Star Eater (Arcade)

In my search for games to review on NewGrounds, very few of the under judgement games stand out. Firstly, star eater's logo was captivating enough despite the unhelpful description which just went "star eater".

General:

Design (2/5 seconds) - I think the concept is pretty cool but there's much to improve on, explained in greater detail below.

Audio (3/5 bubbles) - Overall a pretty simple soundtrack that got the mood going initially but it soon died down. 

Mechanics (2/5 spacebars) - Once again, there's room for improvement. For now the mechanics are smooth though.

Art (2/5 floaties) - The game itself has quite the dizzifying effect with the bunch of "orbs" floating around in darkness. The art could be higher quality, even for a simple arcade game.

Emoview:

What's going on? (1/5 balls) - As I mentioned, I was thrown into the game right away and without a pause or restart button, I had to die and reload before being able to read the description. With that, I would suggest you add those 3 elements to your game (Pause, Restart and Instructions).

Boring Enemy AI (2/5 enemies) - As you go around the map you realize that eventually there will just be three enemies and you also know that all they do is follow you. There isn't anything too difficult about the enemies and later in the game, especially with the boost, they become just more of an annoyance rather than a threat.

Twenty orbs (2/5 orbs) - It didn't make much sense to me that you get such a huge boost right after you collect 20 orbs, Reading the description, I initially assumed you would need to gather them in the middle to get the boost. However, when you put the orbs into the middle you're losing that boost so there's pretty much no point to scoring them in until the last few seconds. 

Spike of power (3/5 sparkles) - I must admit it felt great to have such a spike of power but after the initial 20 seconds or so I took to get those 20 orbs, it didn't seem to get faster or better or anything. The powerups from the boxes didn't seem to have too much effect and the game got pretty plain. 

Verdict:

Overall I think its still pretty entertaining. However, there's a lot of small design improvements that would make the game much better.

Dunk dem stars for yourself right here: Star Eater