Hi guys, and welcome to the Battlestation Harbinger review, or as my desktop background knows it – game still pending for a review.

So why haven’t I reviewed this game before now? One thing that influenced the late release of this review is the fact that I couldn’t play the damn game. “Why George, is it because your life is so cool and full of awesome things and you don’t have time?” Hardly.  Read on for the gory details…

Although the team who developed this game seems like a bunch of great guys, and yes, I love their work, and yes, I am fully aware that they were working around the clock to publish all the patches for the bunch of buggy copies that they’ve distributed – I still have to say that getting this game on the day of its release, finding out that it’s not working, and than waiting for a full week just to try it out… that was a real kick in the sack.  And not the fun kind.  Wait, forget I said anything…

So yeah, I was one of the lucky ones who had an issue with repeating episodes and bugs that simply mess up the game completely with no option of saving any progress. However, I finally got this game up and running after a patch or two, thankfully.  Check out the gameplay footage below:

This is the team behind Battlestation Harbinger. The entire Bug Byte Ltd. crew is originally from Finland, with an already established career in designing awesome games such as this one. The picture above is from their website, so if you want to find out more about how three developers build such cool games, here is your chance. And that is about everything that I’ll cover from that aspect, since these guys already have a group of avid fans who will probably start harassing me if I don’t get some facts right.
A fun fact: This project reached 180% of its goal on Kickstarter in October 2015. Way to go guys.

Not gonna lie, I’m really enjoying Battlestation Harbinger. The moment the first sequence appeared on the screen I was transported back to the Sega Genesis era, and felt connected to the game’s concept almost immediately. It was kind of a slow start but the fights kept me constantly hungry for more. I literally jumped from one point on the map to the other (and those jumps look awesome, check the screenshots) in order to find enemy forces and dive in guns blazing. Yeah, that’s the exact depiction of my gameplay and the first thing that I’m going to bitch about.

While the initial set-up for the plot looks promising, the game is a little bit thin on content. First, you’re shown a myriad of amazing characters marching down your screen like it’s effin Glee, and once you get all hyped up those characters simply disappear for a huge chunk of time. Just because a game is as so-called “simple” in design as this Battlestation Harbinger it doesn’t mean that it should be simple in terms of telling a decent story, in my maybe-not-so-humble-opinion.  How hard can it be?*  I love storyline (I’m an author, dangit, I have to!). The plot doesn’t even have to be that complicated, but I do insist on consistency and at least some space-drama.  Who doesn’t like space drama?!

*Actually I have no idea how these type of games are built or if the development of this game was hard or not.  and would love an expert opinion on the matter so hit me up in the comments section!

The 2D graphics are beautiful, (I really love 2D space games) and as far as that goes it’s everything that you would expect and want from a mobile space game and much more (massive explosions, once again, ftw). And although I would appreciate having a double fast forward mode or something when it comes to speed – the arsenal and all the sweet cannons and rockets that I got on my playthrough really made me happy. I didn’t even mind the somewhat repetitive gameplay, but unlocking all ships and features was a bitch, but something I just had to do. FYI, you literally have to play and wait for days to get some of the fancy things in BH.

Although the final product seems under-cooked, I have to say, I would still strongly recommend this game as a great quality time-kill for your phone, and I’m hoping we’ll continue to see more patches & additions from the Bug Byte crew.