Star Splash: Shattered Star

Genre: Auto-Runner

Players: 1

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Review:

Star Splash is an Auto-Runner released on the Wii U in 2017, although “Auto-Runner” may not be entirely accurate in a game where you swim, jump, and float, but don’t actually run… being that you’re a dolphin in the ocean collecting stars to try and meet a quota in each of the game’s levels.

The presentation in Star Splash is fairly straightforward and simple, using bright, cartoony 2D visuals for its characters and backgrounds, with energetic synthesized music that’s… a bit too simple and childish in tone for my tastes, but will likely appeal to younger audiences.

The gameplay itself is a fairly unique take on the Auto-Runner genre. While in the water, your dolphin can move around freely, and jumping out of the water allows you to jump repeatedly or dive back down into the water. Every level requires you to collect a certain number of stars, so this is less a game about surviving and more about picking up as many of these stars as you can.

Unfortunately, the controls here aren’t great. Firstly, mapping “jump” to the up button instead of a face button is frustrating and I thought we grew out of that sort of terrible game design back in the 8-bit era. However, even more frustrating is how sluggish your dolphin’s horizontal movement is – trying to move back or forward feels like an ordeal.

As a result, what could have been a creative take on the Auto-Runner genre is too frustrating for its own good. If you have a young one who’s a fan of dolphins, they might find Star Splash to be a delightful game, but I think most players will likely want to skip it.

tl;dr – Star Splash is an Auto-Runner (Auto-Swimmer?) that has you collecting stars as a dolphin. While some gameplay elements here are a creative take on the genre, overall the gameplay is really hurt by the game’s poor controls. There are still some creative elements at work here, but I think most will likely want to skip this one.

Grade: C

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