Starcrawlers mini-review

So, for the past week and a half, I've been playing this little game called Starcrawlers, a first person blobber combining aspects of Wizardry and Shadowrun.

Eight classes, 21 truly unique abilities per class, the game is nothing short of creative. Most classes have synergy not just within their own skill trees but with different classes as well. And, because you are limited to 5 active skills during combat, personal strategy and customization is very high.


You control a party of four "crawlers" in a world where corporations run the 'Verse. Based out of your local space station town square (otherwise known as STIX), you run various missions for different factions, talk to your local bartender, and stock up on any necessary supplies. It's bare-bones, but it gets the job done.


So what do you do with your team of crawlers? You can either simply follow the storyline and gradually sleuth how an interstellar ship mysteriously lost its entire crew or choose to ignore it and complete random side missions. Whatever you decide, your party will have class-specific options for dealing with obstacles. A Hacker for security systems, a Smuggler for getting the drop on a mercenary squad, an Engineer for doing the grunt work and unjamming a door, etc.

The goal in side missions varies, from escorting corporate scientists to simple assassination jobs. What won't vary is the sheer number of enemies you'll be fighting every step of the way; this is a turn-based game, so your characters' initiative and speed will be vital to victory.


The Good

• Superbly varied skills! These aren't merely renamed skills from one class to the next; each has its own theme and underlying mechanics, whether it be a Cyberninia setting up his assassin strike or a Hacker infecting his targets with a virus.
• Two dozen competing Factions! Each mission you do will likely have both positive and negative ramifications. Gain enough reputation with one Faction and they may offer you unique items. Become hated enough with another and they will send assassin squads after you.
• Three different storyline paths.
• Very active developer(s) patching any issues that get brought up.

The Bad

• Too few enemy types and tilesets. After several hours in the game, you won't be seeing much of anything new aside from unique bosses and story content.
• Become hostile with enough Factions (and you will in any playthrough of significant duration), and you might be getting stopped every two steps inside missions to deal with hit squads.
• Those different storyline paths still utilize the same mission layouts with mostly the same objectives. It's mostly just someone else giving you the mission.
• Although there are items to ameliorate the necessity, a Hacker is all but required in your squad to deal with the plethora of security hacking and lockpicking.

All in all, I've probably logged in over a hundred hours in this game and I would greatly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Blobber turn-based combat. While my main complaint would have to be the lack of variety in both enemies and environments, this is more than made up for with sheer diversity and FUN of the different classes and their skills.

Sounds great. I also really enjoy it - but haven't played it much yet.

I'm going to wait for some more content, though.

Thanks for the review. I purchased while it was on sale, but so far I've only had time to install it. I might play this after I finish my current run of System Shock 2.

Are the procedurally generated sidequests finite or can you keep taking them as long as you want? Can you get over-leveled or do enemies scale?

JDR13 said:

Are the procedurally generated sidequests finite or can you keep taking them as long as you want? Can you get over-leveled or do enemies scale?

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The side missions are procedurally-generated, yes. You choose between a handful of missions, each varying in difficulty/level from "Easy" to "Extreme". You can get over-leveled for storyline content in normal difficulty modes; however, "hardcore' mode will scale these to your level as well if you chose that difficulty at the start of your game.

I'm playing on hard difficulty and I think bosses scale on hard but nothing else. Usually though I end up playing story missions when my party is slightly below the recommended level so I don't think I ever actually see the scaling.

Saw your pics first and I admit, it got me interested instantly.
And then you said - shadowrun.

Thanks but... No thanks.

joxer always has something beneficial to add to the discussion.

joxer said:

Saw your pics first and I admit, it got me interested instantly.
And then you said - shadowrun.

Thanks but… No thanks.

Click to expand...

Shadowrun as in Cyberpunk. Not as in a (great) game that you can also play on mobile devices (which I assume is your gripe with Shadowrun?)

Yes, JDR, sorry if I react on the most important needle instead of ignoring it. Besides, in another thread I've mentioned Alan Moore's comic masterpiece series you should buy, so instead of wasting time on me in this thread you should… Shoo I guess?

tomasp3n, not sure, Drithius can you please clarify what you ment?

Cyberpunk theme + Wizardry blobber exploration.

Started playing today, and I'm really liking it so far.

What difficulty did you play on? I'm playing on Normal, and it seems really easy so far. I've only finished a couple of missions though. Does it get significantly harder after the first few missions?

Since it doesn't allow you to change the difficulty once you've started a new game, I need to decide soon if I'm going to keep playing on Normal or start over on Hard.

Thanks for the mini review. I backed it on kickstarter but haven't gotten round to playing it yet. I might put it next on my list, it sounds great. I thought the procedurely generated stuff was more prevelant, it's good to hear its mainly in the side missions. I imagine that's the kind of useful information they were sending me in all those backer updates I never read.

I got a couple of hours in last night and I'm enjoying it so far. I'm going with a Cyberninja as the main character, but I hired a Hacker and a Soldier as quickly as I could. I'm not sure about the soldier though… I might swap him for one of the classes with names I don't understand (eg Void Psyker) in the hope that they're awesome.

The Hacker has been particularly useful, as Drithius says in the review - within the first couple of missions there were loads of computers and doors to hack etc, and one level with a tonne of security system stuff that the Hacker resolved easily enough. I don't know if maybe a different class would have been provided different options here but from your review it sounds like the Engineer might have opened a few doors as well.

Combat has been ok so far, but I'm looking forward to a few more attack options as my characters level up. Currently I'm just repeating the same basic attacks, interspersed with using healing items.

The main plot is interesting. The side missions are ok, and the faction concept is great (at least in principle). I'm interested to see how (whether) this factors into the main mission.

Man this game is not easy in the beginning. I'm getting my ass handed to me on a regular basis. I'm really enjoying it though.

And yes, I started over on the Challenge difficulty.

I missed all these new posts, sorry

And, lol @JDR: "this is easy!" "this is hard!" I played on Hard my first go; the game opens up once you have an idea of what you want to do with your characters (and have the points). If you play through NG+ (basically repeating things, lvl 30-60), I would recommend the hardest setting. Scaling is something that was poorly done in the game and the first half of NG+ suffers for it.

Pongo, you can burn through the main story missions in a few hours. The bulk of my time spent has been in the procedurally generated side missions. Although sometimes monotonous due to the lack of variety in enemies and tilesets, I still enjoy myself.

The game is a paradox of sorts. Although the level design is simplistic, the character design is quite deep and rewarding (for most classes anyway). That's been my main draw: discovering new synergies between the classes.

Do you stick to four party members during any given playthrough, or do you use more and rotate them? Do you think it's worthwhile to keep the Prototype?

Prototype is quirky. It's not the best class, but neither is it the worst. I quite enjoy chaotic shot on a shield-busting rifle.

Whenever I wanted to experiment with a class, I would "fire" the one I had (if I had one) and subsequently rehire them at the tavern. They are scaled to your main member's level automatically. You can fire members and edit character traits from the "Overview" panel.

Oh, careful firing the Prototype, it can sometimes bug out and not be available for rehire.

How does aggro work in this game? Is it based on equipment or something? The crew member being targeted the most seems to change from mission to mission.

Also, is it just me or does the RNG seem a bit off sometimes? I have the Prototype equipped with a gun that has an accuracy rating of 80%, yet he's missing around 50% of his shots, and that's against enemies with 0% dodge.

Agro is based off of whoever does the most damage unless a taunt ability has been used on the target in question. Certain items/skills come with an agro multiplier. Soldier is a decent class for funneling agro if you're interested in that strategy.

RNG seemed fine for me, but I also tried to always keep my accuracy above 90% (higher in late-game). Not sure if you noticed, but you can also view your calculated accuracy in combat if you look over a skill's tooltip before firing; it will take blind and evasion into account.

I made the soldier my main. I put all of his early points in the tanking tree, but it took awhile before he really excelled as a tank. Early on he was pretty good at getting agro but not always good at surviving the agro that he got. Once I got the top tanking talent, juggernaut, both his agro generation and survivability jumped dramatically.