STARDROP

About an hour in, it becomes a stealth game with no stealth mechanics. Not long after, I got softlocked between two cargo bay doors when an android put the station into lockdown; it's just bad game design to allow the player into an area with no way forward or back. At that point I got tired of the jank and gave up on it.

Some jankiness (softlocks, unwanted cursors appearing on screen, awkward positioning of the character in order to activate terminals, repeated conversations, etc), but otherwise this is one of the better space-set narrative games you'll play. The shiny graphics weren't exactly to my taste, but I admire the game not just for its excellent story (it has great dialogue, and one of the most gentle yet heart-reaching endings I've seen), but also for how the developer has gone beyond the standard walking-sim template. There are good puzzles, whether they be finding keycodes or the effective android override setpieces, and there's also some basic stealth. It's not wonderful stealth, but it gets the job done. The zero-G movement, using the mouse buttons to lower or raise your elevation, was OK too. I went into Stardrop expecting just another Tacoma or something like that, a walking simulator with a celestial setting and story, but actually it's something different entirely. I'm not saying it's BETTER than Tacoma, a game which I love and does its premise magnificently well with great polish, but it's a unique kind of experience, finding a certain balance between the puzzle-dialogue-plot mix…

STARDROP is a story-driven first-person science fiction adventure developed and published by indie creator Joure Visser. Released on Steam in 2019 after a period in Early Access, the game represents a passion project that spent several years in development and was largely crafted by a single developer. Rather than focusing on traditional action mechanics, the game places its emphasis on narrative, atmosphere, and exploration, inviting players into a slow-burn space mystery that gradually unfolds through environmental storytelling and character interaction. The story centers on Aryn Vance, a salvage and rescue operative who travels through deep space investigating abandoned vessels and responding to distress signals. Alongside her partner John Kindley, Aryn embarks on what initially appears to be a routine mission involving a mysterious spacecraft located in a distant constellation. As the two begin to explore the ship and piece together fragments of its history, the situation slowly develops into a larger mystery concerning the fate of the vessel, its crew, and a deeper narrative about the people who once lived and worked aboard it. The game’s plot unfolds gradually through cinema…

Stardrop is a wonderful sci-fi walking sim. It's super indie, and you can tell that the ambition went slightly beyond what the budget could spring for, but it's still a pretty solid adventure. You play a salvage operator who finds an abandoned dropship where the gameplay mechanics are dutifully explained, then that leads you onto a bigger ship where you do the same thing - walk slowly around a vast space hulk, reading emails and collecting pads to find codes, unlocking doors, rebooting power cores, you know the drill. There are some stealth sections, but they're forgiving - the only thing that happens if you get spotted is the alarm keeps blaring until you cancel it, no need to die and repeat. There is one section toward the end where it's not very clear where the consoles are that need to be activated, but overall the progression is well-signposted. The story is comfortably familiar if you are a sci-fi fan. It's a mystery with a couple of mild twists, nothing shocking, but that's not really why these kinds of game exist. Everything gets resolved neatly, there's no lurking terror gimmick, it's just our heroes doing their jobs, salvaging a ship, making some wisecracks, the end. Th…

The game is interesting to play. The story is nice and i love Aryn's voice. The models like of polishing but as i understood the devs couldn't find a good graphist and had to buy models online.

10/10