Eternal Starlight is a real-time strategy game for the oculus. The game aims to push the boundaries of mobile VR gaming, offering a unique blend of RTS gameplay embedded in a nasty permadeath loop.
The Defense of Proxima in Eternal Starlight
Eternal Starlight is a space strategy game in which you try to defend mankind's claim to Proxima. It is a planet that represents humanity's last hope of survival. The story describes mankind's inevitable destruction of the earth and the equally inevitable pilgrimage to the stars to find a new home. Humans are not alone in their quest to find this life-sustaining planet, and the warlike Kraya are hellbent on clearing the region of "Terran scum."
The campaign
Essentially, the core of the campaign consists of you embarking on a series of micro-missions, trying to build resources and alliances. They are supposed to help with the next looming confrontation with the Kraya. You are free to choose which of the randomly generated missions to pursue based on the resources, items, and potential alliances to earn. As such, these missions are more like combat vignettes than actual missions. Most of them are over in anticlimatically short time. Upon completion, resources can be spent on upgrading your flagship or purchasing auxiliary ships to bolster your armada. But be careful - because defeat comes with a high price.
The gameplay
Gameplay in Eternal Starlight sees you taking control of an initially tiny fleet consisting of your main flagship and a small fighter. You control these ships by grabbing them and following the path you want them to fly or marking the enemy ship you want them to attack. It's intuitive.
Game pace and scope
Both the pace and scope of the game can be manipulated to suit your needs throughout the fight. At any point, you can slow down the action to strategize and then pull off some maneuvers. You can also use simple gestures to expand and contract the scope of combat, giving you tactile control over your vantage point throughout the fight. While this sounds great in theory, Eternal Starlight sadly lacks execution.
speed as a problem
The speed at which vehicles traverse the vastness of space during combat is far too fast to allow for effective use of the increased viewing angle. The exception to this is when you are targeting certain enemy systems. The function can only be manipulated through a cumbersome process. You must slow down time, zoom in and select the target ship, then target the system you want, then scale back up to a scale that allows for some degree of tactical control. Unfortunately, this process is required every time you want to target specific systems. On paper the system seems great, but in practice it just adds a tedious stop and start component that makes combat feel stilted and quickly becomes a chore.
Control Panels
Similarly, the controls for this world changer are missing one of the most obvious necessary features. You are unable to turn the world around you. To shift your gaze along this axis, you must physically move in virtual space or use the thumbsticks to rotate the world in a wide and confusing arc.
Alien death
Like all good roguelikes, Eternal Starlight builds suspense by utilizing the ever-present threat of permadeath. If you fail the mission, you can lick your wounds and try again, but if you lose your flagship, it's Game Over!
Custom Battles
Eternal Starlight features a Skirmish mode that allows you to create custom battles from all available unlocked ships. Using a scoring system, you can compete against a fleet of up to six ships. Once some of the more interesting ships have been unlocked, this mode offers a proving ground for your tactical skills and higher intensity action.
The space
Eternal Starlight has a deep and varied progression system. There are several branching technology upgrades that you can use to either upgrade a single ship or buy an armada of smaller ships. The options are wide and interesting and, when used correctly, add a good dose of tactical depth to the gameplay. In addition, each tech branch has a number of specializations that are randomly generated for the current playthrough. This variety ensures that no two runs are the same and forces you to use a slightly different strategy every time you play.
Eternal Starlight
Each of your capital ships can be upgraded with specific modifiers, additional weapons and weapon slots, and awesome new special abilities. The combination of these elements significantly changes the approach to missions. This means that each run can be played repeatedly thanks to the procedural generation of missions, rewards and perks. The rewards gained from each run are so meager that it becomes either tedious or impossible to get the best elements of the game. There are few permanent benefits that carry over into future rounds.
technology trees
You study the various branching tech trees available and wish for a path and strategy that you might wish to employ. Then, after a few missions, you'll find that you'd have to play through the whole game three times to earn enough money to implement your strategy. The difficulty curve increases disproportionately with your access to upgraded gear. This means that after you get frustrated that you can't afford to buy something good, you just get blasted back into space dust. Another chance to wallow in the knowledge that you have to start everything over.
rewards
Roguelikes reward each playthrough with a little something that you can take with you to the next run. This builds the depth and difficulty of the gameplay loop over time, giving you a reason to keep coming back. However, Eternal Starlight doesn't do this, so actually would have been better suited as a standard campaign-style RTS. As it is, Eternal Starlight artfully dodges the best elements of the roguelike genre and manages to capture only its most frustrating traits.
shine and depth
Unfortunately, the overall visual presentation of Eternal Starlight lacks sparkle and depth. The world away from the core game is you on the ship's bridge or in your living quarters. Unfortunately, these environments just seem flat and unrefined. The characters that appear on your communication screen also come with a retro-style aesthetic that doesn't end up as stylized, instead looking poorly executed. The actual gameplay takes place in the far reaches of space, so the backgrounds are understandably not varied. However, this is not compensated for by detailed, textured models for the various crafts, nor have the graphical resources been expended on lighting and effects for the weapons.
Graphics and sound
Graphically, Eternal Starlight is usable at best. The graphics don't detract from the gameplay, but they also don't give you the sense of awe one would hope for from a game set in the vast, inky void of the cosmos. The sound in Eternal Starlight is the game's weakest component and really lets the game down. The sound effects are acceptable. The ambient music is rather monotonous and does little to instill a sense of urgency or tension during brief combat encounters. It doesn't distract, but it adds so little to the game that it might as well not be there to some degree.
No voice over
The voice-over, or rather the lack of it, is where the biggest problems arise. Between each cutscene there is dialogue between you and the various other characters, all delivered via text. As the text plays, the character provides a soundbite such as "We don't have much time," but there is only one such recording per character, and it plays every time it's on screen. This happens regardless of the context of the dialog. You can tell the game is a production that lacked the experience and budget to deliver this element to a benchmark standard.
Conclusion
Eternal Starlight is an ambitious attempt to combine the RTS and roguelike genres, which unfortunately fails to realize the enormous potential of the concept. The game features a deep system of branching technical upgrades that could have been amazing if coupled with expanded missions and more accessible resource management. The 3-minute vignette-style mini-missions create a disjointed experience that keeps you from immersing yourself in the action. The quest library is in dire need of something to fill its gaping RTS-shaped void, but alas, Eternal Starlight isn't. However, it's not entirely devoid of positive elements, so genre enthusiasts will still find some fun. Eternal Starlight is a bold attempt to combine RTS and roguelike styles, which unfortunately fails to capture the best elements of both genres. Despite some fun mechanics and a real depth to fleet customization, Eternal Starlight struggles with pacing and presentation issues that prevent it from fulfilling its potential.
The developers of the game are White Noise Games and David Wallin. White Noise Games also took over the publishing.
