We don’t often get such an early look at a game so when the chance came I jumped on board to check out Starmetal Crusaders.
Looking at the store page Starmetal Crusaders (SMC) promised a blend of third-person shooter and RTS, immediately recalling memories of Double Fine’s Brutal Legend. That game has its detractors not liking the gameplay mix it offered, but I was in the “I like this” party so I was looking forward to seeing what SMC offered.
I’m going to preface this by saying the build I received was very early access, I would hazard a guess at pre-beta. There were spelling errors and technical hiccups but these things were normal for this stage in development.
What Starmetal Crusaders offers at the moment is a brief tutorial, a boss battle and a three-way skirmish against the AI. Judging by the greyed-out boxes it will offer a story mode, skirmish and missions, with another feature I will get into later.
Jumping into a mission you get to choose from what looks like five crusaders, your hero characters, with only two being currently available. What differs between crusaders is not apparent at the moment aside from guns but I would assume that some abilities would be unique to each character in the future.
Your chosen Crusader then launches down to a battlefield to begin the match. The game starts as a real-time strategy with you having to assign collectors for resources, build better facilities, train troops etc. but at any time you can take manual control of your crusader and the game plays like an almost third-person shooter to give yourself a more action feel in combat.
I say almost third-person because the camera doesn’t change much, you can’t even rotate the view so enemies can surprise you from three sides as your only good view is above you. The controls are not intuitive either, using WASD and mouse for movement bizarrely the key to fire is X. In build mode, the mouse buttons are used for commands but in third-person I would prefer the mouse to fire as that’s what I kept using. Hopefully, this will be something implemented later.
However, my progress was always halted by the atrocious balancing in place. You see, the computer always seemed to be able to allocate resources at lightning speed. By the time my feeble human reactions had started building the first barracks, I would be swarmed by a fully kitted-out army and get annihilated. If I wasn’t stomped and managed to hold them off by the time I started rebuilding a second wave came in and finished the job.
I managed to win one game by ignoring my base at the start and rushing in to destroy enemy bases only for the AI to not know how to respond. It was still a slog as the Crusaders have a ton of health and zip about, but a victory was earned nonetheless.
Again, I’m trying to appear neutral as this is not a finished product and thus cannot be held up to scrutiny, but my frustration abounded.
The graphics and music are a bit unpolished but have a decent start to build from with detailed character models and some good animations. The troop units and buildings do appear basic but you can determine what is what.
The final gameplay mechanic appears to be a *ahem* relationship subplot. You see, all the Crusaders are female and have questionable *raised eyebrows* armour choices. The last option I didn’t mention on the menu was rooms and, although none of the further options were implemented yet, I did recognise some of the icons. I don’t think the eggplant icon was to offer your Crusader a nutritious vegetable (or is it a fruit?).
Yes, it appears it’s going to be one of “those” types of games. What this achieves (aside from titillation) is unclear at this moment, but maybe you would gain some form of loyalty system wherein you unlock more abilities. Or is it just there to sell copies? Who knows at this point?
Being the state of the game I can neither recommend nor detract from the title as this demo is nowhere near finished as far as I’m aware. All we can do is keep an eye on it and see if it delivers. With a release date of Q3 2024 pop Starmetal Crusaders in your Wishlist if this seems like something you’re interested in.
Developer: X1 Games, SlovGoblin
Publisher: X1 Games
Expected Release: Q3 2024
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