I loved Star of Providence to the point of having trouble putting it down because of its fast-paced shmup gameplay, punishing bullet hell patterns, and replayability. Defeating its astoundingly difficult boss battles is satisfying and encourages the player to improve mechanically and thoughtfully. If you make it to the Hard mode, you’ll be treated to bullet patterns that will test your dexterity like few others have done before.
All right, Dunkey, you got me: Star of Providence is a very fun game. I did my best to avoid giving into the hype from your entertaining YouTube channel and what your fans have been saying for the last few days.
I played it. I played it for 12 hours. I want to play it for 12 hours more. Heck, I can see myself investing just as much time in Star of Providence as I did in Enter the Gungeon (somewhere around 40 hours or so) during the pandemic when I was stuck at home. Twin-stick roguelikes are most enjoyable in short, but sweet, bursts of chaotic gameplay, and Star of Providence takes the cake thanks to its replayability.
It’s clear that developers Team D-13 and publisher BIGMODE (led by Dunkey, himself) know what makes bullet hells fun, especially for players like me who enjoy arcade-like gameplay loops and seek creatively punishing bullet hell designs. Although Star of Providence originally released in 2017 under a different name, its current state and newest additions elevate it from a simple roguelike shmup to a deep bullet hell.
Star of Providence shocked me in its depth. It masquerades as a simple shmup (shoot-em-up) like Galaga or Touhou but contains the traditional roguelike variety where every time you start a new run, you’ll be presented with something new despite the core gameplay loop retaining its solid skeleton. You don’t need to spend time attempting to “learn” about Star of Providence beyond just picking it up to play, which was all the more reason why I was hooked from its first few minutes.
Things start off simple, you control a little ship in a small room with one duty: Eliminate all the enemies in that room. Upon doing so, the walls open up to show adjacent (small) rooms full of enemies to be defeated. Every so often you come across a larger miniboss that, upon being slain, grant you access to a large boss. Rinse and repeat until your little ship succumbs (which will assuredly happen) to the enemies and their onslaught of bullets. To master Star of Providence, I was to keep my ship from taking damage. The more enemies I destroyed in succession, the greater score multiplier that would impact my score and rewards.
Star of Providence’s procedurally generated rooms keep the focus on the player’s little ship and surviving increasing waves of bullets that dart across the screen. Thanks to the compact rooms, the pace remains constant, chaotic, and fun. There’s never a moment of boredom from moving through an empty room with nothing to shoot or uncover. It’s delightful.
Bullet hell shmups need to have a constant pace to keep players on their toes, be it evolving bullet patterns or increasingly difficult enemies. Star of Providence’s procedural generation and wide array of bosses ensures that every run feels fresh, chaotic, and fun. Happening across hidden rooms and other small secrets adds icing on the cake, but the fact remains that Star of Providence remains fun yet chaotic throughout every run from the first room to the final boss (assuming I could get that far).
I occasionally happened across new weapons, cartridges (run-specific upgrades, like an increased multiplier or occasionally recovering health upon taking damage), and other small bits and bobs. If I already had a weapon, choosing the new weapon would salvage the old and make it so that I got some value from changing my weapon.
Weapon swapping is not as deep as, say, Enter the Gungeon. I could only have a single secondary weapon (that I could not swap) during a run of Star of Providence. If that weapon ran out of ammunition, the weapon would break and I would be left to use my ship’s often-weak default weapon. Thus, I would often have to weigh my weapon’s longevity as I whittled away from its ammo reserves while hoping for a room reward to grant me additional ammo.
In later runs, the decision of scrapping my current weapon for a potentially new and stronger weapon would decide the fate of that run. Sometimes, the newer weapon would have unlucky keywords (think weapon perks) but would have far more ammunition to get me through a tough boss fight. In the instances where I clearly made a terrible decision by holding onto a great weapon with virtually no ammo left, it felt bad to lose that weapon, but it taught me to feel comfortable with swapping out a weapon so I wasn’t left with the default gun.
The boss battles at the end of each stage are where Star of Providence shines brightest. Shmup boss battles often involve a massive boss that fills the screen, often punishing the player with small windows to dodge streams of bullets. Mastering Star of Providence is tough, but it’s so rewarding to successfully take down a boss and move ahead to a new floor. In the current version of Star of Providence, each floor will select a single boss from a pool (26 bosses in total!).
There are a few (read: handful) of side objectives to be completed across any number of runs. For the most part, there’s very little way of tracking progress or seeing what I need to do without opening up the Steam achievements or heading over to a Wiki. Completing a side mission almost always feels rewarding, but there’s a part of me that wishes that there was an easier way of tracking my progress across my runs.
My biggest issue with Star of Providence is its readability – that is, how the information about weapons, upgrades, and more are displayed to the player. Star of Providence looks simple at the start, but the amount of upgrades and weapons are quite a bit to take in. I can understand a gameplay decision to keep players out of the menus and instead focus on simply playing the game, but having a clear way of understanding my current power and current objectives (including the Seals I have currently obtained/have yet to obtain – no spoilers, folks) would help me chart out what I should keep an eye out for during a run.
Permanent power is not a thing in this roguelike, but that’s not necessarily a problem. Unlike roguelikes such as Hades and Astral Ascent, power is granted in the form of a wider pool of weapons as opposed to permanent bonuses that persist across runs. In theory, this would mean that the difficulty curve of Star of Providence is steady and steep. In practice, mastering the bullet hell aspect and maximizing a score on any given run is the key to succeeding. It also means that finally slaying a boss (like Fish, lorde have mercy) for the first time feels ever so satisfying.
Before I conclude this review, I’m going to be honest: I plan on keeping Star of Providence installed on my desktop and on my laptop for when I’m traveling. I truly appreciate how, in just 20 minutes, I can get to the final floor to face the Overlord final boss. Of course, unsuccessful runs are shorter, but the fact remains that I can very easily get through a single run in a short amount of time and feel like I want to play more. Now that Star of Providence is available on Switch, I feel compelled to get it only because I travel more with my Switch than I do my laptop, and Star of Providence is the perfect short-term game to play on a train ride or in the car.
If Team D-13 were to make a sequel or consider a larger-form expansion, I want them to lean into Star of Providence’s lore and charm. What currently exists is a nice touch and has small moments of silliness (like the passive-aggressive cat who always has something smart to say in the Hub), but I want more from the in-game universe. Enter the Gungeon doesn’t take itself too seriously thanks to its massive array of guns, including a bullet that shoots guns, and I want a degree of silliness to permeate throughout Star of Providence’s small rooms. When that silliness and charm are given a greater spotlight, only then will Star of Providence exist as the gold standard of bullet hells.
I loved Star of Providence to the point of having trouble putting it down because of its fast-paced shmup gameplay, punishing bullet hell patterns, and replayability. Defeating its astoundingly difficult boss battles is satisfying and encourages the player to improve mechanically and thoughtfully. If you make it to the Hard mode, you’ll be treated to bullet patterns that will test your dexterity like few others have done before.
