Review: Starship Home
Mixed Reality has failed to massively impress me so far, with Smash Drums being the only game I chose to play in MR. Starship Home has now landed in peoples living spaces being a full game made for MR only, and not being added into a VR game.
Release Date: September 26th 2024
Developer: Creature
Publisher: Creature
Price: £15.99
Reviewed On: Meta Quest 3
* Access Provided For Review *
Cultivate Alien Plants
Starship Home is a Mixed Reality game that turns your own room into a spaceship, and lets you depart on an interplanetary expedition from the comfort of your own home.
The game starts by a box being delivered within your placespace, once you open it you will start to place parts of the ship on your walls and floor. Allowing you place a storage draw, the cockpit, the air-lock, a terrarium and windows to make your room into your own personalised spaceship.
From here you are contacted by the Alien who the ship parts were meant to be delivered to, and you will soon be given an Alien plant that you need to nurture, as this could be linked to removing the evil blight that is taking over planets. This will introduce to the basics of looking after the plant, what the Alien was trying achieve and more about using your newly acquired ship – now it’s your job to help the Alien achieve his goal of getting the planets rid of the blight.
This will see you opening and star map and jumping to each required planet. One there you will have to open a hologram of the planet and clean it up to find your point of interest, then release a landing cannister out the air-lock to land at that point. Once at these points of interest, its now your job to scan the planet and find the plant and get it back to your ship (via your little helpful robot friend). Once the plant is back in your home from the air-lock you will now have to help remove the blight from them and cultivate them back to full health.
To get them back to health you will need to go into the plants dream sequences that will see you play a mini-game linked to that plant. Which will remove you from your ship and transform your playspace to environment to do with that planet and plant, you will then be doing activities like squishing slugs and getting balls higher and higher in the air to name a couple. Once you have done this you will need tune to plant which relates to popping bubbles in order as a song plays and then give the plant water and nutrients to get it back to full strength. Once its back to full strength and happiness it will start to play a tune.
However, you do still need to look after the plants after they are back to full strength and keep them happy. This is done by making sure they are getting enough water and nutrients – they will stop making their tune if they run low of either or both of these elements.
This is then a rinse and repeat process as you visit all the required planets and collect and cultivate the plants. Where the gameplay and loop is not at all difficult, the game is more about that charm and one that would totally suit a younger audience – but that you can enjoy as an adult.
Your Room In Space!
As mentioned you will be turning your own room into a spaceship, a large amount of your ship is made up of your room. But, when looking through the windows in your ship and seeing space around you, the effect when going into hyper drive and each unique planets environments it looks very impressive and shows what MR can do. Add to this all the elements in your room being very detailed and clean, and placing a plant pot with an Alien plant on your own desk is very surreal. With the world being very cartoony it is design it, works perfectly with Starship Home and will resonate with both children and adults.
Once you start the add more planets they will make up the background music as each tune they make fall inline with each other, with all the noises linked to parts of ships sounding perfect as well. Add to this every Alien you encounter on your journey being voice acted very will and it does everything it needs to audio wise.
Comfort
The Verdict
Starship Home has certainly made me feel that MR could have a real future in the gaming space, outside of a couple added on experiences that I liked it’s never really impressed me that much. The team at Creature have made a fantastic use of your playspace and allowing you to make the ships layout to how you would like it. The game is a bit on the simple side when it comes difficulty but, even as an adult it has a great charm that means you will still have fun – but I expect the younger audience will love it.