Star of Providence is a twin-stick shooter bullet hell roguelite that was released in 2017 but just received a Nintendo Switch port and a large content update on PC.
I’m glad to see it get some more attention as arguably it is one of the best games to get into the rogue genre with. You may have even heard of it already but under a different title, as it originally launched under the name Monolith.
What is Star of Providence?
Providence isn’t the most unique game in the genre or the most expansive. Instead, it’s hyper-focused on delivering the essentials and simplistic, fast-paced fun. A winning run is only about half an hour long and each room only lasts a few seconds.
Even backtracking through dungeons is as simple as opening up the map and clicking on the room you want to go to. The game is simple, intuitive, and extremely polished.
GUNS GUNS GUNS
Along your path of destruction there are plenty of trinkets and toys to find. There are cartridges that provide minor bonuses and machines to install important ship upgrades. However, the real run variety comes from the weapons you can find and the huge number of affixes they can have.
There are sawblades and railguns, but they can come in hundreds of different forms such as triple shots, room warping, and bullet trails. Ammo is very limited so you won’t be using the same gun all run; you’re constantly swapping your arsenal around.
Star of Providence shines brightest in its incredible enemy and boss design. There is a solid variety of encounters and the enemies work together to cover your screen in mayhem. Foes can have shields that deflect bullets or trinkets that pull you towards them along with other elite effects that are more interesting than larger health bars.
Boss fights don’t waste your time either putting up a fight through intense patterns to dodge instead of inflated HP. Even the later bosses, while having much higher health, are conscious enough of the fun-factor to constantly mix up their patterns.
Heaps of Endgame Content
If you finally kill the Overlord you may think that your adventures are over, but actually they’ve barely started. There are a ton of hidden floors and secret fights to be found that in my 70+ hours I still haven’t seen the last of.
Difficulty modifiers also add to the replayability with a Hard mode that significantly intensifies enemy behavior and several different ships to play as.
Along with a Nintendo Switch release, Star of Providence received an update on PC that expanded what the game has to offer with a Boss Rush mode (that has a few surprises aside from the usual fights), a new NPC that throws you into challenge rooms, and several new weapon affixes and upgrades to play with.
Play This Game!
I adore this little game (that’s not so little anymore). The run length, visuals, and pacing may make it seem like there’s not much to offer here but Star of Providence holds its own among the greats.
While Kinix purchased his own copy of Star of Providence on PC (Lin, Win), Team D-13 was kind enough to send me (Mike) a copy of the game last year. I pretty much agree with the above, and that’s why Providence features prominently in our list of roguelike shooters.
