If I was ever going to go into space, my ‘space music’ would either be some slow and sleepy jazz, down tempo electronica or metal. Too often is space painted as a beautiful mystery; we look up at the stars and liken them to a delicate diamond spray, coyly vying for our attention in the most precious and understated way. For years, pictures of nebulae were artistically enhanced, colours made to look more vibrant than they actually appear.
Never mind that space is essentially a lot of nothing, empty space, gases, rocks, littered with galaxies and star systems. The space between them all is incomprehensibly large. You’d see uncountable lifetimes of nothing in travelling from one place to another (until we get the star gates in place…). There are some pretty dangerous things in space though. Black holes, a collapsed star with a gravitational pull so dense it pulls in all matter, even light. Pulsars, spinning neutron stars that shoot out deadly electromagnetic radiation for millions of miles into space. Even closer to home, we have to consider our own Sun, which ejects massive bursts of solar plasma towards us, and thanks to our Earth’s electromagnetic field, it is mostly shrugged off. Without it, we’d probably be like Mars.
Nothing is more dangerous however, than space pirates.
You don’t know why and you don’t care, but you know these lewd rude space dudes need taking care of.
A tiny ship, dwarfed by the magnitude of space takes on legions of star ship destroyers in a glory of pixel art, bright colours and bullet-hells.
Shoot your way through a danger zone of asteroids, make mincemeat of enemy ships with a giant rotating saw, spawn bots that spew fire everywhere as you cackle in manic space-glee.
This game is so fun. I’m a big fan of roguelike games, and I’m a big fan of semi-mindless spray-and-pray shooting. High-action screenshots were actually hard to take when the Xbox One Kinect can’t hear you over the battering heavy metal soundtrack (a worthwhile trade-off), and you’re also screaming in a half-garbled manner because there is so much stuff to shoot! You couldn’t pick a better soundtrack, it fits Steredenn perfectly. Even if you don’t like metal (honestly, it’s not all pig squeals and old men burning down churches), it’s instrumental and therefore mostly inoffensive. Just chugging guitars and thundering drums which make you want to start welding fins and rocket engines to your neighbour’s car to go for the joy ride of your life. (We do not condone this behaviour. We watch enough Fail Army.)
Imagine my glassy-eyed and gaping jaw as bullets spew from every direction, giving you only a split second to make a do-or-die decision (most often for me, die).
A few minutes of shooting swathes of enemies down with your giant laser will have your blood pumping. Maybe you want to get in close and personal. Smell the rank fear rolling off the other ships as you get in close and unleash a hellish circular saw to shred into the enemy innards and leave them leaking coolant into the universe. Auto-turret, anyone? Supplement your enjoyment with a friendly buddy who will auto-attack everything on screen, helping you tote up those delicious points.
What good are all these weapons, if not to just look cool? Well different weapons have different strengths and weaknesses. Some do special damage, or normal damage, or are better against shields. And you probably won’t get the same weapon every time, apart from your default one.
You’ve navigated your way through asteroids, and lasers, and shooty turrets and flying chainsaws of death. Now to bring out the big guns. El ultimate hombre. The bosses.
Dwarfing your ship in comparison, these veritable Titanics of space are the Space Pirate elite. They fight hard, though most are slow-moving, so depending on what weapons you’ve elected to equip yourself with up until this point through various drops depends on your method of extermination. Maybe you can fire your auto-rockets to home in on the boss while you strategically dodge the incoming barrage of bullet hell. Nip round underneath and behind it where it can’t attack you so you can unleash your deadly short range attacks?
One you’ve cleared this boss, you can select an upgrade, which from the selection, is nicely varied.
Steredenn isn’t the kind of game you will pick up and finish in one go. It has countless hours of replay value in that the levels are sort of randomly generated, and there is an arsenal of more than thirty weapons to try to stack. A pleasantly challenging learning curve means you’re not left in the dark for more than should really be troublesome. It’s a frantic and enjoyably chaotic game, and every wrong twitch of the control stick could be the difference between life and death. Not only that, but you can compete in the Daily Run. A one life, one shot chance at getting on the day’s leaderboard by getting the highest score. Complete as far as you can into one run, after that, you have to wait until tomorrow. If a boss is being particularly troublesome, you can practise against it in the Arena. This will only apply to bosses you have already encountered. Don’t be thinking you could be sneaky and learn all the boss attack patterns in advance.
Summary
Steredenn is a tidy little indie blessing, with the currently popular pixel style, a variety of attack styles and a soundtrack that will have you windmilling in no time. Seriously, Google Steredenn, and Steredenn soundtrack is the second most popular search. A roguelike shoot-em-up in a galaxy of its own, it’s out now on Xbox One.
Lauren contributed 14 articles to ICXM between 2014–2016, covering game reviews, and Xbox news with a focus on hands-on impressions and verified-source reporting. Their bylines on the site span the run-up to Xbox One S and Project Scorpio, plus the broader Windows 10 gaming push. They post on X as @Lulzaroonie.