Thanks to ZGame Studio for the Steam copy for review! Star Clash is a twin-stick shooter arcade game where you play as a planet that shoots bullets. The main idea that tries to separate the game from everything else is the moons that go around you also shoot and act as an orbital attack. Unfortunately, this idea changes absolutely nothing, and Star Clash comes off as incredibly standard and boring compared to the giants of the arcade genre. The goal of Star Clash is simple: kill enemies and get a high score. You play on a boring 2D plane and shoot enemies that lack any sort of variety (runs that were later in the game still only saw 3-4 enemy types, which consisted of “I shoot bullets sideways”, “I shoot forward” and “I don’t shoot at all”). There’s a ton of different planets you can play as, but none of them offer anything different from a gameplay standpoint other than maybe another orbital or starting with one of three different weapon types.

The other way the game tries to be different is with powerup drops. These would be okay if not for a few scathing issues. There are two groups of powerups-- One type that only orbitals can pick up, and one that only you can pick up. Waiting for the orbital to go around you to pick up a small circle with a letter on it is frustrating, and on top of that the circle has a very strict hitbox, meaning if you aren’t in the exact spot, your orbital will miss picking it up. The problem with pickups you grab is how the weapon upgrade system works. There’s an item in the game that gives your gun more spread. It’s the only upgrade in the entire game. If you pick up a new weapon type, it resets your spread, leaving you with a weak single stream of bullets. It’s actually better to ignore the other weapon types altogether so you don’t reset your progress. Controls are awkward to say the least. Instead of W and S being up and down, they accelerate and brake. It doesn’t work well, and a lot of my runs ended due to these controls. Star Clash claims to have controller support, but even having my Xbox One controller plugged in completely broke the game. Keyboard and mouse controls are fully rebindable at least.

Along with awkward controls, the options menu has next to nothing in it. Star Clash only runs in windowed mode and there's no in-game option to change this, or even the resolution. Apparently, you do have a health bar, but there’s no UI for one, so you can’t tell how much health you have and there’s no feedback to you getting hit by bullets.

Star Clash looks ugly and sounds bad. The art is nothing significant and the UI is boring. Sounds are nothing noteworthy, and the music in the game is taken from non-copyrighted sources. Star Clash is truly a mechanically boring game wrapped in a boring package. Moral issues are nearly nonexistent. You’re a planet shooting circles at asteroids and other planets. Nothing questionable is shown or done. Star Clash tries in several ways to be different, but fails in nearly every aspect possible. A dollar is fair enough for what you get but is probably better spent elsewhere. Not recommended at all.