About This Game The Stargazers squadron! Three pilots of the Allied Defense Force Signals, first to arrive in any new frontier, their mission? Venture deep into uncharted space and explore the hell out of it! The Stargazers is about giant robots, star ships and the relationship between three girls. Inspired by 50s and 80s Scifi, Pulp Fiction, and Mecha anime! The Stargazers is a self contained story, and while we’re open to the idea of making more stories in the future, we’re designing Stargazers around self-contained adventures for the Stargazers Squadron in the style of pulp fiction. Stargazers is a yuri game, showing the relationship between a group of 3 girls and their time together. 1075eedd30 Title: The StargazersGenre: Adventure, Casual, IndieDeveloper:LupiesoftPublisher:MangaGamerRelease Date: 4 Nov, 2016 The Stargazers Download] [PC] I'm a massive sci fi nerd and a pervert so this was purchased as a Christmas gift for me.I wanted to like Stargazers, I really did. The premise is neat sounding - it's supposed to be a self contained story in a retro-kitsch future with a pulp feel to it. Front and center is the relationship between two human women and a female-gendered biometallic polyamorous space elf. Intriguingly the story allows you to switch perspectives at certain points. Ideally this adds replayability to the game, as well as giving some flexibility to how the story gets told.Unfortunately the game falls short on several levels.On a technical level the game, though it has no crash issues, has several problems that should have been fixed at the time of this review. The game came out on the 4th of November, 2016. As I write this it is the 6th of February, 2017. At a certain point in the game assets the game tried to load simply weren't found, and the game continued for a while with an error message in the corner. At another point the game seemed to simply not load any character images for what seemed to be a perfectly normal sequence, leaving nothing but the background. While the game eventually 'popped' back to normal, I was completely unsure if what had just happened was a technical error or simply an unfinished scene.There are also grammar and spelling errors at a frequency which is disappointing considering reading text is what you do all game, including spelling the name of the ship incorrectly. I can understand errors like these happening and the aforementioned technical problems existing during the initial launch, but they should have been patched by now. Out of curiousity I clicked the help button to see what it was and it opened a text file with an email address. Okay.The perspective mechanic works correctly; however I found myself sticking mostly with one character, with a few scattered switch-ups. Unfortunately this ended up limiting perspective, as what seemed to be major, exciting events happened entirely off-screen because I had selected the wrong person. While this might have been ok (sometimes it pays to be alone with a character and their thoughts), it becomes clear that the character is usually informed of major parts of what happened without the player necessarily finding out, making random references utterly meaningless if I hadn't selected a certain perspective.And now that I've dealt with the mechanics, I can really get into the story. The most glaring problem is that the game ends after interesting things have finally begun to happen, both in terms of world-building and relationship progression. The game ends up feeling like playing through the first act of story, except that random paragraphs on each page disappear and reappear because of the perspective mechanic. And then it ends.I'm concerned that what happened was an attempt to feel very 'pulpy' without consideration for how well done pulp (or more recent pulp inspired media) plays out. For a modern example, Pulp Fiction has many stand-alone stories that intertwine and weave through perspectives, but the story comes full circle due to the non-linear narrative, filling itself in. The sort of fulfillment of a stand alone didn't happen and I'm unsure how much different perspectives can consistently offer. The other, somewhat less recent example would be Star Trek - The Original Series, and the game does have a certain pseudo-episodic feel to it over a somewhat vague amount of time. The problem here is that TOS episodes were still full stories in and off themselves, and also had a lack of actual major character development as a feature - TOS characters were archetypal. Stargazers characters are not, unless they are secondary, which means no matter what I always felt like I was missing out on important events or inner monologues, and actually did aside from brief references. The game would have been better served with a more traditional structure that allowed focus. Imagine if you cut a TOS episode down to scenes that exclusively featured a selected character. Gonna make for some really lopsided and weirdly paced episodes.The 'romantic' plot also seems much too easily 'solved' and devoid of any kind of heat. Should the threat of a love triangle be boring even if constrained to one perspective?"So replay the game" you might say. Unfortunately I can't say I feel like it. My playtime is inflated because I privately streamed it to a handful of friends and insisted on voice acting every role (in part because of an uncomfortable lack of music and sound effects), but even if it had taken less time, there's just not enough interesting going on. There is the hint of interesting things developing, both in terms of the setting and in terms of the relationships the game is supposed to be about, and I mean that in totality - whether you wanted the story to feel like a somewhat real presentation of a relationship or something really gratuitous and deliciously sleazy and thrilling, you won't find it here. The game ends before it's even finished getting to first base with you.Some might chalk this up to censoring, but I have to question that since there's ample opportunity to raise heat and stakes without being too over the top. In the steam version, the developers removed the bulk of the 'cg' pictures and the scenes where they would come into play are simply skipped over or worse - the player is faced with a black screen and the text to read. From what was linked to me, some of the cg is pretty tame regardless (though some isn't, though it's nothing too wild still) and already exceeded by all kinds of non-romance games. The developers stated on the forum that there's no patch to "uncensor" the steam version to avoid competing with the site where they do sell the uncensored version. I don't know the fine details of such a choice were so I won't guess.However this presents a major problem in that sex and sexuality is a major part of both relationships and personality, particularly given the thrust of the story and the 'resolution'. Either there was no character development made through any kind of deleted content, which utterly squanders many opportunities, or there was character development which was removed. What's left is clumsy and unconvincing of libido or romance.As for the art while I didn't find it horrible I wasn't sold on mecha design and the character art felt unevenly done.It's a shame. There's bits of neat stuff seen through the cramped windows, but the shuttle ride is over before it hits escape velocity.. As much as I would love to recommend this game, I cannot. While I enjoyed the character interactions over all, the way some scenes ended abruptly, and the way the story itself 'ended' without resolution, are just too much of a negative.I would like to assume that the creator is planning to add more to the game story-wise because - "The Stargazers is a self contained story, and while we\u2019re open to the idea of making more stories in the future, we\u2019re designing Stargazers around self-contained adventures for the Stargazers Squadron in the style of pulp fiction." According to the description, but there is no ending, the story stops dead without any resolution or answers, it's a cliffhanger in the worst way. If this is all that they are planning to have for this game, I cannot recommend purchasing this game at all, it is unfinished and very short, the 4.6 hours of playtime I have listed on this don't even include continuous play, a portion of it is simply idle time that I had left the game running for.TLDR: The game is short, unfinished and not worth purchasing in it's current state. I sadly cannot recommend this game.. I wanted so much to like this game, I really did. I love the artist, I fell in love with their style when I first played \u201cThe Reject Demon: Toko\u201d. But unfortunately, The Stargazers has a few issues that cannot be ignored.The art style surely is great, no complains here. My favorite character is Vii, she seems so soft. I wish I could hug her and just sleep in her arms. All the other characters are nice as well, and I found interesting the fact that you can read the story through the eyes of the three main characters. Also, the song that plays in the title menu is really addicting! I kinda wish that this game had a soundtrack available.Speaking of BGM, that\u2019s one of the main issues here. The game lacks that most of time. Sometimes there\u2019s a track or another, but mostly\u2026 There\u2019s nothing. I think that BGM plays an important role in visual novels, and it was a huge letdown on Stargazers. There\u2019s a few bugs too (images not showing up, when you choose a certain answer the game breaks, etc), and honestly, the ending was\u2026 Bad. The game suddenly ends, and that\u2019s it. No explanations, nothing. I understand that developers might add more stuff after some time, but seeing how this visual novel is right now, I can\u2019t recommend it. It\u2019s really expensive for such little content and for a game to end that abruptly. If this was in early access, I could understand the problems (and wait for the game to be finished before playing it), but it\u2019s not. It\u2019s sold as a finished product, and it\u2019s not finished at all.3\/10. Only get this title when it\u2019s on a good sale and don\u2019t expect much. At least you can enjoy the beautiful art style.. It's a rather beautifully drawn game, the art is unique and warm. This is what appealed to me at first glance with the game, I was aware this was an eroge and that certain scenes would be edited out in favor of Steam's codes and conduct. Yet despite that I felt this game warranted a purchase. Now overall the world in which you are witness to is intersting and i would love for it to be expanded on. Except the interpersonal stories are rather lacking in substance. Add that with an unclear ability to guage whom is speaking and whoms perception you are in habiting. You can become at times lost in the story (not in the good way either), hopefully they patch some form of inficator as to decipher whom is speaking at any given time, be it through text or on screen prompts.. The story was great. It was cool that you got to change persective between characters.10\/10. Good so far. Nice that you can change viewpoints mid story.. I very much want to recommend this game, but as of now, it's barely "chapter 1" of Stargazers story, and with Kickstarter project cancelled, chances at remaster\/continuation are slim to none.Which is a shame, since I liked the art, and story left me wanting more.Buy only if you want to give money to developers in hopes this game eventually rises from the limbo.Addition from 23.12.2017 http:\/\/steamcommunity.com\/games\/445670\/announcements\/detail\/1583444307570798909Looks like it's not completely dead.. Tem out of Tem
- milzheicripisabmy