Star of Providence

Overall this is a fun game with a lot of character. The runs feel too long to get another shot at the endgame bosses towards and the early game is too easy compared to the endgame. Some of the bosses and encounters do feel cheap with borderline unavoidable damage that will deal twice the damage if you do not get lucky enough for the upgrade. Just to win and get the credits isn't that hard but the endgame and a lot of the challenges are cheap difficulty. The overwhelming majority of encounters in this game can be cleared with skill and not requiring memorizing patterns. It does feel more skill based than games like Khazan or Dark Souls, which have trolls and are basically just memorizing quick time events.

For those who loved enter the guneon and binding of isaac, this is for you. What it lacks in quantity it makes up for in tight fast paced combat

A pretty fast-paced, satisfying, twin-stick shooter (keyboard+mouse shooter, really) with a lot more depth than I was expecting. Good variety in gameplay between runs thanks to how weapons+traits are randomly generated, and frequently having to choose between upgrading yourself or trying to maintain your health and ammo.

There's also a lot of challenge. It's very easy to get hit, a lot.

Star of Providence is the best bullet hell I've played (IMO). I've played enter the gungeon, nuclear throne, and ikaruga, and this takes the cake. You have the great world building and story of gungeon, with the chaos of nuclear throne, and the masterfully crafted bullet patterns from ikaruga that make you keep on coming back for more. WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

Warning this game is hard if you've never played a bullet hell before. Though I would still highly recommend this game to anyone wanting to get into the genre as it starts off pretty slow, and eases you into the difficulty.

this game is fun if you think smashing your nads with a hammer is fun.

mastapeece prolly like aaaaaaaa.... 8 or 9/10

v good should buy if you enjoy roguelikes

Played this game on the steam deck (so the hours my account is reporting is a bit off) super cozy roguelike perfect for plane rides. Is still fun though I am not great at it.

Excellent game for the first 4-6 hours, but the price tag and genre are contingent on enjoying repeated playthroughs after you "beat the game" the first time. The game is too easy up until the original final boss, and then after that the difficulty reaches the point you'd like it to start at, so that you can learn the harder stuff. Instead, if you die, you have to blow through the whole game again.

The variety between runs is nonexistent; each one feels the same, with the properties of the weapons mattering little. The various mechanics feel underbaked too—the dash is rarely useful past the easy parts of the game. The harder parts require precision, not wild burst movement, and the bosses and minibosses don't feel like they're designed to make the dash relevant. The fact that there are different types of bombs is confusing too, because they all serve the purpose of removing projectiles from the screen the exact same way. They might do damage differently, or sometimes they don't do damage at all, I dunno. It wouldn't have been too hard to have the bombs have vastly different effects, like a temporary shield that circles you, or a bomb that creates a small, moving circle that deletes bullets as it travels, or a bomb that fires a big beam in front of you that slows your movement and only erases bullets in its path (so not ones from the sides).

The fundamental gameplay just doesn't make runs feel meaningfully different, nor does it feel like the decisions you make in the first 80% of the run affect the last 20%. The game's fun until you've beaten the first "final boss", but after that you have to replay weaker sections too much, with too many uninteresting decisions, to get to new stuff.

Top-tier roguelite, and maybe, just maybe there's something here for the shmup fans too, no promises. Veers too much into bullet vomit clustermuck territory towards late game, and makes some design decisions I don't agree with (t. don't find fun) but the developers clearly have a strong vision for this one. It's just that they're trying to balance that vision against years of added content and mechanics. It doesn't always work.

I went in with the context of having played this game a lot during its Monolith days. Getting into SoP today, completely blind, you'll probably be fine... but you might be confused about like 20 unexplained mechanics. Maybe this gives the game a sense of mystique for you, I don't know.
I do find it funny that the developers realized the cumulative damage upgrades throughout an entire run would trivialize an especially late floor so they put in an invisible damage softcap. Or that they added a damage nerf to weapons that fire in a burst that goes unmentioned otherwise, because obviously giving the player a weapon that's just like another weapon, but fires in triples and thus deals triple the damage, wasn't totally balanced.

Some bosses are too RNG in the sense that like, one of their attacks will absolutely crush you while another possible attack might blow raspberries in your general direction. This is a prevailing issue with bosses from Floor 1 (though obviously the stakes are much lower so early on), all the way to, I'd say one of the super bosses. Some bosses are too RNG in the sense that like, they will do the same attack 5 times back to back and you really feel it in your bones that they weren't expected to do that. It's either that or it's that one pigeon attack that you can completely avoid by tapping right or left so the real challenge becomes staying awake. Late game difficulty scaling will make some room layouts and bosses disproportionately more difficult which will surely mess with your target prioritization muscle memory.

Some bosses are really cool though. One boss in particular while not particularly "late game" per se, let me stretch my legs with a hybrid melee/ranged ship in a twin stick shooter where the boss is actually designed around the melee hits being much more powerful than the ranged ones. It's pretty good. You'll know which one I'm talking about when you get there.

Storytelling is a mixed bag. At points, the game manages to be crystal clear with no dialogue, and at others you'll be hit with a textwall of cryptic nonsense that you won't be able to decipher unless you're jacked into the Discord server lore discussion matrix. How many councils were there again? I don't care for it. Well, I wouldn't have cared for it if not for the Gauntlet Master, who requires you inquire him with a specific dialogue option before you can fight him. Which I didn't do for the longest time, because I was sick and tired of his endless ranting about something or other lore thing only lore nuts care about.

This review feels like a laundry list of things that annoy me specifically with this game. This is why, if you read this far, you might be surprised to learn that I love this game, and it's an easy recommend for me. It's a cutesy package with a deceptively huge amount of content. Well worth double the asking price. It hits some emotional high notes that I wouldn't have expected a roguelite where you shoot stuff as a spaceship could. No doubt, the reason it can is the presentation, and the tear-sheddingly gorgeous soundtrack with over 3 hours of original chiptune compositions.

Some random assortment of points I couldn't segue into:
Metaprogression isn't huge here, you can probably unlock everything you care about sans loops in like 5 or 6 runs if you know what you're doing. I still wish there was less of it.
Half the weapons in the shop are annoying to use. It's an important skill to figure out which ones to disable so they free up some space in the loot pool.
In terms of accessibility, I mean, there's a photosensitivity option that's not really all there, and a controller autoaim that's in the works at the time of writing. Good enough for me.
Maybe set the game resolution to one of the pixel perfect scaled ones. They're the 580p and 870p ones. Yes the game internally runs at 290p. Don't even ask.

Is this game for you? Would you like a tightly designed, bite-sized roguelite with a charming aesthetic? Can you look past its flaws I can't anymore as a tired gamer who put way too much time into this one videogame for some reason?

Since I was playing on the GOG release for this one until fairly recently, I won't be able to get 100% achievements unless I start over in a new save. This also means like, a hundred or so hours won't show up here. That's more of a me issue but just heed this as a warning to not purchase the GOG version. They haven't even updated it with the name change, and the DLC which was merged into the base game a long time ago is still up for retail on GOG. They're clearly moving forward with Steam as their primary platform. The game doesn't have DRM, you can delete Steam .dll's from your game folder if you're concerned about DRM. Well, since I am, and I deleted those .dll's, I won't get to unlock any more achievements for this game. My completion state will simply stay frozen like this. I'm totally okay with that. I will update this portion of the review if they ever release the latest version on GOG.

Bought this because of dunkey, despite knowing I don't really like roguelites.

It's very fun, feels good to control, difficulty is good. But there is too little to hook me to this game. More specifically, the world isn't interesting enough. There is a subtle line between vague and mysterious. This game's story and world seem to lack interesting meaning and development, but it also feels as though it's just keeping those secrets from you for now, and you will get the answers later.

I decided to spoil myself to know if I really want to give this my time, and found that this game does do some interesting things, just not with most of the setting and characters. If it did, then the wiki doesn't seem to know of it. Reading the flavor text in the "beastiary" of this game, I got the feeling that no one had really thought up any lore, but they had to write something... and so they wrote random shallow comments that look like they fit the character design, with little tying everything together. The challenge alone is not a bad reason to want to play more of this game, but for me it's not enough. I want the world to be interesting and tease me with fulfilling answers to my questions. If I want to play a challenging bullet hell roguelite, I have many many options, most of them more gripping than this one.

It's not at all a bad game, it just doesn't have anything to make me want to return to it. I don't know what story it's trying to tell, and it doesn't know either, so I'd rather play Gungeon or something similarily charming, but with actual substance and more originality, on top of the fun and challenging gameplay.

If you're a roguelite junkie, then you might love this, but I'm not, and this game doesn't do anything else interesting enough for me to want to play it.

binding of isaac if isaac had a gun and 50mg of adderall

Twin-stick bullet hell roguelike with excellent sprite art, music and gameplay. It is really fucking hard though, and the amount of shit that goes on may be overwhelming if you aren't familiar with the genre.

YES, get it! its hard, but thats the point really.. Great game for its price. you will get your hours worth assuming you like this kind of game. its not quite like.. its not a twin stick, but it has elements of it, especially boss fights. But also lots of cool guns, have yet to unlock a bunch of em... its good fun really.. just buy it.

The best game of it's kind, everything is perfectly thought out including risk/reward.
Very tough but fair, all the content is possible with more practice.
Play it

Mind blowingly good and addicting, with depths I didn't think this game would ever go. Constantly surprised by this game every time I play

This takes me back to days of playing Raiden at the arcade. A good bullet hell with plenty of RNG and upgrades to keep things interesting. Strong and diverse soundtrack. Not too extreme, pretty forgiving with respect to the genre.

Game is too "into your face", not my jam.
It failed to provide attractions to help me cling to the game. (like world settings, music, designs etc)
I know it is for the retro vibe, but the art style is too bland for me.
The tactile feeling is quite decent, but the game play experience has stayed quite the same across enemy types.

Incredible game, infuriating but fair, super addictive. My first bullet hell game since the SNES era, maybe a tough place to pick back up, but I'm not stopping until I've earned my full gamer cred.

If you are a shmup player the game can be a little less intense than you would like. You find that the bosses are the best part. Fortunately, there is an entire game version dedicated to fighting the bosses. The Trials bring the game from a fun, shmup like experience, to being a great shmup like experience.

Genuinely, the best bullet hell I've played. What a fantastic game, man.

extremely addicting and rewarding, there is way more content than they initially show you too and i am constantly unlocking new bosses, characters, and weapons

Star of Providence is incredible. I'm very particular about bullet hells, and I can't get enough of Star of Providence. The controls are fluid and tight, the aesthetics are pitch-perfect and the gameplay manages a lot of tricky balancing acts in an impressive way.

For example, runs can snowball to some degree: doing well on the early floors means more max HP and more scrap to spend at shops, giving you an advantage going into the later challenges, making good early play meaningful. But it doesn't fall into the trap of dooming a run if you make mistakes. The game gives you space to claw yourself back from the brink while also making your early decisions and mistakes meaningful. (This is helped by the genre: because it is possible (if not reasonable for most players) to beat any boss with no upgrades and the default weapon, the advantages you do gain over the course of the run can be kept very significant but not success-defining.)

This is a minor detail, but it does so much for the flow of the game: most pickups disappear when you leave the room, allowing you to not have to spend any mental load on them. Ammo pickup? Grab it. Health? Grab it. No need to weigh the pros and cons of grabbing something now vs. having to remember to come back to pick it up later. That kind of decision is left to important things. And to add to this, no pickup is ever truly wasted: grabbing ammo without a gun to feed it to grants you currency instead, while grabbing healing at max health contributes towards increasing your max HP. (This is part of what makes good play rewarding without making a bad start a guaranteed loss.)

The mechanics just all feel like they're geared towards giving the player a good experience. And that, in turn, makes it feel like a game that WANTS you to improve and defeat it, even as it throws increasingly daunting challenges at you. It's a game that's been extremely good at making me go, "I'll never beat X, I accept this" to "Well it's still fun to TRY to beat X" to actually, eventually, overcoming X. And then realizing that X is only the beginning.

And the game excels at surprising you. Just when you think you've seen everything, it'll throw some new enemy, some new boss phase, some new thing to explore at you. It feels endless in the best possible way.

On top of this, there is actually some really interesting lore, slowly revealed to you from a variety of sources. It doesn't put any of it in your face, but there's a lot to uncover if poking at the weird, mysterious edges of games is your thing. You wouldn't think a game about spaceships shooting one thousand ghosts and funny machines good have good characters, but it does.

I like to throw in a few quibbles with any review to give the reader a sense what the worst elements of the game are (what's the opposite of a backhanded compliment? A fronthanded insult?), and I'm struggling to come up with anything worth saying. It CAN be frustrating to do a 40-minute run, only to trip over the same final boss and end up back at the hub with no material progress to show for it. The final floors CAN be especially brutal, with some rooms PERHAPS bordering on unfair. There is one attack in the game I feel like deserves more a telegraph than it has. Those are the worst things I have to say about the game.

10/10, super excited knowing that D-13 plans to add MORE to a game that is already packed to the brim.

It was already a 10/10 when it first released. Then it was improved with the first expansion. THEN it was made even better again with this latest update.

How do they keep doing it? Will it happen again? Will society be ready for it!?

I have average skill at bullet hells, and I've been able to get decently far. I'd say this game is the next level of challenge above baseline Hades / Hades 2 - if you like those games, you'll have a pretty good time here. The toughest thing to get used to is having no invulnerability on your dash.

A great twin-stick shooter-roguelike. Similar to Enter the Gungeon or Binding of Isaac (or Minishoot Adventures in terms of the shooting style). It has tons of extra content to keep grinding for, and it feels very rewarding to learn the bosses and develop better strategies. Very worthy of the Bigmode brand. XD

An insanely rewarding, hard game. if your a fan of roguelites you'll love this game, if your a fan of bullet hells, you'll love this game, if your a fan of both, this is heaven.

Big Mode is continuing to establish themselves as a must buy publisher, every game has been amazing and well worth the price

An excellent entry into the Rogue-like Bullet Hell genre. Plenty of content to be worth the asking price. A simple and addictive game loop. No issues with bugs or crashes. What more could you ask for from this type of game?

Watch the trailer, if it looks like fun, it probably will be

Had a free Sunday, took Adderall, and played this game for 7 hours. For the love of everything good in this world, play this game.

Love everything about this game (design gameplay, story?). It's difficult and I don't know if I can finish it, but who cares. The FUN is important and damn do I have :D

Played it when it came out and was called Monolith. It's a solid shmup and is sooo much fun! Unfortunately the dunkey buyout didn't add enough for me to replay it - but it's still fun for 20 hours or so!

A very well-made, with a good amount of content. The right kind of difficult, with no hand-holding. Hidden bosses/secret levels that can kick your ass.

A strong recommendation to any fan of bullet-hell rogue-likes

Star of Providence, at its core, is a fun bullet-hell rogue-lite shooter. The core gameplay is fast, fun, and responsive.

However, the package that core, fun experience is wrapped up in is... a bit of a mess. The aesthetics are all over the place: the intro video and tutorial suggest a high-tech ruined dystopia, and the music for the brief tutorial section is driving and energetic. Then you start the actual game and the music becomes lighthearted and cozy; the enemies blasting at you feature a mishmash of floating skulls, wizards, fish, robotic angels, bleeding eyeballs, and military tanks; you befriend a giant cartoon cat; etc. None of this detracts from the fun of the core shooting bullet-hell experience, but it DOES hold the game back from being elevated to something greater than the sum of its mismatched parts.

The game's systems are also at times very opaque. I had been collecting "hats" from very early on in my play of the game, and only after seeing the achievement pop up for collecting ALL of the hats did I figure out what they actually do. The afore-mentioned big fluffy cat allows you to buy upgrades, but at first it's unclear what you're actually purchasing (in most cases: more options for powerups that might appear in future runs). The language on powerups is often unintuitive or unclear, and requires experimentation to figure out fully. (e.g. There is a type of powerup called a "cart", and I encountered a powerup option that mentioned "carts" before I had ever encountered one, so I had no idea what that powerup option actually did.) That's not game-breaking in and of itself, but it feels like a big risk to potentially sacrifice your entire run in a rogue-like/lite game just to figure out what a keyword in the game means.

Again, overall the game is quite fun. It provides a stimulating challenge and its controls are fast and responsive. However, there's a lack of polish that holds the game back from being a truly excellent experience. It's definitely a nice effort from an indie dev, and I don't mean to be too harsh in my appraisal! I'm just trying to offer the most honest feedback that I can.

You can really tell this game was made by really skilled developers, everything is super well done, and there is an insane amount of content. I love this game

Unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of roguelikes, and if you aren't either, this game won't change your mind. I haven't played it a ton because I simply cannot mentally justify the ratio sunk time to new content. It feels great to play, has cool areas and enemies, etc, but requires time and skill commitment I can't justify reaching when I have to replay the same few levels over and over. I don't think this game was made for me.

I'll still keep this review positive: if you like roguelikes, pick this up. You won't regret it, especially if you are into the retro aesthetic!

From what I've played so far of this game, I can safely say BigMode haven't published a bad game yet (tho they've only published two so it's not that bold a claim actually)! 8/10.

A bullet-hell rogue-lite, quite nice. All around lots of stuff to do.

I think the game's primary curse is that guns/combinations with lots of projectiles are fun, but also make it harder to read enemy projectiles with similar brightness (and, sometimes, similar colors). Practice mode helps a bit.

Best played on a keyboard+mouse - controller movement is locked to 8 directions so the only thing you win is making it easier to consistently aim backwards if you're going for a very specific kind of build on a specific character.

A top-down shooter rougelike wasn't the type of game I expected to be so taken by, but Star of Providence really delivers like very few other games do; the game consistently levels out fair encounters and varied bosses, the upgrades you get over the course of the run can wildly change your gameplay style, and every time I thought I'd seen every nook or secret, there were plenty more entire secret endings to the game waiting for me. Best of all, it's all substance, no filler, and tough as nails.

Having owned this game since it went by the name Monolith, I can say with confidence that it is an excellently crafted project both in its aesthetic and gameplay design.

BUT, despite years of ownership, I find the infrequence of my return to the game growing each time I try to delve back in. While it shares a number of similarities with the likes of Binding of Isaac, the core difference is in Star of Providence, you don't really assemble a build to beat the game. Your ability to see the ending/complete loops is almost entirely dependent on your ability to memorize and navigate enemy attack patterns.
If that is your cup of tea, that's great. Unfortunately for me, that's seldom what I want when I'm hankering for a roguelike fix.
What's here really is great, and there is a lot to discover. Just bear in mind that you are unlikely to satisfy any power fantasies with this one.

Amazing and challenging. My only wish is for there to be more unlocks! If you like hard roguelikes with a good variety of content that don't feel like complete BS, this game is for you.

I hate roguelikes, bullet hell, and procedural generation.

I love this game.

Probably the best of its genre. This game is not perfect - there's some dumb bullshxt that feels unfair, but those moments are few and far between. With excellent music, great level and enemy design, and a gameplay loop that keeps me coming back for more, Star of Providence delivers what it promises.

Great game with an amazing gameplay loop, both extremely difficult and rewarding.
Having played Enter the Gungeon, this takes the bullet hell and roguelike aspect to a whole new level.

The fact that this game was basically ignored for 8 years is a crime, a crime that I'm ashamed to have commited myself.

Dunkey gave this game the relevance it deserved and I couldn't be happier.

If you like bullet hell and a pre-Hades rogue-lite stucture, this game is for you.

This game is so unique, it has the perfect the balance of rng and skill. It scales in such a way that the majority of your progress is skill, however it introduces new and fun features, allowing it to remain entertaining throughout the play through. I cant wait to play some of the other content, as it seems like I have only scratched the surface after beating the overlord

embarrassed to admit that i probably never would have tried this game if dunkey wasnt promoting it hard for his new publishing venture (shmups/bullet hells arent usually my thing) but shee-oot this game is fun. good reminder to broaden my horizons and play games outside my comfort zone more, highly recommend this one. i think the room-by-room rouguelike structure with upgrades and shops and stuff really helps the pacing, my usual problem with shmups is exhaustion since theyre often just overwhelming level after overwhelming level with nothing in between but this is a very digestible bullet hell format for me.

Star of Providence is pixelated perfection, the peak of what a Roguelike should aspire to be. Tightly designed, beautifully stylized, and as fair as they come, though 'fair' does not mean 'easy' in the slightest.

For every challenge you rise to meet, there is always another lying ahead of you. Nothing is left up to chance; Though no run is the same, there are endless opportunities to succeed. The only thing stopping you is you. And the more you give this game, the more it gives back.

Rewarding in a way no other in the genre can match. A true test of skill. No matter what lies ahead of you...

❤️ Don't give up.

Cant even use a controller, turned on steam input and changed controls to controller. It makes square A and cross to B and only lets me look left and right, awful that this is an issue in a game released today.

Just straight up adrenaline pumping fun. Weapons are powerful and hitboxes are tight as hell, letting you avoid any attacks thrown at you if you're skilled enough. Every enemy and boss has unique moves and there is a staggering variety of both. I have only just scratched the surface of this game, but its seems like it has as much replay-ability as my old baby Enter the Dungeon, possibly even more.

Buy it.

NOW.

Perfect, just perfect. no offense to isaac but that game is slow as fuck. The amount of enemies and their attack patterns is very good. The bosses are hilarious and the weapons have interesting mutations.

Lack of full Steam Deck support seems odd. Lack of official Steam input controller layout is just lazy.

I'll change my review when the devs add official, working default controller bindings. It'll take 30 minutes at most to add.