Star Galaxy is a new arcade game from Douglas Kim. It’s your job to save the stars by tapping on them before they hit the bottom of the screen. The difficulty goes up as you progress through the levels, and the scoring system is nice, getting bonus scores for tapping on one colored star, that’s not yellow, 3 or more times in a row. This gets very difficult as more different stars are added, the speed goes up, and various obstacles, like clouds, get in your way.

Ratings:

Graphics; 3/5

Gameplay; 3/5

Controls; 3/5

Replay Value; 3/5

Overall; 3/5

Additional Details:

Reviewed on iPod Touch 4G

Version Reviewed: 1.1

You start off with only yellow stars falling from the sky, and with each level, a new item is added. The second level gets blue stars, third level, orange stars, fourth level is clouds and falling stars that you can‘t hit, so on and so-forth. You’re given 10 star misses, or hits of items that you’re not aloud to hit, before you get a game over.

The graphics are nice, and retina supported, also in HD for iPad, and the game is Universal, so you’ll be able to experience the graphics as they’re meant to be seen even on your big screens. The controls are nice and responsive, like you’d expect them to be in a tap game. But there’s only one mode to play in, moving on through the levels, kind of like waves. Games like this could be a lot better with modes like Endless, being able to keep playing without the pause of leveling up, and having the difficulty increase as you go on, Challenge, giving us a certain number of stars to hit in a certain amount of time, and other challenges, or a Survival Mode, tapping on stars until you miss one. Leaving out different modes kind of takes away from the replayabiltiy.

To make up for it a little though, Douglas Kim has included OpenFeint and GameCenter leader boards, for you high-score mongers, and 21 achievements as a kind of long-term challenge. There are two power-ups, but only two from what I’ve seen so far, a collectable power-up, stored on the bottom right of the screen, and when used, clears the screen of all stars and shooting stars, and another one which when tapped slows down the stars. Power-ups that take out one color of stars, or leave one certain color would have been an awesome addition. Having one power-up that clears the screen completely really just takes away from your score, so using it actually hurts you in the long run, while the time slowing power-up is very good for collecting combos.

But what Douglas Kim has here is a nice casual arcade tapping game that’s good for gamers of all ages, and from casual to hardcore gamers as well. The graphics are nice and polished, and the music helps with the atmosphere of the game. More could be added to it, but what it has is good for $0.99, and if you’re a quick thinking tap fanatic, this game will be right up your ally.