The unofficial discussion and advice thread (Spoilers?)

I thought I make a thread for Starseed as it seems like a game where internet discussion is going to be key to figuring stuff out. The game itself is very reluctant to tell you what to do, similar to Fez in a way, so hopefully this thread can be useful for duders. I'm not sure how this is going to work in terms of spoilers since a lot of the fun of the game seems to be figuring out what the hell to do, I guess you could give a brief non-spoilery description of your hints/advice and put the hints in spoiler boxes? I dunno.

So to kick it off the main objective of the game (I think) is:

To collect keys, which appear as stars in world 1, these unlock doors in world 2 which lead to world 3. By collecting keys and going through the doors you can bring your seeds into world 3.

What you do after the bit I just described: There are platforms above you where you can find new "respawn" points, poetry and dudes. The dudes each appear to have their own special abilities.

Key

World 1=The world that you spend most of your time in, you start on a mound of soil being chased by the black funkiness.

World 2=The black and white/inverse world.

World 3=Where you start, there's lots of poetry here.

I played for a about a few hours, i think i've gotten to all the characters in the hub world (what you call world 3). Aim of the game is to link up blocks to a star (key), then enter inverse level, and get to the exit with the key. You then get to leave to hub world with seeds, and build in the hub world, finding new platforms/characters.

I don't know if you know, but in each level there are 3 key doors as well. Obviously very difficult to get. You have to link up 3 stars (keys) AND link up a special star (3 key door). This is very hard as once you link to a star it stars disintegrating your blocks -_-. WHAT IS BEHIND A 3 KEY DOOR!? Also I think I should prob try and go into a 3 key room with loads of seeds....

I think to 'complete' a characters level, you probably have to open and complete the 3 key door.

Also the last character I have found is VERY different from the rest, and is probably the last level if I could get to his 3 key door.

His poetry is "Hopeless, I Ignored it-" and his ability is that he is unaffected by the spreading blackness, and you can walk on it, also there is a lot of blackness already in his level. In order to enter the inverse level you have to kill yourself with an explosion. But I still can't get to a 3 key door, and even if it did, i'd be going in with very few seeds...

P.S I think hubworld, levels and inverse level is easy to remember :P

Getting into a 3 key door seems really, really hard.

I linked up 3 keys and a 3 key door once, got real excited, but had no seeds to use to make a bubble and so was trapped down a long shaft and couldn't get to the 3 key door D:

I do not know whether it is worth making a list of what every single block does and how they react with each other. Or if it's a standard result no matter what.

Without taking movement and block position into consideration, I think there are 28 combinations. 28 combinations which all need testing :(

And I do not know if it is my eyes deceiving me, but can I control how the green blocks spread out, by moving? :O

Maybe I'm completely missing something here, but I feel like the thrill of each new discovery is severely dampened by the amount of repetitive busywork the game seems to require in order to progress. By the time you've found/collected/built enough to reach some new thing, the payoff just feels underwhelming and disappointing more than anything else. Again, I could be COMPLETELY missing some factor that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet, but this feels kind of like Fez if it made you grind for collectibles every time you wanted to shift perspective.

@bbalpert: Yeah I think the exploration in the hub world would pay off if each level was more different, the only difference seems to be the characters. Their abilities aren't super interesting anyway. E.g everything is sped up, break more blocks, spread a lot of ice etc.

Yep , at some point, you just want to be able to have a limitless supply of seeds.

It is no surprise that the 3 lock doors bring you to a SuperMeatBoy rip off level. But to get there requires a lot of tedious work, which is not thaaat fun. https://i.minus.com/iIMilCvzXVUIC.jpg

@bbalpert said:

Yeah, I felt similar about Fez. I loved discovering stuff but the slowness of the exploration and the shittiness of the map sort of ruined some of those discoveries.

As far as I can tell there aren't that many combinations, unless I'm missing something of course. The sand (the vomit green coloured blocks) seems to fuck up the mega jump blocks and the red blocks explode if you plant stuff in them. Other than that I haven't discovered any crazy combinations.

They affect the creep very differently though. The creep rips though long yellows and red, while I use the green vines and ice to slow it down.

Blocks like bushes with hearts, yellow and purple seem random how many or where they go. Yellow always wants to go left, you have to force it to go right or up. I haven't tried to force it to go down.

I have worked out a little tactic. As long as you have enough squares to stand on to build and jump up you are ok, you do not need to worry about using any blocks to build higher, only the green and red boxes are worth using to build up. (Although that is what I guess) You have to dig down in the blocks you have already made to create a defense. You want to create a huge horizontal line / space to plant the green creep in. This allows it to spread indefiniately to fill the whole, thus stopping the blackness.

Not sure if this is at all correct.

No idea how to use the purple / sky blue boxes either.

Edit - I asked the developer if your movement affects where the green heart paths go, and he didn't want to comment. Which makes me think hmmmmm. When I have played, it seemed like if I jumped, or went left / right the green followed the same path.

I made it through a 3 key door once on the first guy (where everything moves excruciatingly slowly).

Inside, there is a little challenge room. Each character seems to have a different one. If you complete the challenge, it lights up a dot in the teleporter that takes you to the levels. As far as I can tell, there is no change in anything else.

Honestly, with how much people were saying that you need to experience and learn for yourself, I was kind of disappointed. Unless something amazing happens if you get through all the 3 key doors, I don't really feel like the game warrants all the secrecy. It takes about half an hour to figure everything out. Finding all the characters and what they do was kind of entertaining, but after the third one I noticed they were color coded with the type of block their powers are based on, and it sort of took the surprise out of a lot of it.

All that is fine, but with it being so arduous to get into a 3 key door (and with some random levels not having any within reach or vision), it just felt too grindy with too little payoff. Like everyone is whispering secrets to each other and I ask them what they're saying and they just tell me "Oh, I was saying it's a nice day out." to which I respond, "Yeah, I guess it is."

I've been making a map of my homeworld progress if anybody cares (I'm not done yet): http://i.imgur.com/Wkq0SwD.png

And yeah, I'm with you SpaceBoat. It got boring fast. I haven't unlocked any three-key doors yet, though.

I really want to know how anyone (hello Jon Blow) can call this his game of the year. Seems crazy to me.

Yeah I always feel like these games aren't as good as the zeitgeist would have you believe. Quotes like this blow my mind, is he playing a different game!?

"If I could only recommend one more game for the rest of my life, it would be Starseed Pilgrim. Imagine if Fez was all in 2D and had a super-addictive and original logic game as the main mechanic, rather than jumping and rotating. Then you basically have the flavour of it." — Bennett Foddy

Its just a fun puzzle game... I feel like indie people shit their pants at any half decent game lol

HMM maybe the ending if you open all the 3 key doors is good? who knows

I feel like I'm missing something, Eurogamer gave it 9/10, RPS were also really positive about it. It's certainly fun, but I'm at the point now where I feel like it's a chore to make any progress since you're basically just doing the same thing over and over.

Stumbled across another world/area if you hold H while in the hub world, though it just seems to be a game reset.

would be nice to know what happens after getting past the 3key door rooms but even getting to them is such a pain. Not sure if it's even worth it to try and progress or just stop playing.

I would love if there was a great ending after unlocking all the 3 key doors, I just don't think I actually have the patience to do that. It's a shame.

Maybe if the 3 key doors stayed accessible after opening them once, I would be more likely to try to see the end.

I'm in the same boat. I absolutely LOVED Fez, and the word-of-mouth around the indie community was that this is a very similar experience. But I actually found myself becoming extremely frustrated with this game. There's so much time investment, so many random elements, so many ways to completely mess up a level and get nothing from it, and so far (even trying to spoil a little bit to see what I'm working towards) the payoff seems to be seriously lacking.

I don't know if I was expecting this to eventually turn like Portal or Frog Fractions or something. But after about 3-4 hours, it's just not fun enough to grind through in order to see what's behind the 3-key doors.

I understand that discovery is the point. I'm sure people are completely satisfied with the colors and sounds (I was a little disappointed that the "symphonic" garden was just made up of repeated major triads =P), but I just want to know, at some point, if there's anything left to do. And the volume of "just keep working at it, you'll see" posts are completely mystifying to me.

I'd love to know from anyone who has put more time into this if I should keep going, and if so, how I might be able to gauge my progress.

@cityfires: Well, I've played around 7 hours and that's pretty much what I did up until now. I updated my map in my earlier post, if you want to see that.

Well even if its not the game it was hyped up to be, I still had a lot of fun playing it. I guess people had to hype it up so we'd even play it, but I wish I could've played it without waiting for something magic to happen =/

Scores like 9/10 and game of the year are BANANAS! Its 9/10 compared to other games that price I guess...

I've liked my time with the game, but I'm absolutely done. As other FEZ fanatics have pointed out, it doesn't feel quite like this one lives up to the hype (and FEZ is pretty much an all-timer for me.) I didn't find "discovering how the game works" all that entertaining; I honestly think more straightforward presentation and standardized structure would probably benefit the game. Seriously, the idea that this game is fun because it's obtuse baffles me; what fun there is to be had w/Starseed Pilgrim is the structural athletic thrill of crafting your garden-like architecture and slowing the creep as much as possible. I don't want to collect more seeds to move about the hub world to get to new levels, I just want to play new levels. Maybe a level where some structures are already built or something? Maybe one with other brown hubs? But, instead, it's roughly the same level, over and over again, where your garden is randomized and your characters very slightly affect how the plants work.

As many have speculated, the three-key doors might unlock a final, interesting secret (similar to the end of Antichamber, maybe?) but as it stands, I'm so wicked done.

I'd like to see a sequal, with additional / refined mechanics. And more "game" to the game. Perhaps make it a true puzzle game. And include time trials and other scary things that happen to you if you get caught up in the darkness.

Can you actually finish the game? Does it have an ending?

I think I've found all the isles and I've beaten one of the three key door things with the black suit. What would I have to do to get an "ending"? Please don't say I have to get that three door thing on every isle!

Beaten all the 3 key doors I can find. I believe one of the islands, the one that has a center square and a square near each of its corners, is something "different". I'm trying right now to get to it.

Edit: Just going to confirm that there is an ending. Completing 3 star doors is key. Good luck.