ImaginationOverflow enters the shmup arena with Stellar Interface. A game that promises the wholesome goodness of shmup shooting combined with the well-known toughness of roguelikes where autogeneration is as hot of a feature as the sun. Stellar Interface is sure to be a difficult title to complete as both of these genres are well known for their high difficulty ceilings. I’m here to tell you that Stellar Interface set out what it accomplished and is title worthy of your library or even backlog. There are even a few… interesting features that we’ll explain along the way, strap on in and fly by to the Stellar specifics below.

Developer: ImaginationOverflow

Publisher: ImaginationOverflow

4 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $12.99

Gameplay elements for Stellar Interface are what you would expect from a shmup. You fly your spaceship around attempting to not hit every asteroid in the galaxy all while vanquishing the universe’s weakest and toughest foes. Your ship is equipped with an unlimited supply of dashes which makes you invulnerable to attacks for a very short period of time. You do this across a variety of levels until…. well you die. Then you start over, pray to the RNG gods, and hope the next run is more fruitful. The core gameplay loop to Stellar Interface keeps you coming back for just one more run. We can thank the game’s roguelike elements for this by keeping it interesting while largely staying the same. It’s like an on-stage magic trick that you can’t turn away from.

Stellar Ships

Right after you boot up Stellar Interface you get to select from 2 different spacecraft. Each spacecraft and weapon come with their own sets of stats such as ram, health, mobility, and slots. On top of this, each spacecraft also has their own unique consumable attack. Ram is used in Stellar Interface as a limiter for how big of weapons you can put on your spaceship. Certain weapons cost certain amounts of ram so plan accordingly. This is not high school. There’s not a whole lot of ship variety here to start with, even after I unlocked an additional ship I found the variety lacking and underwhelming compared to the weapons or software options. It wasn’t until I unlocked the Erebus spaceship that I was able to equip 3 different weapons. This was the first ship change in Stellar Interface that made me feel like ship selection was an actually impactful decision.

Awesome Arsenal

In Stellar Interface everything from machine guns, lasers, blasters, shotguns, and torpedos are at your disposal. Weapons are fairly straight forward with statistics you would usually see like fire rate and damage. I’m currently a big fan of at least 1 machine gun and 1 torpedo. As you progress in Stellar Interface you will be able to equip new weapons from merchants. While at the merchant you can freely swap weapons. There’s no spending or earning currency for upgrades. This is really nice as it takes the sweaty decision making out of the process and lets you just have fun deciding which weapons you want to roll with. No one likes bean counting in a shmup when it comes to blasting foes, save that for the stats.

Charting the Galaxy

Navigation in Stellar Interface consists of a tree of connected nodes and your decision making prowess. Stellar Interface helps you with these decisions by adding a variety of indicators on each of the level nodes. These nodes will show you the threat level, which is how hard the level will be. In addition, they will also show you three different signal strength measurements, this is a spaceship after all. These signal measurements are used for determining how close you are to merchants, spacecraft factories, and lost lords. I have found great success beating all of the lower threat levels first and gaining strength before attempting the higher difficulty levels or lost lord bosses. Those things are tough. But feel free to rush right in if you feel so inclined.

Software Upgrades

Upon completing a level you are awarded a choice of software upgrades. You may only pick one per each level you complete so choose carefully. These software upgrades consist of everyday damage upgrades to more crazy things like pets or flaming burrito gas. ImaginationOverflow took a few liberties here to crack some jokes and increase the humor level a bit. A large portion of the upgrades either mock something well known, pay homage to it, or downright throw it in your face giggling like a 12-year-old schoolboy. Similar to the V-AGGRA software here. Pew pew! Upon completing missions you can even earn one-time use cartridges to start the run with. It’s almost like cheating.

Spacing Out on Levels

During my short time with Stellar Interface, I have visited just over 100 levels. Throughout those visits, I am left walking away feeling let down at the rather “flat” level design. The levels slowly move forward to give an effect of moving through these spaceship factories and star systems. The scale of everything is actually well done here. Certain parts of the background even move, Bravo! This would all be great but there is no true depth in the levels and even a minimal level between your spaceship and the level itself. Often times some of the software upgrade effects blend in so well that it’s hard to determine what’s yours, whats the enemies, and why is that thing flaming?! Everything comes off as looking rather muddied or blended more than I would like. Most times this is not an issue but it has been noticeable when playing and just complicates an otherwise tough genre of games.

Stellar Net

Stellar Interface tracks your every movement, not a stat goes uncharted in Stellar Net. I don’t think I’ve seen a game that tracks itself this closely. Overall progress bars for each category. Lists of the descriptions of the various software upgrades you have found. How many times did Bally kill you? You get the idea. Nothing but well-done stat tracking here, perfect for any completionist or trophy hunter. If only there were achievements or trophy rewards on the Nintendo Switch. Please, Nintendo! It is 2019!

Conclusion

Stellar Interface is a worthy contender in the Nintendo Switch shmup arena. The wide assortment of ships, weapon types, and software upgrades give the game a really sizable variety. It might take you a bit to get rolling but do not lose hope. The software upgrades have hilarious, possibly distasteful for some, descriptions. This gives Stellar Interface its own unique flavor of dirty hilarity (ImaginationOverflow, this didn’t go unnoticed and is appreciated at a lower life form level). The combination of shmup and roguelike really hit home the “just one more run” feeling similar to Son of a Witch <3 for me. There’s also a huge amount of content here for the price they are asking. It would be illegal if this game were to ever go on sale, that would just be stealing.

Be sure to checkout my other shmup review on Horizon Shift 81 as it’s currently my favorite game. I also have a hidden likeness for cooperative games so be sure to checkout Renate’s crazy Catastronauts review. This totally looks like something I should play. I promise I didn’t bury any bodies in my basement the last time I played Overcooked. Be sure to find me on Twitter, I do all sorts of indie game related things over there.