TombStar - Review

TombStar takes Enter the Gungeon to cowboy space, and then hands you a flamethrower and tells you to kill the robots. TombStar is a little bit eccentric.

TombStar is a Space Western themed top-down shooter with heavy roguelike elements and an incredibly stiff difficulty curve. Similar in nature to games like The Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon and Hades, TombStar aims to bring you a unique challenge that will keep you coming back time and time again.

TombStar is easily one of the more difficult top-down roguelike shooters on the market, despite its seemingly cheesy cartoonish appearance. The visual design of TombStar is what aims to set it apart from other games in the same genre. The worlds are vibrant and full of colour, with a sheen of cartoon like visuals to further enhance the popping nature of the environment. Every enemy is easily recognisable at a quick glance, and the sharp differences between the environment and enemies means that you are never going to be caught by surprise. The projectiles have a sort of aura or glow to them, that help you keep an eye on everything flying your direction. Unlike Enter the Gungeon, there is no bomb mechanic to clear the screen of projectiles and you will find certain room shapes and enemy configurations truly difficult to successfully navigate through all the dangers.

TombStar starts you off with one character out of a possible three. The simplest of the three, Jack Galloway is a 6 shooter Cowboy with the ability to slow down time. Jack embodies the most Enter the Gungeon equivalent style of gameplay, his dodge being a simple roll. The first of the two unlockable characters is the Sharpshooter AJ Starchild, who with a sniper rifle in hand can fade into the shadows to confuse enemies and get critical damage on the unaware foes. AJ was the one I found the most enjoyment with and kept going back to her. AJ turns into a black mist for a few seconds when dodging and allows for rather rapid movement when avoiding projectiles in this mode. The final character is Benson Gara, a strange fish-like hybrid human, who takes his shotgun and massive damage absorbing armour into battle. Benson encourages the most aggressive style of gameplay, his dodge absorbing enemy projectiles as well as inflicting damage upon any who come in contact with his shield when he dodges into them. The tank-based character, Gara, was the one I had the hardest time coming to grips with. The hyper aggressive playstyle is one not normally seen in this type of games but is one that will likely stand out to most players. Despite a seemingly small cast, the three characters offer different styles of gameplay, and most players will likely find appeal in at least one of them.

TombStar is hard. The game lures you in with whimsical visuals and seemingly straightforward gameplay. You may even get through the first zone without even being forced to fight a boss. An interesting feature that I find myself a bit split on. If you’re unlucky enough, you’ll get slapped with the major boss of Zone 1, Tentaclaw, who if you’re not ready for streaking columns of bullets and area of effect bursts, you’ll find yourself quickly killed. TombStar is deceptively difficult and requires pretty clean play to get through the 8 worlds, each with progressively more difficult variations of enemy configurations as well as newer types in each one as you go. Each section within a zone has a potential of spawning multiple waves of enemies too so you may find yourself fighting a less than optimal configuration followed by an even worse one. The upside is that with each failed attempt, you will get a certain amount of experience based on how well you did.

This experience will unlock more guns, more perks, the other two characters and equipable perks to take into each run plus the currency required to upgrade these perks. Some of which you may find absolutely vital to success, such as more heart containers and up to three exohearts to act as shields for stray damage. So, whilst extremely punishing, TombStar does aim to let you get a few more advantages the more you play, and to flesh out the experience even further. The more guns and perks you unlock however, the more unlikely it is to come across your favourites as regularly and you may find yourself overwhelmed by an array of mediocre options when you really just need the upgrade to make your dodge reflect projectiles back at your enemies.

There is a certain amount of randomness to each zone in TombStar. Depending on your luck, you may get away with not experiencing a single boss in the first couple of zones. In other instances, you’ll get back-to-back major bosses, or at least a miniboss and then a major boss. Each zone has the option of either having an exit gate, a miniboss battle or a unique major boss for that zone. Whilst I enjoy the random nature of the outcome of each zone, I didn’t experience a boss on Jack for almost the first hour of failed runs, and then experienced constant bosses on AJ. I thought it may have been linked to the characters, that each zone held unique bosses depending on who you played as. This was wrong however and it appears to be a complete RNG. This makes it pretty difficult to get solid experience against a boss of a zone and can lead to promising runs falling apart because it’s been a few hours since you last had to fight a boss in that zone.

TombStar is a generally enjoyable experience if not a little light in current content. The eight zones will probably take about ten hours or so to finish a complete run for the first time. For those that find enjoyment in these kinds of games, TombStar will easily offer a good amount of it. One that will pull people back for another couple of runs, to see if they can do it just a little bit better, a little bit cleaner. There is enough of a roguelike RNG experience here to ensure you don’t feel too much like the game is repeating the same content over and over.

TombStar is generally enjoyable experience both visually and gameplaywise, and if the developers intend to bring further content to the game such as more characters and bosses, as well as more worlds, TombStar could really develop into a multi hundred-hour game in the likes of Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon.

The Score

8.0

Review code provided by No More Robots

The Pros

+Each character provides unique style of gameplay

+Pleasing aesthetic design

+Decent enemy variety

The Cons

-Long term gameplay may be lacking

-Difficulty curve is super unforgiving