Written by Flamecaster, edited by Otaku Apologist
“The Stargazers”, developed by Lupiesoft. An erotic kinetic novel about a bunch of diverse girls and their sexy dramatic adventures in outer space. Available on Nutaku’s storefront for $16.00. Released on March 8th, 2017. The game features uncensored female genitalia.
The science fiction genre has always held a special place in my heart. There’s just something deeply enthralling about space exploration, discovering alien cultures, learning of new technologies that may plausibly be discovered by humankind one day. I was quite excited to get my hands on “The Stargazers”, to see how science fiction works in a yuri-centric narrative.
STORY
Stargazers jumps straight into character introductions. Instead of having the three female leads introduced one after the other, the game lets you choose one of three narration perspectives at the beginning. You get this choice again at several key points of the story. You can experience the story from the eyes of Temperance Goodchild, a disciplined military woman with no tolerance for nonsense; Risty Mello, the (seemingly) distant communications expert and romantic partner to the third main character, the highly sexual Viiflidi Ylvida, a busty free-spirited alien girl with only one thing on her mind: sex, sex and even more sex.
Temperance, Risty and Viiflidi all serve on the ADFSS Shooting Star. Temperance has been reassigned from a Mars base to lead the two-man crew as their captain. The girls get into all kinds of adventures that bring them closer together, as they try to solve their prejudices, shortcomings, and personal indiscretions to come together as a team. While the overarching narrative focuses on the interpersonal relationships between the girls, the writers did a fine job in establishing a world that even sci-fi junkies like me can get interested in.
GAMEPLAY
Stargazers is a kinetic novel. You click the screen to “turn the page”. There are no routes, no choices that take the story into different directions. The only influence you have over the game’s events, is the option to choose the narration perspective, which certainly adds refreshing variety to the reading experience. It also helps to establish the characters. The downside is that if you stick with your favorite character throughout the whole game, you won’t learn much about the others. I highly recommend you go through the story at least three times to learn how each character sees the world, and what kind of backstories they have.
GLITCHES AND ISSUES
There are plenty of good ideas that work in the favor of The Stargazers, but there are equally as many flaws that bring the production down. For such a short visual novel, the game is full of technical bugs. The bugs are the type you’d never expect from a game that was properly tested. There’s sprites missing, and errors that lead to unexpected crashes. Worst of all, the soundtrack and sound effects completely vanish when you play from Tem’s, or Risty’s perspective. The intense fight in the casino during the latter part of the story could have definitely used more powerful tunes, and visceral sound effects to make the scene more engaging. Unfortunately, that’s not the only missed opportunity.
The story and buildup are very strong in the beginning of the game, but that quickly changes towards the middle. Things start falling apart by the end of it. A lot of plot points are introduced halfway only to be dropped and never mentioned again. Hastily introduced characters appear briefly to serve as talking heads to a troubled main character, only to vanish just as soon as their usability expires. The resolutions to each of the three separate narratives are weak and rushed, especially Temperance’s. While she gradually warms up to the antics of her teammates and starts to develop some feelings for them — which frankly seem to stem from sexual frustration rather than anything else — the way she changes her mind about them feels way too fast.
The few choices the player can make (that don’t involve switching character perspectives) are ultimately pointless and do not change anything of importance to the unfolding story. The game would be better without them.
Perhaps with a few more months in development, “The Stargazers” would have turned out a much different animal; one that you wouldn’t prefer to jettison out of a spaceship’s airlock.
GRAPHICS
The most enticing parts of “The Stargazers”, and all of Lupiesoft’s production for that matter, lie in the audio-visual department. Taosym’s character designs are always unique-looking, thanks to his distinct art style and high attention to curvature, shadowing, and color palettes. Given that most of the female characters in the game are either scantily clad or sport tight-fitting bodysuits, letting you enjoy the women’s curves and muscles. The few brief lesbian sex scenes and CGs make most of the quality of the art style, even though they could have been longer.
“The Stargazers” does a good job of capturing classic technological designs that were ever so present in science fiction of the ’50s and ’60s. The ship designs look smooth and pleasantly rounded. The designs for the robots that the squad pilot, may look goofy, but they are a short love letter to those cheesy, overacted sci-fi shows of the past century.
MUSIC
“The Stargazers” introduces a nice mix of modern music with a generous amount of electronic and rocking tracks that compliment the narrative. When things get heated in the story, and that happens quite frequently, the music shifts into a more visceral gear, making sure the reader really feels the intensity of the scene. The quieter exposition-driven moments have comfortable tunes playing over them, creating a relaxing atmosphere.
SOUND EFFECTS AND VOICE-ACTING (SFX)
Other than the soundtrack, the audio of Stargazers does not feature any additional effects, or voice acting. Given the caliber of the whole production, which is way above average for a western-developed game, the experience could have easily benefited from the addition of sex noises, or even a moans here and there.
HENTAI
Beautiful girls, human and alien, wear skintight outfits throughout the story. When they aren’t wearing sexy outfits, they are fucking. There is plenty of flirting and innuendos sown in the dialog. The few girl-on-girl scenes featured are brief, and get to the point quickly. The girls go at each other with full force, not holding back neither punches nor vaginal fisting. Taosym’s art style lends itself well to the pussy-pounding action. The multiple girls featured in the title are drawn with varied body types from slim and curvaceous to chunky and luscious.
CONCLUDING WORDS
The Stargazers has a story with good potential that soars a bit too close to the Sun. While the relationships between characters are interesting, I feel that their arcs lacked a proper conclusion. Instead, what we got is an adventure that ends way too abruptly with little payoff despite some good buildup. The developer has promised to fix the technical issues of their release in a future patch, but as of time of writing, all the aforementioned bugs are still present.
This was our review of Stargazers. You can download this game at Nutaku’s store.
Overall
- Story
- Graphics
- Hentai
- Gameplay
- SFX
- Music
