When I saw the trailer for Astroman from StarQuail (which you can watch after the MORE button in the full review), I immediately wanted to play the game. I like platformers, and this one seemed to be quite polished for an Xbox Live Indie title.
Now that I have played it, I am in awe, because it’s a beautiful game with an atmosphere that very few titles manage to establish these days. But I also do have some mixed feelings for the game, because I can’t recommend it for everyone.
Hit the MORE button to read the full review.
As far as story goes, Astroman doesn’t offer much. Your spaceship self-destructed and parts of it were scattered onto neighboring worlds in a solar system with nine planets. You start on the first planet equipped with a Jump Module that lets you jump (a little bit) and a Blaster to shoot all the cute aliens that you encounter. You visit world after world to find all the parts to complete your spaceship. You can’t visit all worlds right from the start, because barriers like an asteroid belt hinder you from reaching the farther away planets. So the first job is to find the components that enable you to reach those worlds.
The cool thing is that you fly the spaceship yourself – so if you find a gun to blast away asteroids in your way, you actually get to use it in the level selection screen where you fly from planet to planet.
Besides the ships components you can also find three useful upgrades for your Jump Module that will allow you to reach new destinations on the worlds. So flying back to worlds that you already visited can prove useful–especially since hidden on each world are heart containers, which you won’t be able to reach unless you find all of the Jump Module upgrades first. Four heart containers will get you a health upgrade, so searching for them is absolutely worth the trouble.
All that health is needed because the further away a planet is, the more alien creatures you will find. While world number one is mostly populated by walking stones with rabbit ears, green anteaters that spit stones, and the occasional crab that shoots red lava drops from the ceiling, in later worlds you will find much more aggressive enemies, who (more importantly) will come at you in larger numbers.
Thankfully, there are plenty of checkpoints in the game, but having to use one has several disadvantages. First your ammunition count will be set to thirty (which sometimes might be good) and second all the little creatures you already did put out of their misery will come back to life. Even though moving through the worlds is mostly a linear experience, it sometimes happens that you want to go back or search an area more carefully because you suspect a heart container. Getting more health means less checkpoint usage and translates into more vacant areas to search for treasure.
Search for treasure – are you the exploring type of gamer? If not, sorry that it took me so long to tell you, but this game is not for you. I love to explore levels and even I sometimes lost interest in searching. A game like Astroman is something that I usually finish in one session. Some candy, a nice soft drink and a good platformer are all the companionship I need to have a couple of hours of enjoyable fun. This is not entirely true with Astroman – after maybe an hour of gameplay I sometimes became so frustrated that I stopped playing. I still had the urge to play further, just not right away; so why all the frustration?
The level designer did a very good job at hiding the stuff you are looking for. Maybe a little bit too good I think. Especially since he didn´t really do a good job at pointing the player in the right direction in the very big worlds you are visiting. You are alone and just have to search every corner – and if you missed it you often have to go back. Or start from the beginning. Since I´m not a fan of repetitive gameplay I tend to take a longer break before replaying a level for the fourth time. Astroman I played over four days – each day a little bit.
The level design is not the only source of frustration. The controls are very tight and jumping works extremely well, but I can´t say the same for ducking while shooting in a specific direction. Often you land on a small platform, try to duck to shoot the enemy in front of you before he manages to reach you, just to see Astroman looking and shooting into the wrong direction and getting his ass kicked by the alien. This is bad enough, but it gets worse. On enemy contact you lose control over the character for a short moment. This can catapult you into the next enemy, down a high platform or just into a pool of acid fluid. On more than one occasion, I had the pleasure of a chain reaction that stole all my hearts from me without a chance to intervene.
As mentioned before, dying means having all enemies reset. It also means getting back to the last checkpoint. While it’s obvious that the first thing is bad, it’s not so obvious why the second thing can be very, very bad as well. In Astroman, the checkpoints are not reusable. This means that if you reach the end of the world, and know that you must have missed your ship part, you sometimes go back the way you came. However, all of the checkpoints are inactive now. If you die you go back to the very first checkpoint, rather than the last checkpoint you activated.
Those were the reasons why I restarted the game. I first started with the “Astroman” difficulty, but since it frustrated me too much I started a new game and went with “Astrobaby” (as embarrassing as it is). I advise you to do the same; the game is much more enjoyable, and it’s still in a galaxy far, far away from the galaxy “easy” lives in. If you are a casual gamer that does not enjoy searching huge areas for health packs, better go visit “easy” in that other galaxy and stay away from Astroman (the game, not the difficulty), believe me. Choosing “Astrobaby” as a difficulty had another positive side effect. Some level parts you play in the dark with just a very small light bubble around you. This bubble is a lot bigger (still quite small) in the “Astrobaby” setting. You see just a wee bit of the surrounding level instead of nothing besides glowing enemies and some green glowing stones. The screenshot below shows you how it looks if you play as “Astroman” to give you an idea what to expect if you are still toying with the idea to be a “man”.
If you enjoy exploring and don´t mind a tough platformer with a little shooting action, go ahead. Astroman delivers big, big worlds that have beautiful graphics. It is a shame the game is not part of the Indie Games Winter Uprising because the polish of the title is fantastic. This is indie culture at its best. Later worlds could have used a little bit more diversity, but I never grew tired of the beautiful art in the game. The same goes for the music; it’s very ambient and fits the scenery perfectly. Almost constantly finding heart canisters gives you a great sense of progression, and the longer you play, the less impact the aforementioned design flaws have. I enjoyed Astroman a lot, and finding a long sought after ship part was very rewarding. It is in my nature to search every corner of a game, so I hope it´s in yours too. Because then you have a very fun to play platformer in front of you that is absolutely worth the $3.00 asked, and will deliver you four to six hours of enjoyable playtime – more if you want to find absolutely everything.
I played 3 level of the game (the planet into the meteor “vertigo”) but i didn’t find a single piece of upgrade for the spaceship or the astroman. Maybe i just play to fast the level but when i’m going to finish each level doesn’t seems that i didn’t explored some part of the level… but, i love this game, the art style, music, even the gameplay are beautiful, so, i guess that i will take the challenge to finish each planet, even if i need to search in every pixel of the screen
by the way, it’s planned the release of a walkthrough? i think that this type of game need this stuff.
Yeah that´s the big thing with the game – they did a really good job at hiding the good stuff. I enjoyed it a lot (most of the time at least), but you have to be really careful to search every corner.
Little tip: Later in the game you get a scanner that at least tells you on which planet there is still stuff to find. I actually managed to find everything in the first 2 worlds. Maybe at some point I go back and try to find everything in the other worlds – but I doubt I will ever get to 100% with the game.
I have to say that i’am very disappointed. As i said the game it’s beautiful, i love to look at it, i love to play it but i don’t have too much time to play, so i’m tired to play and re-play every single level to find the upgrade, cause i’m stuck in the first 3 planet, played i guess 3-4 time for each of them but i didn’t get any item, just a heart box to get more hp. Maybe i’m doing it wrong, maybe my copy it’s corrupted (lol) but really, when i go home after work the last thing that i wanna do is search for something that i can’t find and get crazy. Really, i’ll try to play it for sure cause i like the game but i’m disappointed.
Most items I found without problems (because I like exploration in games a lot anyway), but one item in one of the later worlds (4-6) will really get you CRAZY!! It´s hidden so mean that I most likely wandered near it a couple of times before finding it.
I hope the devs will create some kind of Astroembryo mode with items a little less tough hidden.
one item founded (cannon to destroy the asteroids)
and, i found an upgrade to jump higher, so i guess that from now will be a little bit easier to find the other upgrade… or, i hope so… 
I’m happy cause at the beginning as you can see through my post i was very very frustrated but now it’s going well.
Pretty good review.
I just played this title myself and I gotta say you really hit nail on the head. Its too bad the devs dont have a feedback page on their site. As a game like this deserves their attention in regards to what the players are saying.
One more thing to is this guy is right folks. If you’re not a Metroid-vania type player. Move along. This game isnt for you. I love these types of games. They make me feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth! So far in this game I really love the art direction & music. It just seems to fit perfectly. The humorous letter from the ship manufacturer about the ship’s self destruct feature was hilarious!
I could really sense the love placed in this game from the dev crew. The level design and music(especially the music*) is great and if they had awards for xbl indy titles. This game deserves one. Too bad it couldn’t be an actual xbla title. Complete with achievements. Despite its looks. Its packed full of challenge.
Although this game has been a pretty enjoyable find. There was still quite a few trouble spots. Which is the reason I wished the devs had a feedback board. 1- The level design is a double edged sword. It provides challenge but is too quick to alienate non-metroid type gamers. It gets a bit too frustrating too early in the game. 2- On the level designs. I really feel they could have took a bit more time to diversify the levels. Like add in a BG thats all desert or another thats like a jungle. In short, these guys really could have stood to crank up games like Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night, to LEARN something on level design. 3- The difficulty really didnt phase me. What did was the control. Maybe its only happening to me. But, theres been cases where out of nowhere. Astroman starts running to the left on his own! So this might be a bug if anyone else is experiencing it. 4- Only 2 bosses?! Are you kidding me? Guys, this is 2010. Not 1987! We can do better than that. What is it with indies and western devs regarding bosses?! Jeez!
Still, I hope to see a sequel to this. Its a very promising title. And really shines brighter than alot of the other titles I’ve seen on xbl. Theres alot of indies that could look at this game and a few others to learn something about investing time, effort & quality in their work. Then just trying to “pump something out” for the sake of it.
But if Starquail does do a sequel. I really hope the things we covered here are fixed and built upon to make something much more solid.
Congrats Billo – next step stardrive (and this one is the really TOUGH one – at least it was for me).
Phyerboss thanks for the cool feedback – the devs might not have a feedback form on their website, but they contacted me via email about my review and they really read it. I will write them now and urge them to read your comment.
“Astroman starts running to the left on his own! So this might be a bug if anyone else is experiencing it.”
They messed up the deadzone in the controls – that is the area where the stick shouldn´t give out commands to the controlled character. It seems your pad does not center back perfectly – so it often gives out a signal of “left movement”, it´s small but the game reacts to it even though it should ignore such a small movement. It´s the same issue I mentioned with the ducking and shooting.
Hello, I’m the artist from Astroman. Thanks for taking the time to comment (you and everyone else, too!)
We actually do have a feedback forum on the Starquail site, you can find it right here: http://www.starquail.com/Forum/ Currently it doesn’t have an Astroman subforum but I’m sure we can change that. I am forwarding all this over to Daniel, the programmer, hopefully he can figure out what’s going on with the controls (I can’t seem to replicate it)
There is a quick walkthrough that I wrote and uploaded to GameFAQs, but they haven’t posted it yet for some reason. I can link to a copy on our server, though: http://www.starquail.com/michael/astrofaq.txt I hope that helps out!
I would have loved to have added more things to the game, more tilesets, more bosses, more powerups, and I even had a couple enemies that didn’t get in, but we were already “over buget” in terms of time we intended to spend on it, and even a game as small as this is still pretty risky. Would love to do a sequel, though–we learned a lot working on this game (And the post-release feedback has been helpful, too!)
@Michael Stearns:
Thank you. Because I didnt see an actual board dedicated to Astroman. I passed the forums off as a place to post any comments.
Was it really “budget” or “exe size/time constraints”? Im sorry if it sounds like Im busting your chops. Seriously, Im not. Its that, I am just wondering as I read/hear this alot from many other devs out there that leave a lot of very good content and solid ideas out of a finalized product. And most times its actually time or exe size constraints than budget.
I head my own development group as well and its something I wouldn’t mind asking so I know what to look for with my own projects.
BTW: awesome art! And who’s the musician? He/she deserves kudos for that style of music!
No problem, and there’s one in the forum now.
And yeah, I meant Time Budget. We set ourselves a deadline that we went over right away–it’s cliche, but even when you plan these things out really carefully, real life can get in the way! In truth though, we did get nearly everything in there, but in making that time budget, we hadn’t allotted much for bosses anyway. I don’t want to go into personal detail, but Daniel and I have a history of scrapping games that had a lot of high-priority boss content, so we really downplayed them for this one. More conservative, but also a finished game that we could both agree on.
The music and sound effects were done by Jeff Ball, and he’s really good!
Here’s his sound cloud, if you’d like to hear more of his work: http://soundcloud.com/jeffball
@micheal stearns: Hi, just want to give you my congratulation, you did a very good game, great art style (now i’m curious to see an eventual work a little bit more “darker” with your art style), and gameplay.
You guys are awesome, I really appreciate the positive feedback on the music. The soundtrack is now on my website, check it out! http://jeffedwardball.com/?p=147
looks fun. looks very polished compared to most XBLIG. I have to get this game a shot.