Devouring Stars Preview

When I first looked into Devouring Stars, the thing that caught my eye was ‘Greek gods’. I’ve always liked Greek Mythology - though I’m more of a greatest hits kind of guy. I can hum along to the tune and sing the chorus, but ask me my opinion on Zeus’ punk phase and I get nervous. Chances are, I probably only know it if it’s appeared in an issue of Wonder Woman, Hercules or that brief spell where Ares was an Avenger.

Devouring Star’s story focusses on the Titans - the gods that ruled before Zeus cast them into Tartarus, a realm below even Hades. That pretty much sums up all of my knowledge on the Titans - none of which is helpful whilst playing Devouring Stars…

Ambush!

So far, the dev team’s work has focused on the gameplay and graphics more than anything, so the storyline isn’t too important. You control Titans - which take the form of orbs that float around space. Using the mouse, you have to guide them over to various star fields where they begin gathering stars into their orbits. As you progress through the destiny grid - the pretty fancy looking level selector - you come across four factions which are trying to eradicate you and each other. The stars your Titans gather are used for battle - if you have 40 stars and they have 300 for instance, then you’re going to lose and vice-versa. Denser nebulae give you more stars in a shorter time, meaning you have to strategise where to place each Titan under your control in each level. If you lose a Titan, you don’t get them back until the next set of levels.

Most levels take the form of ‘destroy all enemies and take over the portal’, which gets boring after too many levels, so some you can avoid the enemy and just take over the portal. The game is broken up with a few lines of story in between sets of levels. The destiny grid allows you to turn and rotate it; each view of the grid gives you a different set of levels by shifting where each dot (representing level sets) is. After each level, you select the next one - occasionally being given more than one path to select.

The level select - it's full of stars!

My favourite part of Devouring Stars has to be the soundtrack. It’s purely piano music, played very well in various styles. The music for each level appears to be randomly selected and some of the tunes have very obvious and jarring loop points — the music fades to silence before starting from the beginning again. Apart from that, I do enjoy it very much — it is quite soothing whilst you’re chasing Titans through space.

Speaking of chasing… Titans will only attack one another if they are within range. Once an AI Titan begins to run away, I found myself getting annoyed that mine would chase it. Because once it began to run, it wouldn’t stop until mine stopped or turned around - if I was busy on another section of the map then I could waste minutes trying to get them close to the portal again. Movement isn’t swift, though it really shouldn’t be. These beings are using stars as weapons and are moving (subjectively) very quickly as they do so. But as a videogame player, some levels can last a while.

And this is why you run...

Devouring Stars looks and sounds very nice, with enjoyable gameplay that won’t tax you too hard. There could be a little more variety, but that may come during development, as hopefully will a fix to the ‘run away’ mechanic. With the Steam Achievements, it will require multiple playthroughs to fully complete, but a single play through will last you about five hours. And at the current price of £6.99, that’s not too shabby.

Immature, I know, but JANUS!