LONESTAR

If someone calls this FTL meets Slay the Spire slap them. It is nothing like either of those games. Lonestar is a turn-based game about numbers and everything else is set dressing. Your ship consists of 3 rows that produce a number of attack power and the same goes for the enemy. You subtract the losers power from the winners power in a row and whatever is left is dealt as damage. Everything you do in this game has the purpose of making those numbers go up in various ways. Core among them is the units on your ship. Little blocks with spaces for number cards. You draw numbers from your number deck and add them to a unit. So the "deck building" aspect of it all is literally just what numbers you have. And you might do an entire run without changing the numbers in your deck at all. There are wacky passive buffs, but the units then are where the complexity and build strategy are. As a boring example the very first one you will probably see is a unit that says "when you add 2 identical numbers add + 2" On that same ship is another unit that can make numbers go up and puts them back in your hand and there is your first combo, make the numbers go up in the right way to have 2 identical ones for a bonus. And then of course there are many many different units with different synergies that you try to get throughout the run. The passive buffs need the right unit to become useful but if you can combo they get VERY useful. There is an added layer, the number cards have colors and you can only put in numbers into a unit of the right color or a "stronger" color. And a strong unit will have slots of higher tier colors. So balancing your number deck and units around each other can be important. The enemy then for the most part is less interesting. They just have their own fancy way of making numbers but your strategy is mostly unchanged. You need a big number to win the damage race. That being said a small part of them are absolute fuckers that will mess up your entire build. Unwinnable situations are rare but possible. The game lets you restart a battle as many times as you want and even switch around which units you have equipped. But sometimes the enemies numbers are just too big no matter what you do. And I think that can be a problem but is in the nature of turn-based roguelikes. You are at the mercy of the loot you picked up during a run and maybe your luck just sucked and you cant combo hard enough. Now no matter how "skilled" you are if the highest number you can produce is a 17 but the enemy hits you with a 26 every time there is nothing to do about it. Meta-progression is handled very well in this one. Often a roguelike will add more and more stuff to find during a run but in turn make synergys increasingly unlikely. So often your reward for playing is making the game worse. In here all the randomization happens before the run even starts. You get a random pilot with an ability specific to them and 2 random bonuses. You can reroll your selection until you get something that seems good and all unlocks are just more pilots and more random bonuses, so your actual run will still have the same units and synergies. A consequence of this is that there is not that much longevity to this game. Sure the many pliots can offer wacky twists but for the most part you have seen those enemies before, you have seen those units before and you have used that strat before. The music is servicable and the story non-existent. Many dialogue blurbs and enemy briefings are just jokes and references. Which is completely ok, I think the devs succeeded in wanting to make a fun little game and would not be surprised if a few updates shook things up and added variety in the future. So really the question is do you want to spend a couple dollars on a fun little roguelike that sets itself apart from others that you can play for a day or two and then put away? I do.

Game soundtrack is safe and understated, never soars. Everything about the game feels cramped and squinty: only fidgeting your ship one row down or one row up, the modules, the number squares (the color selector for the third ship is absurdly small); I feel like the screen real estate just isn't used well; all of the important stuff is relegated to tiny squares... You get 3 columns and 3 rows, there is a fourth and fifth row you can fidget into above and below your ship for a turn. Maybe how confining that is wouldn't feel so bad if everything else didn't also feel small. This all leads to a larger problem, the game feels too much like a spreadsheet with rows, columns, and numbers. The game is numbers, columns and rows, with some equations. It's a somewhat addictive engine of numbers and rows and columns, but that is nevertheless what is there. Many games amount to that ultimately, but it is much more unabashed here for better or worse. For awhile the relatively sound addictive game fundamentals distract from the game's shortcomings. There is is a good game somewhere in here, but it would need a major overhaul to be a great game: Needs new and interesting ship layouts. For the weapons to not all be reduced to the same animation... new songs that aren't timid and less than or equal to western elevator music. Needs a total UI overhaul so that elements like colors and modules look more appealing and less microscopic. The game just feels so cramped, you only get a 3x3 grid for modules, you can only move one space up or down, you only get a handful of spots to store modules, you can only move modules a bit this way or that -- everything feels small and fidgety. It feels confined, claustrophobic even. Too much in the game is blue and grey -- just in general the colors are bland, a bland blue and bland red (desaturated) and plenty of grey are used for most gameplay elements. I wish I could give the game a positive review, because there is some addictive gameplay here, but there are many addictive games that look and feel better. As it is, this game is worth 2$. If it was overhauled to feel better and look and sound better, with more animations for attacks as well (instead of the same 3 lasers for infinity), then it could be worth up to 15$. I don't usually write reviews these days, but I felt compelled to review this, because I didn't see some of these things pointed out before I decided to buy. Right now as it is, the game is somewhat disappointing. I think the reason it has good reviews are that the gameplay fundamentals are pretty solid. Hopefully this helps some people on the fence. If the game gets better someday then I will update my review.

If you like inventory adjacency style management (Backpack Hero, Backpack Battles, God of Weapons) in a roguelite builder style, then you should enjoy this game. The number of items which modify behaviors is relatively high. One interesting feature is that you can engage in a boss gauntlet after you win the game. You can also view your old builds and statistics, and even go back and rerun the boss gauntlet again or if you fail the first time. Tose are two very interesting features that I have only rarely seen before.

Mid. Short and not as fun and complex as FTL.

There's a lot of stuff discover, far more than the simple astaethics would suggest. It's a great time killer when you want something relaxed to play. The translation needs a bit of work in places (either difficult to understand or in one instance the text literraly does not fit the box).

A lot of bang for your buck. Luck seems enormous when you first start out, but you start to see opportunities to grab items you've never tried, and then suddenly you have a powerful combination you weren't even aware of!

Has plenty of content and endless replayability. A bit too much RNG for my taste as well as the top end being nearly impossible outside of a narrow subset of builds. Just poorly balanced for top difficulties.

A fun game with a lot of replay-ability. You can mix and match a lot of different strategies. Each battle is a bit of a puzzle until you get your ship built out how you'd like and have a solid strategy. The repeatability comes from the numerous unlocks in units and pilot talents. It's fun, can be challenging, and rounds don't have to take all day.

A game that did the concept correctly for what they wished to provide players. The game feels very straight forward, no confusion, and can be very in-depth with the various functions you are able to manipulate with your ship. The vacation system is a great example of that, and creates the perfect rogue-like element that the game wanted to achieve.

highly re-playable! many builds to choose from and its fun unlocking different weapon builds. even though there is steam workshop i think the game itself should add more starting ships. I like the MANY characters to choose from tho

It's a deckbuilder but that's stretching the definition. Yes, there's "cards" that serve as energy, but the real meat of the game is how you organize your spaceship components to load that energy into. And there the strategy is pretty deep. There's OP synergies to find, a huge number of characters all with various abilities, and the lane-based combat (with shades of Cobalt Core) is yet another wrinkle to manage. It's a fairly complicated set of systems, but it hangs together exceptionally well, and is an enormously satisfying game.

Not overly complicated, but really good value and you can play it over and over trying to perfect/explore different builds.

Very fun deckbuilder-like! The options aren't too overwhelming and the mechanic is very easy to undertand: Your attack points have to be higher than your opponent's. Yet it has lots of strategies!

So far, this game is enjoyable. It isn't exceedingly punishing but it doesn't feel easy at all either. You have many options of how to load up your ship to combat the other ship. The more difficult ships do feel a little bit like a puzzle for you to solve, and it is nice that the game let's you escape the battle to retry again. The rewards you're given are also very generous and you have a nice pleasant feeling of really being upgraded with each. Get it, I think you'll enjoy it!

I really like this one so far! 13 hours played is not much, but it's still more than many other roguelites have lasted that I've tried lately and it feels like I will sink a lot more hours into this game. The basic gameplay is easy to learn and there are tons of different combinations of ships, pilots, units, mechanics and treasures to explore. I definitely get Slay the Spire vibes even though the designs and themes are completely different. Each turn you can see your opponent's plans and then need to figure out how to optimize your resources and do some math to be successful. I also like the general tempo and atmosphere of the game. A victory run takes about an hour for me, which I think is right in the sweet spot. The graphics are decent and the music is relaxing and matches the game very well. Almost no story at all is a big plus for me, I just want as much pure gameplay as possible when playing this kind of game. The one thing that I've found so far that I think could be improved is that most ships, units and treasures are too similar looking. I would love for them to be more easily recognizable which would make the gameplay even smoother. More colors would help! Right now I feel like I have to read tooltips over and over again to remember everything. Overall, great game! *** EDIT: Just discovered that cloud sync is not implemented! Really hope that devs have time to address that in the near future. I like to switch back and forth between my gaming PC, my laptop and my Macbook, but without cloud sync that's just not doable. (I know I can manually copy save files between computers, but that's a very inconvenient solution)

Lonestar is a really great game, nearly Balatro Level great, so many different pilots and ships and options....

Fun little shipbuilder with enough unlocks and difficulty to keep things interesting after the first couple victories.

5 hours in and I'm still feeling like it's brand new. Definitely a great rogue-lite. I'm actually a really big fan of how they put "save scumming" as a strategy in the game where you can actually back out of any fight to immediately reset it to the beginning - since they know players are going to do that anyways... Honestly this is the game I EXPECTED when I bought rogue core and was seriously disappointed. Lots of pilots in this game, and different ship attachments they call units. There's great synergies and a learning curve I enjoyed as far as it came to understanding the different mechanics but what was cool is they didn't just come out and explain everything but rather provided a help menu with a guide and was like, "go check it out, or don't, idc"

So I can already see that this game will be a nice little time sink for me. The rogue-like elements feel just right and the figuring out of combos on equipment, placement and load can be both fun and frustrating at times. Don't be afraid to fail and start again. You'll unlock more and more. I bought it 20% off and honestly, it's worth the full price. If you can catch it on sale and you're even partially satisfied with rogue-like games it's a definite grab. Quick edit. This game, as you might expect, plays very well on the Steam Deck. Controls are simple and effective. If you want a quick to play and easy to control Steam Deck game this game is for you.

Pretty fun rouglite for the price tag, find myself having a lot of fun just playing the first few difficulties while trying all of the characters out.

lots of different options and runs. Great puzzle game

It has a much steeper drop of than Balatro when it comes to replayability, but it is a great game and very unique with the way that you can strategy craft.

Meh.. It is not bad. I would give it a "neutral" but steam forces me to up or downvote. Tired of Deckbuilding Roguelikes trying soo goddamn hard to be "intelligent". Most of the fun for me in this games is spontaneous decisions on the fly made with some good thinking without writing a excel sheet to plan ahead. But they always end up being a "find out or read about a broken combo and try to recreate it" simulator. This game, regardless of the novel concepts it introduces is fails to capture the "fun rolling another run" of balatro , is unlike STS too rigid and gimmicky to allow winning without cheesing and is way too complicated for its own sake in comparison to something like monster train.

Man, this is the rightful successor to Slay The Spire. I really did not expect this to have as much depth of gameplay or as much fun as it did

Surprising amount of variety, strategies etc. Nicely tactical. If you've played [b]Cobalt Core[/b] and want something with more depth but still smooth to play, this is a solid pick!

Bought it at like 7 am one morning on a whim then didn't get up for the next ~14 hours

It was fun. It's just math in space, but i enjoyed it

Found myself constantly thinking, "I could be playing FTL instead."

Perfect for playing for a few minutes or a few hours.

A bit more mellow than FTL but similar vibes. Good times blastin away!

Really fun building ships.

Fun puzzle, enjoy the theme

great fun!

Fun game!

good

Nice