Super Star Path claims to be a mixture of puzzle game and top down space ship shooter. I would say this ... Is sort of true? The puzzle comes from shooting the immobile and rather defenseless "aliens". If you set your shots up wrong, you end up with a dead end path, and then you die. There are also boss fights, at the end of each level, and some shooty elements in the later levels within the level.The game is very polished; the controls work well, the options menu is fully featured, the graphic work, sound, music and voice acting are all quite good. The steam announcements from the devs make it sound like the game has problems, but on my aging machine I never hit a hitch and my hour plus of playing was all pretty smooth.
There is a full upgrade system and a large selection of ships to purchase. Unfortunately or fortunately, the ships don't play all that differently, each one generally have a defensive advantage, or a mild offensive advantage. Different defenses tend to be keyed to different levels, you are clearly supposed to do certain levels with certain ships. It's a little Megaman-y, if you will. The upgrade system is supplied by two types of drops, enemy specific ones or just getting gems off the run off the mill enemies that explode en masse.
The game has some real issues though, and after an hour, it starts to drag. It has much the same problem of say, Block Legend DX, where elements of the game can be kind of mindless then you have to really pay attention to bosses. Super Star Path is a lot worse, though, for this.
Basic problem: The main game is a bit meandering, and often you're just sitting there in a narrow path waiting to move forward and unable to shoot whatever is threatening you - a lot of which does not care about the 'blocks' in the way or anything akin to line of sight. The column is simply too tight, and the game's rng too often produces very narrow openings that just lead to periods of being bored. Several of the later levels are better about this, but there's a dull point midway through the game. The more frustrating problem is it is easy to slip up when fighting an enemy that doesn't interact with the "terrain" and end up blocking yourself in. The whole crystallized aliens thing requires trying to aim past the front row and while it's a cool mechanic, it doesn't interact well with some of the designs.
As for the other thing, the bosses play so differently from the rest of game it ends up feeling a little jarring. The bosses also rely on mostly not paying attention to them and just dodging their shots, which is ... Kinda dull actually? I guess that is a shmup thing, but I don't see why you can't do phased sections of the fight where you get some actual dps uptime. If you like shmups, it is quite effective.
Simply put, Super Star Path is a couple good ideas, a nice looking game and then a bit of a let down. In the first hour you see very little variety, and you can only get blocked in to slowly die to the screen moving on so many times before you yawn the game off your computer - frankly, it should just have a quick reload button, since why not? I had fun with it, and I do like the music, but the potential just isn't worked with.I don't see why some of the levels didn't have wildly different terrain or branching paths or ... Turning or just any sort of variety to break it up. The guy (guys? gals?) who did it produced a polished, nice looking game with good assets, but they could have made a much better game with some minimal expansion. Anyway, if it looks appealing, grab it on sale. I'm not complaining about the first forty-five minutes, which is pretty fair for paying like forty cents or something for it.
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