Star of Providence

It’s not very often that a game in a genre as well-worn as roguelikes is able to truly capture my attention. I’ll play a handful of them a year, and I’ll find plenty of them fun enough, but more often than not, I’m not able to find any real lasting appeal. Sure, the gameplay loops of roguelites have been practically whittled down to a scientific formula at this point, but very few of them manage to offer me anything beyond their aesthetic, not well-considered design to compliment gameplay and flow. While it is unfortunate that the use of the term roguelike has been eroded to this level of marketing buzzword meaninglessness, it makes true standouts in the genre easier to pick out of a crowd, and for the love of God, everyone should be paying attention to Star of Providence.

Originally released under a different name (Monolith) on Steam in 2017, Star of Providence has had over half a decade’s worth of updates, community feedback, and pure gumption carrying it across the finishing line, gaining a publisher in Bigmode last year and a release on Nintendo Switch just this past month, which is where I played the game. I want to emphasize the significance of being published by Bigmode, since it’s a publisher founded by YouTuber Videogamedunkey with the express purpose of spotlighting indie games he believes in, and whose sole other published game at the time of this writing is 2024’s Animal Well, a game with many (well-deserved) game of the year nods under its belt. Star of Providence is worth every bit of that same recognition and love, especially when it’s being endorsed by both Videogamedunkey and Matt Murray.

So what actually IS Star of Providence apart from being ostensibly a roguelike that I like a lot? Howabout: a bullet hell shooter in which you pilot a ship from room to room in search of conquering each miniboss on the floor so that you can open up that floor’s boss encounter, and hopefully moving on to the next floor after defeating said boss to then start the process over again. In each non-miniboss or boss chamber, you’ll come across standard enemy encounters, shops, upgrade terminals, items, or secrets. If you’re familiar, think Binding of Isaac, but with a lot less poop and bodily fluids, and also with less heavy of a hand when it comes to upgrading your character. 

See, in Binding of Isaac, your upgrades usually stack on top of one another, to the point where your final build is often some kind of flying naked devil baby shooting blood lasers out of its mouth and crying tears made of bombs. While that can be fun in its own right (who doesn’t love a good flying naked devil baby?), Star of Providence asks you to consider every upgrade or weapon pickup carefully. You might not always want to pick what looks on paper to be the best weapon in most scenarios if, say, you’re on the fifth floor and know you don’t enjoy fighting that boss with that particular weapon. Or you might find your absolute, absolute favourite gun in the game, but with a keyword modifier on it that would mandate a change in your usual approach. Is it worth it to take the risk? Does it have enough ammo to make it through to the boss and defeat it without running out midway through the fight? And if so, do you have the upgrade that makes your default peashooter stronger? And all that’s without addressing the fact that scrapping your gun for a different one gives you health and money back; do you take the safe, albeit somewhat disappointing route of scrapping an incredible weapon now to guarantee that much-needed pip of health back? Really? You’re sure? One of these next couple rooms might have a 100% ammo refill drop in them…

I ask myself basically all of these questions and more after essentially every single room in Star of Providence, and it’s what I’ve come to love most about the game. Yes, the actual shoot ‘em up bullet hell gameplay is absolutely sweaty, white knuckle degradation of your mind and soul if you want it to be (just ask my wife, who felt how much my hands were shaking after I pulled off my first hard mode win and asked if I needed an ambulance (yes, dear, but not for me)), but that moment-to-moment decision-making is what I love about the absolute best roguelikes and also the key factor that I so rarely find in the genre. Much like learning a language, what starts off as feeling overwhelming to the point of being incomprehensible begins to feel second nature by making repeated attempts at exploring the facility, and the language I’m learning is that of the game’s developers. The ebb and flow of my heart skipping a beat after just managing to pull off a win by the skin of my teeth against a challenging miniboss, and then in the immediate next room agonising over which upgrade to choose is intoxicating and, to me, the height of the entire medium of video games: it engages both parts of my brain while also making me feel downright cool, even though I’m just a large dumb man sitting in gym shorts and I just happened to twirl a set of analogue sticks the right way for a little while.

The other thing I find most remarkable about Star of Providence is that, despite having some of the best designed and well thought out enemy and boss encounters I’ve ever seen in a game of this kind, you truly do not have to be some type of gamer or shooter savant to enjoy yourself and even reach some type of ending. Yes, there is an absolutely brutal bullet hell shooter challenge here for the purists that crave it, and I’ve already conquered some truly daunting tasks in this game, with many (many many!) more seemingly still ahead of me, but half of my successful runs have come down to me getting lucky with the sheer amount of max health upgrades and useful item pickups I was finding. So while skill will of course always be your best and most reliable tool in a game like this, luck and smart decision-making can and often will carry you through to victory. And along the way, your skills will improve too as you learn the game’s language. It’s the ultimate roguelike gameplay loop that doesn’t rely on borderline meaningless stat upgrades between runs to keep you hooked; you’re playing because the game is so damn good and because you want to keep playing it and venture further than you managed last time.

I could easily babble on about how excellent Star of Providence is for a few more paragraphs, but I’m not sure drilling into the nitty-gritty can sell you more on the game than my above attempts. Instead, let me rattle off a few other features the game has going for it that didn’t come up on their own yet. a customisable hub accessed between runs with a shop to buy new weapons, access trials to modify some gameplay elements (when those become available); at least half a dozen unlockable playable characters (maybe more; give me a break; I’ve put over 40 hours into this game and still haven’t seen everything, ok?), each with its own unique gameplay offerings and hooks; other forms of upgrades beyond just the aforementioned upgrade terminals and weapons, such as cartridges, crates, and stat upgrades; and lastly, what must be hands down the most hummable soundtrack of the year, courtesy of Garoslaw, seriously, I don’t know if the hub music will ever leave my head for the rest of my life at this point.