Review
Annie here!
This Friday's game is for those of us who just need to chill out and enjoy building a campsite for a while.
Starlit Stories is a very small but very fun and satisfying campsite builder game. If you've ever played Townscaper (which you should!) it's kind of similar in that you just endlessly expand your cute little campsite and it gradually becomes deceptively complex and unique to you, like an adorable fingerprint!
I played Starlit Stories for a good 45 minutes and found myself totally absorbed. At one point Sasha asked me to pass them something and I had to make them wait several minutes because I just couldn't put it down.
My Experience
The game starts off slow, which is probably good because it gives you time to learn the ropes. There's almost no tutorial which is great because the controls are SUPER intuitive and satisfying. At this point you'll notice there are still a noticeable amount of visual bugs with the UI, but it's the kind of thing that's easy to live with if you've played a video game before. At times it can be a little peeving, but assuming the devs make a fix soon I don't think it's so bad. Only once did I get really confused and frustrated, but I managed to figure out the problem within about 30 seconds.
Bugs aside, you can tell the UI developers for Starlit Stories understand what makes a UI feel responsive and good. The sounds are just right and visual feedback is nice and juicy, which I don't see often for games as small as this.
One caveat I'll give is this: don't pay too much mind to the Steam page. After playing Starlit Stories I went back to the store page and browsed through the screenshots and trailer and... wow. This is definitely one of those games that teaches you not to judge a book by its cover.
My final critique is that as you progress you start to unlock larger and larger facilities like restaurants or a basketball court, which really undermine the cozy feel of the game. The facilities are enormous and feel completely heterogenous to the rest of the game. I eventually gave up on adding them because I didn't want to ruin my campsite's vibe, but this ended up being the inciting factor for me quitting the game (along with the fact that I had to put it down to write this newsletter).
Final Thoughts
Starlit Stories has a couple problems that go along with it being a tiny game released by a probably tiny team, but all in all I found it a worthwhile experience. If you like "toy" games like Townscaper, you'll absolutely like this. It's just $4.99 on Steam and has about 45 minutes of relaxing gameplay, but it's also totally replayable.
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