Star Merc

Kinda sh1t

I am 32 years old.

My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old.

When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing.

Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side.

With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of you. In fact, I may have played this game for only a day or two. That being said, after doing so, I had a new joy and hope for life. I managed to leave behind the pain and suffering that had been thrust upon me. I could experience the joy and happiness of other people. I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay.

After realizing this, I turned off the game and went back to work. My hand hurt a lot, but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and became the father I needed to be at that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving like.

Today, I am close friends with the mother of my children. We don't fight, argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents and friends.

Now I have 3 children. My third child is, wait, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my separation, and we just unexpectedly stumbled into each other's lives. We have been dating for a year and are very happy together.

Moral of the story: you never know what life has in store for you, and if I had given up when all odds were against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that.

Thank you.

RPG Maker strikes again!

Star Merc is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction.

I think in this case there's some custom pixelcrap assets alongside the copy + pasted stock RPG Maker assets from Kadokawa. I say that because this looks somewhat worse, visually than the usual Andorlea asset flips that infest the Steam store. It's also eschewing the traditional fantasy anime fanfiction for a traditional sci-fi anime fanfiction, although comparing two kinds of garbage isn't really a productive way to spend our time.

Also notable that the developer couldn't even work out how to use RPG Maker properly (even though it is, as they say, simple enough for a child), so there's some script errors in various parts of the game... no surprises that the quality of an RPG Maker construction kit job like this is low in terms of game design as well as technical implementation. RPG Maker has truly enabled some of the worst garbage on Steam, and this is no exception.

As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.

Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers.

Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.

Star Merc is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger. This is also competing with over 9,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

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<3

first mission is harder than next ome XD

why i buy this?
- who care

The intro can't be skipped. There are no settings or controls. It makes no sense.

This game has some problems, but for the dollar that I paid for it I had fun. The game just drops you in and lets you figure out your own path and see how that chamges the world. I did hit a pooint where I couldn't figure out what to do next, but maybe ill pick it up again one day.

Broken beyond belief. Unable to scroll screens, unable to interact with objects/npcs. Tried what little help was suggested in discussions. disappointed, Had such high hopes. Requested a refund and moving on. Multiple various script errors. Steam should look into the the product,

ok

I absolutely loved this game the second I saw it on the my discovery page. I love weird sci-fi, space games and although quite primitive I thought it would be some fun. And when you are explorin the universe this guy's created it is awesome. The problem isn't that there's something wrong with the game, it's that this game isn't finished. Many people have said the same thing and froom finally playing the game I agree. It isn't just that there's a lack of polish, which I could easily forgive, or even that there a few small issues with the game, it's that it feels like there a whole section of the game that's missing. Right I'm stuck because I forgot what a guy told me to do to progress and theres no way to see certain dialogue's after they are said. Also, giving the NPC's on the world something to say would help a lot in making this world feel more real. Some places have ambient NPC dialogue, but most don't. And the fact that this game hasn't been updated in over 6 months tells me that they stopped working on this game long ago. Unfortunately I cannot recommend even though I want to so badly. Given some life and some direction this game could have been great.

Okay, so the first time I start it up, it plays in a very small window. I kill a creature or two, find a rock with a cave under it and release these parasites and an egg. I go up to the surface, creature I just released attacks me and kills me in a few shots. Also, the first ability you get you can't use, because your energy is too low. I quit.

I come back a few hours later, start it up, holy shit it's full screen. I kill all the wildlife and enter a hideout. I go in and find an EMP bomb and all the NPC's attack me. Stealing is bad. I kill three and I run outside. I can no longer go back in the cave, it won't let me. I go north and go back under the rock, release the evil things... This time I don't get any XP for releasing them, so I just stunted my own level. I go outside, none of them will attack me. I can't go back in the rock cave. I can't go back to my ship. I can't find a way to leave the small area I am in. Literally nothing to do. Wtf.

I played this game when it was in early acces and when i saw the full release update i wanted to play again and see if they fixed some bugs and improved the overall feel of the game.

After playing for only an hour of the full release i was pretty dissapointed, you could still glitch the first level and not be able to complete it and a freaking quest log is still not added in.
So i listed a few things that bothered me about the game.
- Adding a quest log would make this game tons better, early on you get a lot of quests but since their is no quest log you basically forget all the quests you were given so your forced to write down the quests npc's give you.
- Adding in a difficulty meter for quests and giving enemies and area's levels(basically saying what level every enemie is on the planet) would also make the game better since its too easy to walk into an area where enemies can 2 shot you.
Also i still havent found a way to save the scientist in the first level which i thought would have been a quest.
- Armors should also be renamed and get different textures their really boring now only being call "armor tier 1" and having the textures the same for all, also would be better if you werent able to buy all of them from the beginning.
- You still cant add skillpoints to skills when you lvl up.

This could be an amazing game if it were given a bit more love.

I get the feeling that this game was made by an actual child. The writing is horrible and the gameplay is really bland and basic. And it's not just boring, it's imbalanced.

Hey, I'm confused. On the very first level, the dragon lizards are insanely hard. Am I missing something, or do the enemies need to be tuned down?

There is a heal option but it only heals about 10 pts out of about 500 pts and the lizards hit for about 200 pts. I tried the defense option as well, but that didn't make a significant difference.

Until the enemies are made reasonable, I cannot approve the game right now. Please reply to this comment if I'm missing something.

EDIT: The combat with the lizards is fixed, but when I tried to enter the base with the robot in frount, the game didn't respond at all. It worked the first time. The reason I left the base in the first place was because I couldn't interact with anyone inside except some frankly bland comments from NPCs. I belive this is a bug in the game.

My question is wheter it is a bug in the game or if I'm supposed to do something. I explored the entire available map and I wasn't to interact with anything except the lizards and something like gold requiring a "resource extractor".

Surprisingly great, I think I've got 50 minutes on it so far and many more to come.
great job guys.

I only just downloaded this because I love science fiction, RPGs, and exploration in video games. So far this game looks very promising, however the difficulty level is crazy-high for battles. Enemies can destroy you with two hits. Aside from the difficulty level, the size of the planets is rather small too. Some things that I really like about this game so far are the vague story that hints at a greater mystery and plot and the impressive level of choice. In the very beginning of the game you are told to go do something for your creator, however you can deny him and go explore the universe. I thought that was a pretty nice touch. Aside from the gameplay and level design, the music is a mixed bag. I like the ambient music in the game because it adds a lot to the dark atmposphere, however it loops too quickly and becomes irritating. I would like to keep playing this game and see what it has to offer, but I keep finding myself selectively battling because my resources are running low and battles are unfair. Overall I am happy with my purchase of this game so far. My main recommendations are to focus more on memorable music with longer tracks that are distinguishable in the game and not generic. Then lower the difficulty to the point that the battles are not unfair and the player can actually grind without using a ton of health potions. If those issues are fixed then I would focus on making the planets larger and more explorable. That is obviously easier said then done, so the music and difficulty lowering should be top priority. This truly is a unique and ambitious game. I just hope it keeps improving and that people will take notice and buy it when it is finally finished.

When I started this game it became worse and worse, the first level starts off really hard but as you play the game more you become invinsible and the combat becomes more and more boring.

Good little game here. 10/10. More add ons please!!!