Mourning Star Review – A Fitting End to the Universe

Mourning Star is a strange game about the cycles of life. It sees you flinging the last star around a series of vortexes, smashing up space debris as you perform a ritual to bring about the end of everything. And it’s pretty good. 

You control the titular star with a kind of sceptre, dragging it around to the screen. A variety of celestial bodies fly in from the edges of the screen, drawn in by the black hole at the center of the level. You need to smash them, or light them on fire, or a variety of other things depending on the stipulations of the level.

You do that by swinging around to meet them, stopping them before they make their way into the vortex. That vortex can also harm you, sucking out the star’s mass if you pass through it too slowly. 

It all feels strangely frantic, especially to begin with. We’d recommend playing on zen mode while you get to grips with what’s going on – the more stringent fail conditions of the other difficulty settings are going to see you failing more often than not.

There’s a story about a star-child, told in snippets of dialogue and poetic end-of-level quotes. It all adds to the atmosphere of the experience – this is a game that deals with very big ideas, all the while keeping you on your toes with smashy-crashy action. 

Does it work? It sort of does. There’s a feeling of fragility as you play, but it’s also hard to shake the sense that you’re slightly disconnected from everything – like your mistakes and successes are more down to chance than they are skill, at least to begin with.

Mourning Star is unique, intriguing and frustrating in equal measure. It’s definitely worth checking out, but be prepared for a game that doesn’t quite play by any of the rules that you’re expecting it to.

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