StarCrawlers Chimera

About

"StarCrawlers: Chimera" is a sci-fi turn-based RPG where you infiltrate the Chimera BioPharma complex to find Dr. Cerberus. With procedurally-generated floors, various skill trees, and numerous abilities, gear, and enemies, each playthrough offers a unique experience. Choose your difficulty level and engage in tactical combat with 60+ enemy types, while customizing your character with over 200 abilities and 36 skill trees. The game also features permadeath and regular content updates.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player Play through the game's story or campaign solo

77%

Audience ScoreBased on 94 reviews

gameplay6 positive mentions

grinding4 negative mentions

The game features a dynamic build system with a wide variety of skill trees, allowing for diverse character customization and replayability.
The writing and setting are engaging and humorous, providing an entertaining experience for players.
The game has solid mechanics and a unique turn-based FPS combat style, making it a fun dungeon crawler despite its flaws.

The game suffers from numerous bugs and poor polish, leading to frustrating gameplay experiences, including softlocking issues.
The user interface is clunky and unintuitive, particularly with movement controls that force players to use the analog stick instead of the D-pad.
Many players feel the game lacks depth and meaningful choices, with skills that do not synergize well and a lack of engaging narrative elements.

story
32 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
13%
74%
13%
The story aspect of the game has received significant criticism, with many players noting its lack of depth and engagement, describing it as nearly non-existent. While there are optional side missions and a focus on loot collection, the overall narrative is seen as minimal, lacking character development, dialogue, and meaningful choices. Players express a desire for a more traditional RPG experience with a compelling storyline, rather than the repetitive dungeon-crawling format that dominates the gameplay.
- “Sounds stupid, which it also is, but it's very entertaining and provides a funny and immersive background story to the game as well as giving the player more opportunities for loot.”
- “This one is a single character dungeon crawler, where Starcrawlers had many different missions; this has one big mission: a dungeon with different big floors, secrets, side missions, and loot.”
- “While I get it's the purpose of the game to clear out each floor, I would have loved just random missions to do in between the main storyline.”
- “I see lots of people complaining that the story is non-existent.”
- “It really shouldn't be called an RPG at all because there's no story, no dialogue, no choice, and no characters besides mindless NPCs.”
- “There still doesn't seem to be a decent storyline; it's mostly a strategy game rather than anything else.”
gameplay
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30%
55%
15%
The gameplay is characterized by a grid-based structure typical of roguelikes, with unique mechanics and a stealth system that enhances strategic decision-making. Players appreciate the ability to experiment with different builds and skills during each run, fostering a sense of progression and engagement. Overall, the game offers decent gameplay value, especially for fans of dungeon crawlers and roguelikes, despite being a departure from its predecessor.
- “The developers are clearly aware of this quality and implemented a stealth mechanic, giving you a couple of turns after opening a door to decide how you want to engage.”
- “The game's more roguelike structure lends itself well to this kind of gameplay, as each run (no matter if the last one succeeded or ended prematurely) allows you to experiment with other build ideas.”
- “I find it engaging because it shares some mechanics with dungeon crawlers, provides a good sense of progression and build diversity, and it has a solid loot system.”
- “Even though this game, in gameplay as well as in the UI, is extremely grid-based, as one would expect from a roguelike, they force you to control movement with the analog stick.”
- “Gameplay was decent and it's cheap, so... sure, why not.”
- “If you liked Starcrawlers, I'd recommend this even though it's a significant departure from the first in terms of gameplay.”
humor
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The game is praised for its quirky and entertaining humor, with players highlighting the clever writing, amusing item descriptions, and engaging dialogue. The attention to detail enhances the comedic experience, making the background story immersive and providing players with varied rewards based on their reactions. Overall, the humor adds a delightful layer to the gameplay, contributing to its charm and enjoyment.
- “The attention to detail and the humorous moments in this game are great.”
- “Great sense of humor, between the item descriptions, social media posts, dialogue, and even the cute 1337 robot names.”
- “They're so funny, and I loved how you could get different rewards depending on how you reacted.”
replayability
10 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
60%
20%
20%
The game offers significant replayability through its deep skill trees and the ability to experiment with various builds, encouraging players to approach challenges differently. While enemy variety remains consistent across playthroughs, the procedurally generated levels and diverse starting skills enhance the replay experience, making it appealing for those who enjoy mastering different strategies.
- “Amazing game with tons of replayability, provided you are good enough to beat it!”
- “+ high replayability due to the procedurally generated floors & wide variety of starting skills to choose from.”
- “Those levels however are all huge and there is a ton of replayability since you can pick/mix & match from 36 different skill trees in the character creator.”
- “Enemy variety doesn't change much from playthrough to playthrough, so the incentive for replayability is to go with different skill builds.”
- “Those levels, however, are all huge and there is a ton of replayability since you can pick, mix, and match from 36 different skill trees in the character creator.”
grinding
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
Players find the grinding aspect of the game starts off enjoyable but quickly devolves into tedium, particularly due to a combat system overhaul that makes encounters feel repetitive and unengaging. The shift to simultaneous enemy actions leads to either mindless button-mashing or frustratingly drawn-out strategies, culminating in lackluster boss fights that feel like a chore rather than a challenge. Overall, the grinding experience is criticized for becoming a tedious and time-wasting endeavor.
- “It starts off kind of fun, and rapidly becomes more and more tedious, culminating in a series of awful, slow, drawn-out boss fights at the end.”
- “They changed the combat system from instanced encounters into that obnoxious 'everything on the map acts at the same time' garbage that turns every single fight into either boring press-1 spam where you're never in any danger and so everything feels like a pointless waste of your time, or a tedious circus performance where you kite everything around the map and open/close doors constantly and other stupid antics like that to delay the hostiles while you abuse cooldown recovery and regeneration.”
optimization
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50%
50%
Overall, the game's optimization is generally praised, with smooth performance noted until a specific challenging floor that causes some lag, attributed to the developers' ambitious design choices. However, the shift to a real-time combat system has drawn criticism for making encounters feel either monotonous or overly complicated, detracting from the overall experience.
- “Performance has been great up until my current floor, which chugs a bit (for good reason though! The developers went kind of all out on this floor and it's kind of awesome!)”
- “They changed the combat system from instanced encounters into that obnoxious 'everything on the map acts at the same time' garbage that turns every single fight into either boring press-1 spam where you're never in any danger, making everything feel like a pointless waste of your time, or a tedious circus performance where you kite everything around the map and open/close doors constantly, engaging in other frustrating tactics to delay the hostiles while you abuse cooldown recovery and regeneration.”
music
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25%
25%
50%
The music in the game is praised for its ability to provide crucial audio cues, helping players identify enemy encounters and the end of combat. However, some users express frustration that they must rely on these cues for gameplay clarity, suggesting a need for improvement in visual indicators. There is also a strong desire for the original composer to return for any future installments.
- “If you listen to the music cues, you get a better idea when an enemy has been spotted (even if you can't see them) and when combat has ended.”
- “If Starcrawlers 2 will ever be a thing, then please get the original composer back for the soundtrack!”
- “If you listen to the music cues, you get a better idea when an enemy has been spotted (even if you can't see them) and when combat has ended, but it's ridiculous that you have to depend on this.”
graphics
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100%
The graphics are generally considered to be decent, maintaining a satisfactory level of quality throughout the game.

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StarCrawlers Chimera
$19.99
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30h Median play time

24h Average play time

3-40h Spent by most gamers

*Based on 6 analyzed playthroughs

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