You Must Try This 2D Space Dog-fighting Game (Made by a Solo Dev) | Star Vortex Impressions
I was very impressed during my time playing Star Vortex!
Star Vortex is A solo developer made game that's simple, complex, and deviously addictive. It might be only in early access, but I'm comfortable recommending you keep this space RPG looter shooter on your radar.
Your journey begins with a surprising amount of customization options for your starting ship, and initial difficulty, which quickly transitions into a brief tutorial of the game's controls and mechanics, twisted together with an introduction to Star Vortex's overarching narrative.
The controls are quite simple, and if you're familiar with twin-stick shooters, you'll feel right at home. The ship has basic movement in any direction, a small dodge, and a boost. Then there's your weapons, which you can aim independently of the ship. Later you can pick up, or spec into, other utilities that activate on a button press. Lastly, there's a tractor beam, for picking up dropped money or items, and that's it! Like I said, pretty simple to pick up! You'll feel comfortable controlling your ship in no time at all.
But, Star Vortex makes up for these simple controls, by being complex in all of its other systems, which I'll get into in a moment.
Opening the map for the first time blew me away. 159 different nodes to explore, was crazy to see. I figured that most of the nodes were going to be optional or for try hard completionists, but what I found quick was that I needed to play many of them in order to level up my ship. Over the course of my time through with my first save, I actually did end up completing every single node there... and in the second sector as well.
Levelling up is one of the most satisfying aspects of Star Vortex. You gain an upgrade point that you can allot into a sprawling tech tree. These upgrades can affect anything from major changes such as what types of equipment your ship will be capable of using, to minor stat bumps like overall hull or shield capacity.
Most importantly, at certain level thresholds, you're awarded with MORE weapon slots. But, I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.
These nodes contain a selection of randomly generated events that affect what type of activity you'll do when arriving at any given node. Of course, the common DNA is: Kill the bad guys. The space dogfights are one of the foundational pillars of Star Vortex, so it's good that they're fun.
There are several different factions of enemies you'll face, and each one has a proper combat identity, both visually, and in what they prefer to use against you. Some face you in swarms. The stand-outs are certainly the boss encounters, which really shake things up and can wreck you in an instant if you're not careful.
During your travels, you may obtain loot for various different parts of your ship, weapons included. All loot has a rarity, and they come bundled with random stats, the rarity determining how many modifiers the item can have. Find something with a better random stat? You can actually transfer it to a similar item if you'd like, but it will consume that one in the process. I imagine some joy in the late game comes with min-maxing all of your stats with this feature.
But as I said, this system is in place for all other pieces of loot, which can include your shields, engine, utility, passives, and whatever else you have on your ship. It's fun to inspect all the loot you get, piecing together your ship, and using upgrade points to make a truly formidable, bespoke hunk of space metal.
If at any point you're not happy with how your ship is shaping up, or if you find a legendary piece of loot that you want to immediately use, you can, for a small fee, respec your upgrade tree and try a completely different configuration. It's pretty easy to experiment if that's what you'd like to do.
So, combat is the first pillar of Star Vortex. The other foundational pillar? Customization.
As previously mentioned, at certain levels, you can equip more weapons. But this isn't an automatic system, no. You must BUILD your ship to have the capacity to equip those weapons. And not only do you decide what types of weapon or utility slots to put on your ship, you decide where they go and how they look. The ship builder is where you must do that.
You unlock the builder pretty early on, and it's a robust system. The controls, even on mouse and keyboard, are a little iffy, but you can make your ship entirely custom, so long as you keep within whatever limitations your current level has you at. Initially this area will be pretty small, but by the time you're level 35, you can make a real gargantuan battleship.
Don't feel creative enough to make your own ship? Steal a "familiar" looking one from the games' community, directly inside the game. I'm very impressed with how robust this system is, and the more I played, the more attached to my rust bucket I became.
Another bright spot for the game, is in how consumable it is as a Steam Deck game. Playing there with it being a second screen game, time flew. Before I knew it, I had completed every node in sector 1.
The subsequent cross saving to PC allowed me to, in more dedicated play sessions between the Steam Deck crusades, manage my ship with a little more finesse. Move some modifiers around. Customize the ship a bit. Throw some items into storage (of which there's a ton of space for, by the way). Plot out a course or do a node with an elite that may require a little more focus. Later in the evening, back to grinding the nodes, then rinse and repeat. I love that interplay there.
Zorg has a roadmap right on the home page of the game, and I like where the game is headed! Zorg is also very active in his discord, and comments on his development progress intermittently as he includes updates or otherwise. I'm very excited to see Star Vortex grow and mature as a full-length, feature complete game, and I wish Zorg all the luck in the world.
At the time of writing, I'm nearing 20 hours of play time. With the game currently sitting at $25.00 USD, I'm anticipating playing until I hit 25 hours played total at the least. Even in early access you don't have to strain yourself playing Star Vortex to hit that mark, and I can attest that what you do play in that time is surprisingly solid in its gameplay mechanics, presentation, and overall performance.
Ultimately, Star Vortex is an incredibly promising solo-made game, and is one that I feel comfortable recommending you to check out. It's awesome to build your own ship, and grow in power as you fight across sectors in large scale space faring dogfights. If my impressions of this Early Access has stirred your curiosity in any way, I wholeheartedly recommend you check out Star Vortex for yourself, and join Zorg's discord if you'd like to participate in its active development.
(I received a free review copy of this game from keymailer.co, but neither Keymailer, nor Zorg had any editorial input at any stage of the review process.)