or the level too irrelevant to tell.
I bought this game when it was released and since then it's only gotten 60 reviews. That's a shame, because I wish that somebody would play this, get angry and go "I could do better!!" and make a great game out of the idea.
This game has a super-interesting high concept to it. However, without any defined goal, it's ultimately pointless. There is no end-game. Have fun playing forever, or, more likely, stop after an hour or so and never pick it up again. This is Jason Rohrer at his Rohreriest.
If I was given a chance to refund a single game, it would be this.
There is an interesting mechanic (diving into enemies, power-ups etc.) but its connection to the game is vague at best. Going into something feels nothing more than a “next level” button , thus making it easier to lose track of your progress, everything looks so similar, if not identical.
Inside a Star-Filled Sky is an extremely clever concept that doesn't ultimately end up going much of anywhere.
The idea is that you're a symbol exploring a top-down universe, shooting at monsters and collecting powerups. The trick, though, is that everything is fractal; instead of grabbing a powerup you can shrink down inside it, and then shrink down inside an enemy inside of that, and so on. You have a procedurally-generated infinity to explore.
Exploring is all there really is to it, though. As far as I've been able to tell there isn't any actual goal except to survive as long as possible and travel as far as possible.
This game is unmistakably a return to a time when video games were more raw, unfinished, and simple. That this game appears to have depth and complexity is itself an illusion. I can count on my fingers the number of new things you will encounter as you play through the levels. My first time, I went as low as level -40. I couldn't seem to figure it out and every time you die, you go down a level. But then I started over, and am currently stuck at around level 118. There is a room full of robots that shoot enough bullets to make a japanese top-down shooter choke, and so to get past it, I went "inside" one of the enemies to try and disable it's weapons through giving it weaker powerups. Instead, now I am trapped inside of it by more crazy robots.
The way I got as far as I have was not actually through a whole lot of careful planning or picking the right items. Instead, I find that I progressed faster by running straight past or through things to the exit. Since when you die you automatically get one of your three "power ups" replaced with about 6 life points, you can burn through those and get to the exit. But, having done this, I am now not strong enough to proceed.
If you enjoy the concept of games as art than this could be for you. I find it to be one of those games I can get lost in for a few 15 minute sessions here and there. There are some points where it's either over the top difficult or because of the power ups you've achieved it's too easy but those moments in between are great fun.
This game is great, the idea is superb and the gameplay is excellent. You can go inside of things like enemies to modify them and come out to find that the enemy is something completely different. Imagine directly modifying powerups by going inside of them, then coming out to collect it. The idea is amazing. The excution is great.
Certainly Reccomended.
Interesting concept where you dive inner(or outer) from yourself, an enemy or power up in order to make the subject in question weaker, stronger or different in order to get to the "next level".
Once you figure out the concept of the game... well, that's pretty much it. There is no story so going through each "level" is pretty much like playing in an arcade, where you are just going for the points. That's not a bad thing, but for me, I wish there was more.
I still recommend the game due to the fact that it has a VERY unique gameplay system. If anything, this game is still worth the trip, even if it is just for a little while!
I wouldn't call this game a hard tactical shmup as it's on the level of an easier Realm of a Mad God. Anything can become the stage as you can enter another level by hopping into the up arrow tile/manually enter a powerup on the ground/enter enemies or hell even your ownself. A good game to pass the time but I wouldn't call it a difficult shmup.
Perfect example of how NOT to use procedural generation: as the content of the entire game. This is an unfinished program with no vision. Your only purpose is to pilot around from randomly generated level to randomly generated level finding better upgrades so that you can kill the enemies in the way more easily.
You know how sometimes you play a game, and it literally feels like one half of a pretty good game? This feels like 1/20th of a pretty good game. They came up with a cool mechanic, and hung everything on you enjoying that mechanic enough to keep playing. I didn't.
So, pretty much everything on a game map is itself a potential game map and you can enter them and collect powerups to change the thing the game map was based on. The powerups you collect inside an enemy affect its abilities, the powerups you collect inside powerups affect the nature of the powerup you are in, and the powerups you collect inside yourself affect your own abilities. Only the last 3 powerups have an impact, and not until you leave the thing you're in and pop up to the level you entered it from. Every map has a square for popping out of it, so there is no "top" layer.
It can get a bit dizzying, but the awesome number of potential powerup combos, plus the strategy of altering the game elements around you to suit your needs, plus the difficulty scaling based on depth and powerup collection, plus the ability to plant your flag and mark those places where nobody has been before make this a fairly worthwhile game. (My flag is a black glider on a blue field. Try to find it!)
A really fun, interesting game. It's based around the idea of infinity but as to not sound pretentious, I'll just say it manages to be thought provoking with very little.
Thankfully, its also quite good as a game. The shooting is fun with a variety of different projectile types that can be combined for a ton of completly different combinations. It is a shmup so expect it to get hard quite fast. There a few other cool systems. Can't get past a enemy? Dive inside it and give it mediocre weapons. There is much more to it then it seems at first.
My only complaint is that the backgrounds get repetitive fast, which isn't the best thing when the game never ends.
For the price your getting a really unique and fun shooter that could last you a very long time.
Jason Rohrer is a genius, a weird video game Unabomber hiding in a cabin type of genius. Passage was beautiful, The Castle Doctrine is interesting and this is a wild thought experiment of a game. All three of the aforementioned games are award-winning ideas born from a guy who's too cool to be an Indie Game: The Movie name. But are they good games? Like the eternal question "but is it art," my answer is "probably but I'm not here for that, I'm gonna go play Skyrim some more instead." Creative, kinda fascinating, definitely unique. But even if it's on sale, you're still paying too much to indulge a good idea that's missing a fun game attached to it. If it's a buck, get it. If it's not, use the wayback machine to find a Japanese Geocities freeware game because that's what this is.
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Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Jason Rohrer |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 15.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 67% положительных (73) |