Star Ghost (Wii U eShop) Review

The Wii U has become somewhat of a haven for relatively unknown independently developed games, as far as consoles go. Xbox and PlayStation both extol their indie development programs, but we only ever seem to see games come to those services after they’ve proven to be popular on the PC months prior. In comparison, the Wii U has piles of entirely new indie games coming to it each week all vying for a slice of our play-time. This does mean there is less consistent quality on the eShop for sure, but every now and then a game comes around completely unannounced and turns out to be a whole lot of fun.

In   you pilot a ship around a series of star systems, surviving and patrolling the area for the dastardly Metagons to protect your home planet, or something. Truth be told, the story didn’t offer much more than a premise for flying a ship around shooting stuff, and it really doesn’t need to. Navigating through dynamically generated asteroid fields, pieces of broken planets and defending yourself against the galaxy’s various nasties is the order of the day here. You’ll find yourself pushing through these levels, going to different star systems and dealing with enemies of all kinds, until your shields inevitably fail. At this point, if you’re rich enough you can buy a continue, or start your whole trip over, with just a little more experience and know-how than last time.

Star Ghost is deceptively simple in it’s gameplay. There is an optional tutorial when you first start playing which can teach you the general concepts you need to begin with which is nice and short, but well worth checking out to begin with. At a glance, Star Ghost looks like a fairly typical scrolling shooter, think R-Type. The twist here though, is that rather than having direct control over your ship’s movement you can only press a button to give your ship upward thrust. Lateral movement is all automatic, keeping you in the same position on screen while the world moves around you, but you control your vertical movement in a way not dissimilar to Copter or Jetpack Joyride. Keeping movement so simple makes a lot of sense in this style of game, requiring you only focus on a single axis of movement.

In addition to moving and dodging environmental obstacles and enemies, you also have offensive weapons in the form of an upgradable shot. This shot can be upgraded multiple times with boosts to bullet spread and fire rate. You also have a Traction Field which is activated by holding left on the control stick, which creates a field around your ship to pull in power-ups and currency orbs. Similarly, this field can be upgraded which increases its field of influence and lets you pull in items from further away. Both the weapon and traction field power ups will wear down as you use them, downgrading unless you pick up a new power up to replenish stock.

While playing, you will automatically fire your weapon repeatedly unless you pull back on the control stick to use the Traction Field instead. This simple mechanic creates a wonderful gameplay system that is one of the most engaging things about Star Ghost. Often I found myself using the Traction Field in order to save my powered up weapon for when I really needed it. Of course, this makes the Traction Field eventually downgrade so you really have to think on the fly about whether you want your weapon or traction in use, while also taking into account the enemies you need to shoot to defend yourself and who drop power ups for you to use to recharge your degraded weapons and Traction Field. The constant choice between balancing offense and power ups, it’s something that you can gradually become more skilled at each time you play, and it makes Star Ghost one that I kept going back to, even after some frustrating failures.

Star Ghost’s presentation is worth pointing out as well. The whole game takes on a neon aesthetic that had shades of Blade Runner, which while not unique did make for some wonderfully colourful chaos once you’re dealing with large groups of obstacles and enemies. The neon look has another bonus in that it makes enemies really stand out from the blackness of space, so you’ll never feel cheated by a hazard you didn’t see coming. The game’s music also struck me positively. Ranging from some neat cyberspace ambience to action packed electronica, David Wise’s soundtrack (yes, *the* David Wise of Donkey Kong Country fame) really complements the action.

Review concludes below.