Stellar Interface

Genre: Shmup / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Stellar Interface + Sudoku Zenkai bundle, along with Sudoku Zenkai)

Stellar Interface is a Shmup with Roguelike elements released in 2016 on PC, ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019, and then ported to Xbox One in 2023. This game has players progressing through various levels with their selected craft, upgrading it with random upgrades after the completion of each level.

The presentation in Stellar Interface is pretty good with solid 2D pixel art visuals, though you’ll be seeing a lot of the same levels and enemies repeated a lot. These visuals are backed by an energetic synthesized soundtrack that does a good job keeping the adrenaline pumping, but isn’t especially memorable.

As for the gameplay, I’ll admit that Stellar Interface is an easy game to write off at first. The early levels in particular are oddly short, the enemies and backgrounds repetitive, and the Roguelike randomization means that the levels don’t have the sort of thoughtful design put into them that you tend to search for in the best Shmups.

That having been said, this game does the Roguelike elements right, with players gradually unlocking access to a dizzying amount of variety in the ships they have access to. You can try to focus on a ship with a specialization in one type of weapon, or diversify. You can bog down your ship with heavy weaponry, or keep it light and maneuverable. At one point, I started collecting drones that hovered around my ship and automatically fired… and then I got an option to double their number… and then I got another. Make the right choices and have a little luck and you can get to be a real powerhouse by the end of a run, something that’s really delightful. And players will have the ability to unlock more ships and upgrade options for future runs as well.

I don’t think Stellar Interface is likely to go down in history as one of the best Shmups in the genre – the problems I pointed to earlier still hold it back quite a bit. But as a Shmup with Roguelike elements, this game has some good fun to offer, and fans of the Shmup genre will find that it fills a nice niche within that genre.

tl;dr – Stellar Interface is a Shmup with Roguelike elements, and while the Shmup side of things can get a bit samey and the random elements hinder the level design, the Roguelike elements really help to keep things interesting and make for a lot of potential fun. As a result, this is far from a perfect entry in the Shmup genre, but it’s fun and unique enough to be worth a look.

Grade: B

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