Game Info
GAME NAME: Starwhal
DEVELOPER(S): Breakfall
PUBLISHER(S): Breakfall
PLATFORM(S): PS4(Reviewed), PS3, PC
RELEASE DATE(S): March 3, 2015
You may be asking yourself what a Starwhal is. Well it’s an awesome new multiplayer title by developer Breakfall from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Starwhal is inspired by the real deal Narwhal mammal, let me define what a Narwhal is. The narwhal, or narwhale, is a medium-sized toothed whale and possesses a large “tusk” from a protruding canine tooth. It lives year-round in the Arctic waters around Greenland, Canada, and Russia. The Scientific name for a Narwhal is Monodon Monoceros, which is not to be confused with a Harry Potter spell.
I had the pleasure of meeting the designer Angele and I believe one of the developers of Starwhal while I was at Pax East this year at Boston. They are very nice and talented. We had the chance to group battle while at PAX as well and it was very fun to battle random people at the convention. Formerly the title was called Starwhal: Just the tip, which was an amazing and hilarious title but afterwards the developers went back and changed it to just Starwhal. They said on their blog they did this on their own since they wanted this to be family friendly and the name came about originally during the conception of the game when it was just called Just the tip, they felt Starwhal was more fitting. For the whole story go here.
Let’s start off with the basics and also just a note, I reviewed this on the PS4. Starwhal is a 4 player local multiplayer free for all battle. You can choose to either duke it out against 3 other AI competitors or go find yourself some friends to play with local and duke it out. You can choose the color of your Starwhal from magenta, purple, green, yellow, and orange. You can also customize the body and also the head. The awesome part is there are over 90+ costumes which total to roughly about 9,000 costume combos. There are also 20+ arenas and 4 game modes (Classic, Score attack, Zones, Heart Throb). The levels have some great names as well that will make you laugh from Asteroid X, Magnus, Spacetopus,and Neo Flopicron, you’ll have a bunch of sub levels to choose from. The goal of the game is to horn or hit your opponent’s heart to make them lost a life/heart. You start off with 3 to begin with but you can customize that option in the settings and give yourself more if you’re just starting off.
The controls at first can be difficult but you’ll get a hang of the constant flopping and swimming around soon enough into a match. If you don’t have any friends to play with you can play some single player challenges which consist of 32 challenge levels and compete for the leaderboard and also hunt for achievements. A cool facet about that is you can still race/compete with your friends ghost so you know how well you’re beating them or bad they are demolishing your score.
The graphics for Starwhal is fantastic. They are a poppy and colorful color palette and the costumes have fun pop culture references and silly costumes like having lightsaber horns, afros, a computer head, sombrero and well I can’t list all 9,000 but you get the point. The music is excellent as well, with a touch of rock electronic style music Starwhal lends itself to be a very fun game with music that gets you in the mood to do battle.
The Recommendation
I highly recommend Starwhal, not only is it hilarious and has awesome music but it is extremely fun to play. You’ll find yourself playing match after match. I feel like the $11.99 price tag is justified since there is a ton of content included from single player to multiplayer, levels, customization’s, etc. Starwhal is an excellent party game. Starwhal is also available for PC, Mac, PS4, PS3 and will soon be coming to Linux and Wii U. So what are you waiting for? Go horn yourself a copy now!
