Pixel Precision and Lonely Platformer Vibes in Derelict Star

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:11]At first blush, Derelict Star isn't much to look at. It's low-fi pixel graphics evoke a Pico-8 game, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but it does set expectations for a small experimental title rather than game you can spend over 16 hours on like I have. And its mechanics are similarly spartan and minimalist. It's a 2D platformer where you just run and jump. One wouldn't be blamed for seeing it flip by on Steam and not giving it any more of a look than the countless other platformers that get released every day. But if you did that, you'd be missing one of the best platformers to come out this year.

[00:00:44]The setup for Derelict Star is straightforward enough. You are an astronaut whose spaceship is out of fuel. To get home, you'll need to collect several batteries scattered about a massive derelict space station.

[00:00:54]But that becomes harder than it sounds when you realize that you have to actually carry them back, meaning you'll have to find out how to get to them, but also how to worm your way back to your ship from wherever they're located.

[00:01:04]On Blue Sky, I called Derelict Star your favorite platformer's favorite platformer, and I largely stand by that.

[00:01:10]Part of that is the pedigree of endorsements that the game has gotten.

[00:01:13]Reagan Burns of N++ and Adam Saltsman of Cannabalt have had fairly effusively positive things to say about it. But I also said that because the game is very much about platforming. It is a game that is deeply fascinated with the genre as a whole. It is, by all accounts, a work of formalism. That in and of itself isn't that rare. Lots of games are about their mechanics more than narrative or aesthetics, but the singular focus of Derelict Star is what makes it stand out. Quoting the game's description on Steam, "I am obsessed with platformers and the minute details of how they control, and I wanted to create a game that features the things I love most in the genre. A focus on exploration in a large non-linear world, simple and intuitive controls that are hard to master, movement that highlights both momentum and pixel precision. I spent countless hours handcrafting challenges and tweaking the physics for this game until they felt perfect to me, and I hope you enjoy what I've created." Heart Gate.

[00:02:08]And to that end, it's hard to deny that Gate hit every one of their goals with this title. It is, indeed, an open-world momentum-based platformer whose levels require a real degree of finesse in order to beat. The number of inputs are small, but the expression those inputs allow is deceptively expansive. Saltsman called the game a Metroidvania that gates progress not with items, but your knowledge of the movement mechanics that are all freely available to you from the start, and he's not wrong. Derelict Star ties jump power to your movement speed, meaning that in order to jump higher, you'll have to run faster. This sounds counterintuitive when I say it out loud, and I guess in the Newtonian sense it is, but you've done this before. In practice, it's basically Mario. Jumping from a standstill isn't very impressive, but jumping from max speed gives much more vertical momentum. The feedback on how much momentum you have at the time you press jump is actually so important that it's baked into the game's UI, with the bottom of the screen indicating left-right momentum. And when you press jump, it places a yellow line where the momentum is at the time when you lift off, giving you feedback on whether you press the button too early or too late.

[00:03:12]This results in jumps being very analog feeling. Small hops have to be approached differently from big leaps because you need to figure out how to maximize or minimize your speed in order to achieve them. Additionally, if you run at max speed for long enough, about half a screen, your momentum bar will fill and turn red and offer a substantially further and higher jump, but will stun you if you hit a wall or ceiling at that velocity.

[00:03:39]You'll quickly learn that despite the game's rigidly pixelated graphics, corners have a bit of a rounded edge to them, mechanically if not visually.

[00:03:47]There's a sliver of what is sometimes called coyote time, that bit of time in a platformer where you can still jump despite ostensibly being off of the platform already, just as Wile E. Coyote would hang in the air before falling down in the old Looney Tunes cartoons.

[00:04:00]And so too is there just the slightest bit of mantling. At speed, you can skip over small gaps without actually having to jump, and there's just enough forgiveness when trying to climb up corners that you don't necessarily need to arrive fully above them, but at their level. They're subtle, but the entire game is built around these subtleties, and learning the intricacies of the movement system really is the point of the game.

[00:04:22]Derelict Star's various areas are all built to explore the way movement systems function and even interact with one another. There are sections that require gentle taps. There are sections that require maintaining top speed without hitting a wall. There are sections that require delicate falls with planned trajectories.

[00:04:37]The game's environments also offer their own challenges. Slippery ice that prevents you from gaining momentum or sticky surfaces that prevent you from jumping are bog-standard platforming ideas, but the game also makes clever use of lighting by having a sort of fog of war that hides some surfaces until you get close enough. There are areas with poison gas that slowly accumulates in your system unless you reach safety bubbles. And there are areas that loop you horizontally around the screen like an old arcade game. Secrets abound where darker patches of the otherwise monochrome environments belay hidden paths, and each area is themed to specific mechanics, training you how to best them and become progressively more complex as you explore each colored zone.

[00:05:14]As an example, look at going from this checkpoint to one a few screens up. You need to do light taps in order to avoid falling in the pits in the ground, but you can't jump up because if you do, you won't get the red bar speed you need to be able to reach the heights required.

[00:05:27]So you need to sort of coast across the ground in a way that you press the button just as you're in coyote time.

[00:05:32]But just getting to max speed isn't enough because the first jump is actually higher than your max speed jump can take you, requiring you to go from small taps to a bigger, but not too big jump onto the platform, and then from there you can chain a bunch of big jumps.

[00:05:47]But you can't afford to lose the red speed because the platforms are all too short to work back up to it. And that speed is required for the little hover you have to do at the two-square large gaps towards the top of the room. It took me maybe an hour to do this, but right on the other side is a checkpoint.

[00:06:02]The game is hard, but it isn't cruel.

[00:06:04]It's designed to challenge you, but it has faith in your ability to complete it. It doesn't pull punches, but it doesn't cheat or act in bad faith, either. This isn't a kaizo title.

[00:06:39]All of this is helped by Derelict Star being a big open world rather than a series of linear levels. As you explore, you unlock checkpoints that you can fast travel between. So if you get stuck on a particular area, you can always teleport somewhere else and see if you can make progress there. The batteries, your goal, are always highlighted in blue on the map, so they serve as your lodestars through the various screens, guiding you towards which areas of the ship you haven't fully explored. You know there's a battery 10 squares up and two over, but how do you get there? However, once you manage to pick up a battery, you'll find that teleporting or dying drops it.

[00:07:12]So you need to know your full path back without dying. This results in the game effectively having two modes, exploration and discovery and battery extraction. The exploration and discovery stuff is low-stakes and quickly rewarding. You'll see an area that clearly asks you to jump up through it, and while you may struggle at first, once you get there, there's almost always a checkpoint right on the other side. In this sense, each area of the game is just a few screens worth of challenge at most.

[00:07:43]But when you're carrying a battery, you may have to go through a quarter of the game world backwards from how you progressed without dying once, and that becomes a much bigger challenge. Getting the batteries back is, in essence, the game's boss fights.

[00:08:08]It should be noted, I suppose, that most of the batteries are above your ship, making retrieving them less cruel than it might otherwise be. You still need to get back in one life, but you're doing so while often falling towards safe spots and not, you know, climbing a mountain in one go. Despite the relatively simple screenshots, the game isn't sterile. There are references to influences like Mario and Metroid, and the terminals at the checkpoints also help give a little flavor to the world.

[00:08:32]The obnoxiously upbeat dialogue from the ship systems serve as a good foil to the brief moments of internal rumination the player character has upon returning batteries.

[00:08:48]The player character is a character that blames themselves for their predicament and torment even as the computer systems chirp about fun scavenger hunts and assure you that they take your feedback seriously as a valued customer. There is a seething disaffection at the world in the margins of Derelict Star that grounds the game with some humanity that it desperately needs and makes it more than simply a series of jumping puzzles.

[00:09:09]And the music manages to have a chipper 8-bit tone that feels lonely without feeling like it's just cribbing from Metroid, helped along by the fact that it will play a song until it ends and then just let you sit with the silence for a little bit. Minecraft does a similar trick.

[00:09:29]>> [music] >> It's just rare these days, I think, to find a game so focused on its mechanics to the exclusion of all else. It's not that the game doesn't have a story or graphics or even music, but they're all spartan and in service to building the framework of exploring what it means to move in a 2D space. There is something pure about it, almost innocent. There has been in recent years a pushback against ludocentrism, a rejection of the idea that mechanics are all that matter, a repudiation of the concept that narrative or tone or metaphor are just set dressing and what a game is about is purely what it asks players to do. And that rejection is, I think, warranted.

[00:10:21]Pure ludocentrism sucks. Games are undeniably about more than just their mechanics. They are about the sum total of the experience they present to players.

[00:10:29]But that valid response to movements that exclude some games has, I think, resulted in critics like me potentially overlooking other games like this.

[00:10:37]Titles with an intricate focus on mechanics, games that have a watchmaker's delicate precision and levels designed with ornate mechanical intent rather than just as content. Just as visual novels and walking simulators that foreground narrative and environment above mechanics deserve to be celebrated for their achievements, so too do games that focus on intricate and intentional game design. And Dere Ex Machina is an absolute gem of the form.

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