Reviewed By Nicholas “SmugeeBear” McDonald
Dexter Stardust is new point and click game made by Dexter Team for the Nintendo Switch, Steam and PC, which is in a style of episodic science fiction shows of the 50’s and 60’s. You play as Dexter Stardust a survivor of earths destruction 20 years ago by the alien race called the Vreesians from Planet X. Dexter currently works for his uncle as a space delivery driver who has a love for Taco’s with his best friend Aurora who acts as a foil to Dexter who is more down to earth and serious.
There are several episodes which make up the first season, Episode 0 acts as a tutorial as the episode is short and has a few simple puzzles to ease the player in as Dexter has to traverse his surroundings. While in later episodes they have to try and see an important character who can potentially help his uncles business, the puzzles do begin to ramp up later where I had my own Broken Sword moment where I was supposed to catch a rat in an alleyway, where I had to rethink and explore different parts of the city to find the item I needed. But with these style games it’s always good to just try and rethink things over and the logic doesn’t seem completely out there compared to some other titles in the same category.
Before you know it Dexter is on a Quest to Save the Galaxy and has to delve deeper into the secrets of his family. I also liked the graphical style of the game as it does have the feel like a science fiction cartoon in the style of Star Trek Animated series by Filmation where I could easily see myself watching an episode of Dexter Stardust. The controls are what you expect from a point and click game but instead of having controls that change function context sensitively the different functions are mapped out on the different face buttons where I kept on hitting the wrong button several times when I wanted to use a different feature.
You control Dexter by moving a cursor and pressing on the screen and he will move but when you move to parts of a scene where it transitions a pop up window will ask if you want to move to a different area. Also there’s a stand alone button which brings up the inventory menu and you will be collecting different items during your adventures where you can examine and combine and use. But there are times where you might have used an item for one puzzle and then you might have to reuse which caught me off guard but was surprising in a pleasant way.
The dialogue tree is presented in a pop up menu with different topics to talk about and you have to progress with the options to unlock further options which come in useful for the puzzles in the later episodes. I did notice some bugs during my playthrough where Dexter is in a sewer and instead of following the path he would literally walk directly over the scene that it looks like he was hovering. Also, some display issues with text where it doesn’t display properly and looks like its doubled over.
But these are just minor quibbles, I really enjoyed playing the game as the story and characters were interesting and also it includes a directors commentary where you get little insights about the game and its development, usually what inspired a scene etc. which was a nice extra. The game was made by a team of people who are passionate about what they were making and I think it shows. I really do recommend giving Dexter Stardust a go…. Spacey!
Game is available on Steam, itch.io (PC & Mac), iOS and the Nintendo Switch.