Support NeoGAF

[touchfuzzy]

'Star of Providence' is a small little known roguelike bullet-hell shooter that originally launched in 2017 under the name 'Monolith'. It never really found any traction, Steam CCU peaked at 133 in December 2019, and as recently as January 2025 was basically dead peaking at 22 CCU.

Last year, Bigmode Games (of videogamedunkey fame) announced they'd be publishing a new version of it on Switch that contained a major update, also coming for free to the Steam version. That launched yesterday and the game has seen a huge jump in players, as of writing seeing a CCU around 1,100 players, a 50 times increase from January!

https://steamdb.info/app/603960/charts/

Dunkey's video on the game:



Pretty cool to see this little game getting a new lease on life. I picked up the Switch version myself and am enjoying it. You may remember Bigmode Game's first release last year was Animal Well, launching to major critical acclaim and success. Happy to see Dunkey's publishing adventure doing great things so far, excited to see what's next.

 

[Wildebeest]

I said when Bigmode was announced that it was smart business. Influencer gets a % of game sales or whatever, and an indie game developer with a basically finished game gets effective marketing from someone motivated to promote their game.

 

[Fbh]

Almost 1,6 Concords is pretty good for a re-release of a single dev indie game!.
Glad to see Dunkey's publishing project has been working out well for him so far.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

This looks fucking awesome and is exactly my kind of thing. Bought!

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

I love it so far. Despite the “playable” rating it runs perfectly on Steam Deck. Just have to go in the options and switch it to controller input, it defaults to mouse/keyboard for some reason.

 

[UniformDeliverance]

I’m loving it, music is incredible.

 

[drotahorror]

Loved this when it originally came out as "Monolith". Great game. Was shocked to see it had a crazy update as well as Bigmode publishing it.

 

[T-0800]

Any chance of a PS5 release?

 

[Facism]

oh wow i had this when it was under a different name. really good

 

[Shubh_C63]

He had this game in his Best Of Year list long ago just like Animal Well earlier.
The guy knows good game and sells them well.

 

[Dacvak]

I bought this game once it released on Switch, and it is a FUCKING BANGER.

This game respects the shit out of your time and skill. So far everything about it is absolutely incredible. I just beat the (first) final boss, which seems like the equivalent of beating Hades your first time… So now the REAL game begins.

I’m a shmup and bullet hell fan, but I generally don’t like twin-stick shooters. This one, however, is just so addictive and balanced. And there is absolutely ZERO downtime. I’m not sure I can think of another modern game as lean as this one.

Big gigantic huge recommendation from me. At the risk of sounding cringy hell, this is a “gamer’s game”. It’s brutal, but completely fair. It’s fast, it’s chaotic, and it demands 110% of your attention. It’s very much in the Hades/Binding/Returnal category of roguelikes, so if you like any of those games, absolutely give this a shot.

And it runs flawlessly at low latency on Switch.

Either get this game, or go back to

 

[LavitzSlambert]

I said when Bigmode was announced that it was smart business. Influencer gets a % of game sales or whatever, and an indie game developer with a basically finished game gets effective marketing from someone motivated to promote their game.

And we gamers get to be exposed to curated games that otherwise wouldn't get near the attention they deserve. It really makes me think just how many great ideas and talented dev teams are out there amongst the monthly h-game trash spam that clog up the new releases. Discoverability has been terrible this generation.

All that said, I am planning on picking this up (on Switch, perfect platform for it). I don't love roguelites but shmups are great and this one looks really cool.

 

[nnytk]

I would love to support this by buying it on the PS5, why is there no PS5 release or news?

 

[LavitzSlambert]

I would love to support this by buying it on the PS5, why is there no PS5 release or news?

Small team focusing their efforts on the two best indie platforms first. If it gets any sizable bump from Big Mode I'm sure there will be a PS5 version in the works.