​

After almost a full decade since its inception and its rumoured roots as romhack of a quirky little JRPG game, and 4 years after the initial demo titled "Starstruck: Prologue", the full game "Starstruck: Hands of Time" has finally been released today, September 16th, 2024.

Main developer Max Ponoroff has worked on this title for a long time, with the ideas of the game and its story being rooted way back in the 2010s, and together alongside a group of musicians, modellers and translators (myself included), have seen that those realizations and ideas that were birthed such long time ago come to fruition into the final full release of the game.

"Starstruck: Hands of Time" plot focuses on a time-traveler and its AI companion from a dreaded future overseeing a group of four little kids in the year 20XX, all of them with musical abilities, with them getting involved into a series of strange events in their hometown, with the events being related to an unknown entity and the eventual end of the world, while also struggling with their own selves. The time-traveler watches over the group of kids and tries to make sure that the bleak and dark future from where they come from doesn't occur in this timeline.

Play guitar in an interactive rock opera
Play guitar in musical story segments, with a catchy soundtrack featuring live instruments and singing by Elsie Lovelock. If you still have your Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar controller, dust it off, because this game supports it!

Destroy the world as a giant human hand
Demolish houses, solve puzzles, and open new paths for other characters as a giant hand. Unleash your destructive potential using hammers, screwdrivers, and more.

A strange game set in a miniature world
Save the future by exploring the strange diorama world of 20XX. Meet weirdly cute characters and unravel the mystery of how their little lives are connected to the end of mankind.

Starstruck: Hands of Time is now available on the Steam Store for PC, with the game being available in English, Spanish (Latin American, courtesy of yours truly), Russian, Korean, Japanese Brasilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese. The game also offers a wide variety of controllers to play, and also different control schemes, with the game having support for Xbox controllers, DualSense and DualShock controllers through USB, and the user can also utilize the X-Plorer guitar controllers seen in other titles like Rock Band and Guitar Hero for usage within the unique rhythm and musical gameplay of the game. Those that desire it, can toggle the musical gameplay on/off if they choose to experience the game as an RPG instead and avoid the musical sections with the Auto Play feature.

Experience this unique, spiritual and musical title while guiding these four kids to try to save the future from its demise!

Starstruck: Hands of Time on Steam
Starstruck Discord server

 

[Xdqwerty]

So this one was also gonna reléase in winter 2014?

 

[SDA]

Better late than never... duh!

 

[Ampersound]

It does look and sound interesting,
the trailer gives pretty surreal vibes.

I hope there is a GoG release planned, since it's one of the few places where you can actually buy digital games.

 

[raxadian]

I am terrible at rhyming games with RPG mechanics, in Mother 3 I just grinded since the rhyming was not obligatory.

 

[ShadowOne333]

I am terrible at rhyming games with RPG mechanics, in Mother 3 I just grinded since the rhyming was not obligatory.

The rhythm stuff isn't obligatory in this one either