Stardust Skate

Came for the Buffpup stayed for the vibes~ Responsive controls, splendid music, and a beautiful aesthetic Go check out VchiBan as well as all the creative homies who helped make this product !!!

This game has a great presentation and solid game play, but there's no real challenge other than tedium. Basically, you just skate (it's a linear auto runner), collect stars and then use the stars to put into a machine to buy new boards. The boards are randomized, so sometimes you will get a new board, sometimes a duplicate and quite often just useless junk. The characters range between endearing and unintentionally creepy. Each one has a unique ability and later on you can stack the abilities by equipping boards (The game calls them "cheats," but I don't consider it cheating since you need the "cheat" to unlock all the achievements). Racking up points is fun, but there's no greater reward for going longer. You cannot beat this game, all you can do is go for the high score or unlock the achievements. You can unlock all but two of them in five minutes just by clicking around. The only long ones involve finding all the skateboards and dying 100 times. There are only four stages and they loop indefinitely, the only difference is the game gets faster until it's unplayable. If you make it past level 10 you unlock a faster version of the game which is more or less just a shortcut to the later levels. It's faster to earn stars to unlock the boards this way, sure, but it's also totally busted around level 4. The graphics are nice, the dialogue is occasionally funny and some of the characters are just adorable. And yet, I can't help but feel like the game just wants to fall into tedium and never present a real challenge to the player, which is a shame. I mean it can get pretty hard, as you want to crouch to speed up and this increases the point multiplier when you collect the stars (Kind of like lowering your body before an ollie). But no matter how you play it's not going to be a skill-based challenge, and while the game is fun and addictive, it also feels kind of meaningless as a result.

I'm neutral on this one. It's just Subway Surfers with a Vtuber skin. Good if you're on the can and/or to replace doomscrolling with a steam deck in hand. Mute voicelines for a more enjoyable experience. It's fine for what it is I guess.