Summary

• Starstruck Vagabond is an addictive gameplay loop of freight movement and maintenance.
• The story revolves around a purple egg, offering friendship events and engaging crew interactions.
• While mostly stable, the game has occasional glitches but impresses with visuals and soothing gameplay.

Starstruck Vagabond, developed by Yahtzee Croshaw and published by Second Wind, is one of the most addictive job simulators I've played in years. The job itself - a space trucker tasked with delivering cargo from one star system to another - is only the background element of a much larger story, but the entertainment it provides and opportunities it unlocks work both to move the story along and to let players fully immerse themselves in the world on display. It's a life simulator inspired by games like Stardew Valley as much as it is an adventure on par with Croshaw's literary "Will _____ The Galaxy For _____" trilogy, and I've stayed up until 2AM by accident more than once while playing it.

The core gameplay loop of Starstruck Vagabond consists of taking on delivery missions, a multi-step process which involves loading the cargo onto your ship, traveling to at least one (or possibly multiple) starports, and unloading the cargo at the designated areas. This might sound simple, but complications like low storage space and specialty crates (like irradiated cargo that ruins the contents of any adjacent package) turns the act of organization into an efficiency test, where the player must find the most optimal place to set their goods while still alotting room for the routine ship maintenance which must be performed en route.

Clean, Cargo, Repeat

Starstruck Vagabond's Addictive Gameplay Groove

This maintenance is Starstruck Vagabond's other main gameplay component, and how you feel about constantly having to clean, align, and repair your spaceship is going to determine how much you like the game as a whole. Filters and air cyclers get dirty over time and must be cleaned, bumping into asteroids will knock your warp rings and engine pipes out of alignment, and small pests called Zoobs can sneak onto your ship and wreak havoc unless they are quickly eradicated.

An improperly maintained ship will make your task of delivering cargo extremely difficult (power failures during travel aren't ideal for refrigerated goods, after all) while carrying too much cargo at once can impede proper ship maintenance. It's the act of keeping these two systems balanced that sets Starstruck Vagabond apart from being too similar to other "cozy" or "job simulator" games out there.

There is also some mild ship combat in Starstruck Vagabond, consisting mainly of dodging enemy attacks while firing lasers. It's simple, but effective in breaking up the monotony of space travel and debris dodging.

The story of Starstruck Vagabond concerns a giant, purple egg which has appeared in the center of the galaxy. Everyone has their own theories on why the egg has appeared, and throughout the game players will meet and befriend multiple crew who each have different opinions and thoughts on the egg's motives. It is in the interaction with these crew where the writing in Starstruck Vagabond really shines - Croshaw's well-established brand of non-sequitur humor is on full display for the entirety of the game, but players may be surprised at just how touching some of the friendship events in Starstruck Vagabond can be.

The Voyage And The Destination

Starstruck Vagabond Rewards Exploration With More Gameplay

Starstruck Vagabond takes about 15-20 hours to finish, but like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon before it, finishing up the main story doesn't mean it's the end of the game. Players are free to continue traveling the galaxy and taking on delivery jobs, side missions, and crew requests for as long as they want. Without spoiling too much, there is even a parallel to Stardew Valley's Community Center which completionist players will likely be absorbed in for a number of hours.

...a funny, refreshingly unique take on lifestyle simulator games...

The side missions and crew requests in Starstruck Vagabond are all centered around the core gameplay of freight movement and maintenance, but with varying tweaks to make them feel fresh. Derelict ships can be boarded and players can use their welder to destroy debris and gather useful items like food, minerals, money, gasoline, or lost PDAs containing important information. Answering a distress call might entail ridding another spaceship of Zoobs, or repairing some poor soul's oxygen supply before they choke to death, in exchange for a monetary reward. Sometimes you are asked to fly through dust storms in order to collect scientific data, and sometimes you are asked to shoot down a certain number of enemy ships in a specific sector.

Personally, I found the story of Starstruck Vagabond to be really engaging, but after I had acquired a few crew I found that I would put off advancing the story and instead decide to do just one more freight job, or survey just one more planet, or find just one more upgrade, before proceeding. That's the mark of a good game - one you just want to live in a little while before the inevitabilities of narrative force things to get more complicated. This peaked when I installed a kitchen onboard my ship and unlocked the ability to cook and serve meals to the crew, one new feature Starfield really should consider adding.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

4.5/5 - Occasional Glitches May Break Some Immersion

For the most part, Starstruck Vagabond is incredibly stable, especially when considering both its size and the fact that it was produced by a solo developer. With that in mind, however, there were a few instances of glitches and bugs which I encountered in my 25+ hours of playtime. Once a character who shouldn't have been with me appeared in a cutscene for another character's friendship event, and twice the game crashed to desktop when, during combat, my ship's lasers hit two different objects at the same time. I also seemed to lose any cargo if I placed it inside the kitchen module and warped to a new location - although this could just be because one of my crewmates was feeling underfed.

Other than that, there's not anything else I can find to complain about in Starstruck Vagabond. It's certainly Croshaw's best-looking game yet, and the upbeat, friendly ambiance of traveling around with a motley crew of space chums is much more of a calming experience than the oppressing darkness of The Consuming Shadow. It also sounds terrific, thanks in no small part to music composed by Sam Houghton and Joe Collinson (of BPM: Bullets Per Minute fame).

Soundtrack aside, there's a cathartic zen feeling which comes from making your rounds around the ship and hearing the hiss, whoosh, clunk of the starship working properly. It's a funny, refreshingly unique take on lifestyle simulator games, and one which is absolutely worth playing if you like the idea of Elite: Dangerous but can't be bothered with all those multi-hour space treks and weird landing pad requirements.

Starstruck Vagabond releases for PC on May 24th, 2024. A Steam code was provided to the author for the purposes of this review.