Starstruck: Hands of Time
Play guitar in an interactive rock opera
Play guitar in musical story segments, with a catchy soundtrack featuring live instruments and singing by Elsie Lovelock (Hazbin Hotel). If you still have your Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar controller, dust it off, because this game supports it!
Destroy the world as a giant human hand
Demolish houses, solve puzzles, and open new paths for other characters as a giant hand. Unleash your destructive potential using hammers, screwdrivers, and more.
A strange game set in a miniature world
Save the future by exploring the strange diorama world of 20XX. Meet weirdly cute characters and unravel the mystery of how their little lives are connected to the end of mankind.
No rhythm? No problem
If you want to experience the music and story without the stresses of rhythm gameplay, you can enable “Autoplay” in the options menu. When Autoplay is enabled, the rhythm gameplay sections will play themselves.
Features
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Explore three intertwined adventures set in a charming diorama world, switching characters to solve puzzles and change the future.
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Play guitar and dodge attacks to an original soundtrack in catchy musical story segments.
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Destroy the world as a giant human hand in hectic action-puzzle gameplay. (By the way, you can also customize the hand’s size and skin color.)
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Extensive controller support allows you to play with your keyboard, Xbox controller, PS4 controller, Switch Pro Controller, or even guitar controller! You can also remap controls as you wish for the rhythm gameplay.
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Adjust the difficulty level between “Normal” and “Master” mode for the rhythm gameplay to suit your style, or just sit back and watch with “Autoplay” mode.
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Original soundtrack by acclaimed composer Andrew Allanson features live instruments and vocals spanning many genres.
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MetaWare High School (Demo)
I found this game through a video of Alpha Beta Gamer and decided to watch it out of pure boredom. I stopped at about 15 minutes in because I was enjoying the dialogue and jokes so much I decided to experience the game myself without any spoilers.
All the characters have great designs and are very likable,
! even some of Nari’s lines made me smile and relieved me of some of the tension built up from the unknown.
The game has 10 different endings, and the true ending for getting the other endings. They’re not too hard to get and if you get stuck there’s a great guide which tells what you need to select.
! The dancing ending is the best one though.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
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‘We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world’' - Gautama Buddha
What a deep quote huh? Definitely not the kind of words you’d expect to use for an opening to a review for a ‘demo’ but then again MetaWare High School (Demo) is not your typical demo. It begins innocently as a multi-character VN each with their own unique personalities to provide the Reader with some depth and variety during the first of many playthroughs. It then gradually morphs into a mesh of dark humour, philosophical ramblings & sardonic irony truly hooking the Reader into this multiple choice branching of five High School females who curiously try to interact with the Reader after discovering his/her presence.
– Real player with 7.1 hrs in game
Starstruck: Prologue
Starstruck is an unconventional rhythm adventure game that harkens back to the glory days of quirky Japanese passion projects from the early PS2 era. Not to say that the game relies on nostalgia, but it has that same intangible charm you can find in games like Gitaroo Man, Stretch Panic and Chulip.
Although cast in the same mold, Starstruck very much has its own identity. The game goes for a miniature aesthetic and it’s used to great effect. The lighting is gorgeous and you can often spot deliberate imperfections like fingerprints in the 3D models that really sell the hand-crafted look. This paired with the sublime composition and sound design— heavily featuring LIVE instruments— culminate into creating an alluring, dreamlike atmosphere that’s simply a joy to take in.
– Real player with 20.2 hrs in game
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Words cannot describe the sheer delight I had playing this game. It’s really something special.
A friend of mine described it as “A playable rock opera straight off the Dreamcast/PS2” and I couldn’t agree more with that statement.
To me, the world and characters of Starstruck have that kind of magic that, like, a 1970s or 80s children show has. There’s a unique kind of nostalgia that I get from playing this game; it really takes me back to my youth, playing with my Thomas the Tank Engine table set and knocking down the little cutout trees, buildings, and people with my hands.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game