Star Survivor is an action roguelite, a reverse bullet hell that anyone who has played Vampire Survivor or one of the many games that it has inspired in its wake will recognize. The game does a lot that sets it apart from other similar games, such as having a campaign mode and its space setting giving you some classic arcade goodness a la Asteroids.

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Though it’s easy to get going, a lot of info is hidden in a static, manual-like tutorial. And some things, you just have to find out for yourself. Or you would, if we didn’t have your back, and have compiled some things you should know before starting Star Survivor.

Star Survivor is in Early Access as of this writing. The game may change as it develops and upon a full release.

6 You Can Get In-Depth With The Controls

Technically, this is the first thing you have to deal with in the game, but the number of options you have to control your ship in a sea of hostile forces can be staggering.

If you want a basic experience you’re likely to be familiar with and arguably the most intuitive setup, set Ship Movement to Screen Relative, Movement System to Direct Transform, and Ship Rotation to Mouse Align. If you’re using a controller or prefer to keep both hands on the keyboard, use Direction Align for Ship Rotation instead.

If you want an experience akin to an arcade-y space sim or you happen to be a pro at Asteroids, you should set Ship Movement and Rotation both to Ship Relative and Movement System to Smooth Physics instead.

5 Boost Direction Is Based On Ship Direction

Regardless of how you like your controls, it’s important to keep in mind that the booster (Spacebar by default) function will always launch you in the direction your ship is facing.

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When strafing, it can be easy to forget which way your ship is facing, especially if you have directional weapons equipped in multiple quadrants. Still, you want to keep track of which direction your ship is facing lest you ram hull-first into an asteroid instead of away from danger. If you keep your Ship Rotation to Mouse Align, you will always boost towards your mouse.

4 Equipping Basics

If you want a loadout that will devastate your foes, not only do you want to curate what equipment and upgrades you pick up, but you also want to pay attention to where they go. Every piece of equipment (usually weapons) you pick up is assigned to one of the four quadrants on your ship.

This is important because many upgrades will affect a whole quadrant, but usually, these upgrades affect a specific type of weapon (beam, projectile, drone, missile). So it’s important to put like weapons together so that they all share quadrant-wide boosts if you want maximum damage.

3 Shots Aren’t (Completely) Random

Though your shots seem to go off in random directions, you actually have a little bit of control in regard to where you fire. Depending on the weapon type, plenty of visual indicators also let you know where you’re firing.

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Weapons that 'shoot forward' fire toward the quadrant you place them in. There is a faint circle around your ship that marks the targeting range of turret weapons, roughly marking where they’ll aim and shoot at baddies. If there are no enemies in that circle, they fire off randomly into space.

Missiles are perhaps the wildest weapon type, but the general area of effect for Missile Barrage is marked by a big circle, and Cruise Missiles track targets. Ballistic Missiles are actually random, though.

2 Tagging Doesn’t Do Much (On Its Own)

An intriguing piece of equipment you might find in a run is the Tagging Module, which says it automatically tags enemies within range, but nothing of what this actually does. That’s because, on its own, it doesn’t do anything.

Knowing this, you might want to skip this strange little piece of kit, but with some upgrades to it and your other equipment, it’s actually pretty useful. On its own, it can get an upgrade that increases the experience you gain from tagged enemies. A lot of weapons have upgrades that give them a chance to fire when an enemy is tagged or when a tagged enemy dies. This synergy can give a nice bump to the firing rates of those weapons.

1 It’s A Roguelike And A Roguelite

Whether you like the start-from-zero mentality of roguelikes or the incremental meta-advancement of roguelites, Star Survivor has you covered. The style of play boils down to what mode you pick.

If you prefer the former, go with the campaign mode, which has you traversing a map, getting more powerful as you prepare for a confrontation with a boss. If you want the truest roguelike experience, turn on Hardcore mode, which removes your ability to retry a stage, ending a run upon death.

If you want something more like Vampire Survivors, play on Endless, which allows you to bring a custom deck of cards you can upgrade. All the modes give meta rewards, usually in the form of credits or card upgrades, but aside from buying new ships, you can’t bring any of them into the campaign.

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