Christian Indie Game Giveaway (Starclaw: Battle of StarSpace Nebula)

A Christian indie game developer recently got in touch with me about his new game, "Starclaw: Battle of StarSpace Nebula". It looks like a simple space shoot'em-up, possibly with some story built in. He is running a giveaway and asked me to pass along the info if I was willing. Guess what... I'm willing!

You can get more info on the giveaway here: https://playr.gg/Cenokga/sbosn-giveaway

And the steam page for the game is here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1224720/Starclaw_Battle_of_StarSpace_Nebula/

Very cool, Thanks for letting us know!

Here's my referral link if anyone wants to use it!
https://playr.gg/c/Tix9_kq?a=dnarocks_0383

I'm one of the winners of the game from the giveaway. I've been playing it a little bit. Made it to the third or fourth level, and now I'm stuck on a boss (which is really two bosses at the same time).

It's similar to Galaga, the old arcade shooter game. There's a much wider range of motion, though. You can move all around the screen. You just can't turn around. You can get power-ups, too, to change the direction or amount of your firepower, to shield you from damage, etc. There are also some short-range bombs you can collect a limited number of. And there are these blue stars that you collect to fill up the bar above your life bar. I'm still not sure what they're for, and I have yet to fill up that bar.

There is a little bit of story mixed in. When you get to a checkpoint, you see your pilot (a cat) talking to base (also a cat) and a computer. No animation to this; just simple pictures and text at the bottom of the screen. I'm still not totally sure what the characters' mission is or who the bad guys are since there's no intro.

I've seen a couple reviews for the game on Metacritic. They weren't positive, mainly because the game is $20 USD. That's definitely way more than I would pay for something as simple as this. I mean, I doubt I would have played it if I hadn't won it.

The most annoying thing about the game (aside from the impossible boss I'm stuck on) is the fact that every level seems to begin with almost a full minute of nothing. I can fly my ship around the screen and shoot, but there are no enemies until a seemingly arbitrary amount time passes. And this is the start of every level. It kind of feels like I'm playing an unfinished demo.

If you like this kind of gameplay, and you can get the game for a dollar, it might be worth it. But no way is it worth what they're charging.

Thanks for the review, Reed!

Oh! And one other thing that bugs me...whenever you make it to a boss, you lose all of your power-ups (except for the bombs you've collected). It would be really nice to gain the double ship, shield, and stronger laser power-ups and be able to tee off on the boss from the get-go. Really, it would just be nice to keep what I gathered.

AGoodReed wrote:Oh! And one other thing that bugs me...whenever you make it to a boss, you lose all of your power-ups (except for the bombs you've collected). It would be really nice to gain the double ship, shield, and stronger laser power-ups and be able to tee off on the boss from the get-go. Really, it would just be nice to keep what I gathered.

ooh ,man, yeah that would bother me to. Love me some upgrades and character progression!

Hey! Thank you for the honest review and feedback.

First off, I want to thank you for your “kind feedback”. I don’t know if anyone here knew about the review DMCA dispute that went on. I won’t go into detail here, but there was a reviewer who reviewed the game in what I thought was an overly rude and critical way, where I responded in the wrong way.

You can read what I wrote about the experience here if anyone wants to:

https://cenokga.com/my-experience-after-first-game-release-a-letter-from-the-developer
https://cenokga.com/integrity

There were launch day bugs/glitches which I fixed shortly after. After some consideration, I did lower the price from $19.99 to $9.99. Since Its release, I have added player experience fixes and fixed a LOT of things bugs and glitches and changed how some things in the game works. Steam Achievements and Leaderboards for the modes were added. I’ll link the Steam updates where all of the updates are mentioned.

If anyone who played the game before, would want to play it again, and give more feedback on the new updates or what else could be changed, it would help out a lot.
Some of the ways I had the game set up was to make the game seem hard, but instead of it being hard, it was just either buggy, annoying or some things just didn’t work well.
There is a bug or glitch with certain controllers that is out of my control, like the PDP Arctic White Wired Xbox One Controller doesn't work well in the game. The analog joystick cuts out and makes a stuttering effect with the player ship.

Here are some of the updates I made to the game since it's release.

Patch 1.0.2

More info Here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1224720/view/2420069741596390325

• Player Lives would decrease twice if left screen after timer ran out
  
• Added SFX and BGM Volume Control
  
• Player 2, 3 and 4 Bomb issues that would make them only fire 1 Bomb has been fixed
  
• Looping dialog on Hashi' Toomi World 2-8 Fixed
  
• Several Cutscenes where unintentionally skipped. You might want to play through the Story again to get the full experience.
  

Patch 1.0.3

More info here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1224720/view/2495505669473685631

I increased the speed at which the Auto Scroll moves, which was the reason at took a little bit for the screen to move at the start of levels. It was created at the slow speed to give players time to get ready, but I saw that it actually did take to long at the start of each level.
More enemy ships were added to balance gaps in levels.

Update 2.0

More info can be found here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1224720/view/2892954679582117198

• New Modes Update, which includes new Single Player and Multiplayer Modes.
  
• All modes unlocked at start except for Boss Rush. Also, all modes are playable with 1-4 Players Co-op.
  
• VS Enemy Battle
  
• VS High Score Battle
  
• Endurance
  
• Boss Rush
  
• Animated character portraits with emotions were added
  
• Xbox One controller rumble was added
  

Update 2.0.4

• The HP for some Bosses has been reduced
  
• The way Shields work have been changed. When a Shield is equipped and the Player gets another Shield, whichever Shield they currently have will be destroyed and the new Shield will be equipped
  

Huge Update 3.0

Don’t want to post all that has been changed and updated, but here are some of the main changes.

• Issues with certain cutscenes where fixed
  
• The Soundtrack for the game has been redone with new instruments! The Chiptune Soundtrack has been replaced with synthesizer sounding virtual instruments to give a 16-bit game sound.
  
• The Player Star Cruiser has been made smaller.
  
• The backgrounds of Worlds that had only a solid color background has been changed to an actual graphical background of what the current World is.
  
• You can now use F12 to take screenshots on Steam during gameplay.
  
• When you get a new Power Up, that Power Up then becomes the active Power Up. You don’t have to wait for the current Power Up timer to run out.
  
• You can now have up to 2 Clone Ships if you get 2 Clone Ship Power Ups
  
• Shields and Clone Ships now carry over to new levels.
  

Other Player Experience and Game Balancing changes were made.

If anyone here has played Starclaw: Battle of StarSpace Nebula before, please give it another try! As lots of things have been improved.

Cool! Thanks for letting us know!

Okay, you got me to give it another try. It does seem improved. The graphics were better. The first boss was still hard, though I didn't make it very far before my wrist felt like it was getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Maybe if I could get a game controller for my PC that had a turbo button I could hold down…but that's on me.

Hey, I just wanted to give an update on Starclaw: Battle of StarSpace Nebula. It's now Titled: Kowi Ishto: Battle of Akonoli.

In an earlier update, Auto Fire was added to the game in case you wanted to hold the button instead of press it to fire bullets.

The big update and re brand has changed and fixed lots of things about the game including:

• A redone Controller connection System. Nintendo Switch Pro Controllers and Single Joy-Cons can be used.
  
• Various Graphical improvements to enemies and characters.
  
• Bottom prompts have been changed.
  
• Pop Ups saying what the Item or Power Up is when you get it.
  

Lots of other under the hood improvements as well.

Read the announcement on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1224720/view/2990942216954750684