NONE WILL BE LEFT TO MOURN YOU BUT GHOSTS

There was a time when I was working way too much. Between putting in upwards of 55 hours a week at my desk job and chipping away at my art projects, I had little to no time to play any games.

One dragging lunch break, however, a co-worker of mine pointed me to Loren Schmidt’s Star Guard, an independently developed Flash game that took Schmidt a long 16 months to complete. What resulted was a convincingly epic yet simplistic interactive space opera that gorged itself on several well-spent hours of my time.

While I've yet to brave HARD MODE, my understanding is that it offers
a more traditional, less forgiving gaming experience.
(Images sourced from http://star-guard.en.softonic.com/images)

In a GamaSutra interview, Schmidt said that he wasn’t fond of slapping the ‘retro’ label onto his high tension sidescroller. While the game’s limited fidelity does resemble the those graphics of legendary Atari 2600 games, the super abstracted art style feels intentional.

Star Guard’s download page beckons, “GUIDE THE SPACEMAN THROUGH THE CASTLE AND DEFEAT THE WIZARD.” A deceptively brusque and plain synopsis. However, while striding, hopping, leaping and shooting your way through the wizard’s hordes, the player is presented white floating blocks of narrative text. The snippets of story intermittently color the game’s curious graphics with a grim narrative of a once proud space-fairing culture that is crumbling under their own arrogance. The spaceman is the people’s last hope to defeat the malevolent wizard who they themselves created.

Forget motion capture, ray tracing and independently animated hair follicles. Star Guard invokes our primal tendencies to bend abstract visual representations into images of our mind’s choosing. The color cues tell you all you need to know about your surroundings; a vivid imagination driven by crisp preemptive gameplay takes care of the rest.

The charm of Loderunner with the energy of Mega Man.
(Images sourced from http://star-guard.en.softonic.com/images)

This isn’t to say that Schmidt cut any corners in regard to the graphics. In fact, the game has several unique objects whose shapes give the mind’s eye plenty to work with. Some of the enemies have convincingly organic walk cycles, while the red pools bubble below your daring jumps with satisfying “pops”. The in-game sound is comprised of a basic arrangement of sound effects alone: chirps, bleets, crunches and puffs. Set against the pitch black background and the equally bleak narrative, the spartan audio and utter lack of a soundtrack hammer home the story of the spaceman’s grim and lonely mission.

Environmental hazards .(Images sourced from http://star-guard.en.softonic.com/images)

The spaceman is represented as a green pixel effigy, and the player’s options are limited to moving left and right, jumping varied heights based on the length of key press, and shooting. It’s possible to flood the screen with an barrage of shots, but the level design is often peppered with obstacles that serve as cover for the enemy more often than not. Certain enemies also regenerate once killed and if the player doesn’t keep a sharp mind they can easily be overwhelmed by threats from all sides.

Take a look at Star Guard on 'hard mode.' I would have taken a video cap of my own gameplay,

but it would have been embarrassing to watch.

As intimidating as that may sound, there is a certain rhythm to the game that keeps it moving. Once the player has learned how and when to vary the height of their jumps, Star Guard picks up and incredibly satisfying and addicting momentum. While there are no deaths or game overs (in normal difficulty level), there are several incentives for the player to hone their skills, among which include improving their scores with each successive level, and avoiding the frustrating experience of dying and being sent back to a check point, losing that euphoric rhythm. The stages also become increasingly busy and more interesting, with the final battle being a particularly rewarding experience.

Star Guard maintains and advances the tradition of minimalist graphics and challenging level progression. This game is free to play, but I strongly urge those who enjoy it to pitch the developer a couple bucks (and check out some of his other developments), as I am eager to see what else he has to offer the indie game community.