Strike a Pose for Justice!

Flynn’s Arcade has been bringing a number of excellent retro-inspired games to market, and while their latest isn’t my favorite, it will no doubt appeal to a very specific audience. 8-Colors Star Guardians + was very clearly made for fans of Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, RPGs, and old computers. If you’re a fan of all of those things, this game is 100000% for you and you’ll no doubt have a blast with it. If not, it’s still a pretty good time, but your mileage may vary. 

In lieu of any sort of adventuring or overworld, Star Guardians starts out with a Mega Man-style stage select screen. You choose which boss character you want to fight, and which Guardians you want to use to fight them. Each Guardian has their own special attributes, so there’s a degree of trial and error involved in making the right choices, but that’s the game. It’s just these boss fights and a whole mess of bizarre (and amusing) dialogue. 

Simple but Not Easy

That’s not to say that the game is over-simplistic. In fact, it’s just simple enough to be really accessible, but the more you play, the more complex the battles get. Characters will learn new moves, and once the story is complete, the monsters come back to gang up on you, doubling the difficulty and necessitating new strategies. 

This is all presented in 8 colors at a time, just like the title suggests. There’s some really neat art direction going on, but the visuals are intentionally odd and simplistic since the intent seems to be replicating the very old PC aesthetic. And they succeeded completely in that mission. This game looks ridiculous, and not necessarily in a bad way. If you have nostalgia for PC games from this era, you’ll no doubt get a kick out of its unique visuals. Personally, I didn’t do much PC gaming back in the old days, so unfortunately the visuals didn’t do much for me. 

The same can be said for its writing. I’m absolutely not saying the writing is bad. In fact, it’s honestly pretty great. But it’s a very goofy cross between Power Rangers and Sailor Moon, two things that much like old-school PC gaming, I was never much of a fan of. That the writing was able to keep me engaged as much as it did is a testament to its quality, but I imagine that anyone who is a big fan of either of those properties would get a LOT more out of this game than I did. 

A Specific Audience

At the end of the day, I’m glad I was able to give this game a go, and I greatly appreciate Flynn’s Arcade sending me the review code. It ultimately wasn't for me, but I don’t regret my time with it. It’s an easy-to-understand RPG boss rush with some very specific inspirations. If you watch this game’s trailer and it looks exciting to you, then you’re basically guaranteed to get your money's worth. 

8-Colors Star Guardians + is available now for Nintendo Switch and Steam.