StarCrossed

Do you like magical girls anime? What about Steven Universe? If the answer is yes, then I’ve got the game for you!
StarCrossed is an action-arcade game set in space, with alien magical girls ready to fight to save the Nova galaxy from evil enemies!

The plot itself is quite simplistic: Various galaxies, after eons of being too distant from each other, were pulled together by a magical crystal, the Harmony Crystal, which has now been stolen by some evil organization! It’s up to our five heroes to fight hordes of enemies and get it back before anything bad happens!

Now, imagine you are playing pong. Alone. With a star instead of a ball. That’s how you’ll play the game!
Unless you are playing in co-op, you shall pick two characters to play as. Your weapon is a star that is bouncing between the two characters, hitting anything in that space. The faster the star goes, the stronger the hit is. If an enemy is too close to you, you can dash to avoid being hit. The only difference between the characters, outside of their look, it’s their special attacks. A character’s special attack loads over time, but it loads faster if the star is going faster over time.

While you can play the game alone, it’s hard. Each character can be hit a maximum of three times before being defeated, and controlling both at the same time is very hard. If you aren’t looking carefully at the map, you will most likely get hit by something. It’s best if you can play with somebody, as playing alone might be too difficult for one person.

The art style used for the characters’ sprites is really well done, and it reminds me of the recent She-Ra reboot.  The character designs themselves are good. They might even reference some famous heroines every once in a while!
Common enemies are a bit lackluster though, as their designs are sparse and feel a little uninspired to me.  The bosses, though, are great and have that “cartoon villain” vibe to them.
The game’s OST is also great, and it fits with the overall “space cartoon” aesthetics of the game.

The game also features an arcade mode, in which you’ll battle against endless hordes of enemies with the only objective of getting a high score! Each wave will get harder than the last, with more and more enemies on their way to, eventually, defeat you. My only gripe with this is that the game could have used some sort of power-up system to prevent things from getting too stale, as battles could start to get repetitive quickly.

In conclusion, while the aesthetics are really nice, StarCrossed is really hard if you are playing alone, but manageable with a friend. Some aspects of the game might get too repetitive, and in terms of gameplay, StarCrossed doesn’t bring anything new to the table of action-arcade games, but it’s still a neat experience for new players.

Recommended

Did you enjoy this review? Check out our reviews of Cloudpunk and Streets of Rage 4! Do you enjoy what we do? Check out our Ko-Fi, and consider dropping us a coffee! If you want to do what we do, we’re looking for new writers and editors! Fill out the form here if you’re interested. Thanks!

Reviewed by Senpavo on the Nintendo Switch. Game provided by Whitethorn Digital.