Starfend

I rebuilt the first hour. Then I rebuilt everything around it. A few weeks ago someone recorded 23 minutes of themselves playing Starfend for the first time. Near the end they said something I couldn't unhear: "The tutorial is vague. I didn't retain any of the information. I mostly just stumbled my way through." They were right. People who understand Starfend play it for hours. People who don't, quit in thirteen minutes. That's not a content problem — that's a me problem, and it's the one I spent the last month fixing. So I rebuilt the moment you first touch the game. And once I was in there, I kept going. What feels different The first run teaches you now. No more menu wall before you've seen the game. Your first launch drops you straight into a match with a drone already yours, and the game shows you — in the match, with your hands on it — how to move, place, shoot, dash, shield and call a wave. The build screen opens after you've had a taste. Everything you touch has weight. New audio from the ground up, meteors that die with a real explosion, hit flashes, screen shake, gold that pops off the kill, a dash that parries, and a colour synergy that announces itself when it comes online. The game used to be quiet. It isn't anymore. A 100-node constellation. The skill tree is now 10 colours x 10 nodes, drawn as a constellation you light up across runs — with keystones that change how a colour actually plays. Stones have ranks — and fuse. 10 rarity tiers, grey to cyan, and five of a kind fuse into one better stone. 100 achievements that are actually goals. Every one of them is a synergy challenge, with its own screen in the menu. They're a checklist for learning the colour system, not participation trophies. Choose how hard it gets. Five difficulty tiers, unlocked as you win, each with its own score. The menus are alive. The main menu is a 3D diorama with your real fleet in it. The prep screen sits over a living arena where your actual build is flying around. Your colou...

Your runs just got a plan. Two of Starfend's core systems grew up this update. Stones now have somewhere to go — ten rarity ranks, from humble Stardust all the way to Cosmic — and skills stopped being a lucky drop and became something you draft, run after run. 💎 Stones: rank up & fuse 10 stone ranks — every stone now rolls a rank, from Stardust (grey) to Cosmic (cyan). Higher rank, stronger buff, prettier frame. Stone fusion — fuse 5 stones of the same rank into 1 stone of the next rank, right from the preparation screen. Those piles of early stones finally have a purpose. Deeper runs, rarer stones — the further you push, the better the drops. Sell prices scale with rank too. New in-game stone art across the board. ⚡ Skills: draft your build You start every run with a skill — the one matching your drone body's color. From wave 1, you have a button to press. Pick a new skill every 5 waves — after the wave buff on waves 5, 10, 15… you choose a skill drawn from the colors of the meteors you're actually fighting. Skills fuse — pick the right colors and they combine into stronger tiers, with a proper little cinematic: charge-up, clash, shockwave. It's very satisfying. Giant meteors now drop stones instead of skills — kill them for loot, draft your skills on schedule. 🎮 Controller & fixes Non-Steam controllers now match the Steam layout: X/□ calls the next wave, L3/R3 zoom, B/○ levels up the drone you're flying. Navigating the drone buttons with a controller now tints the placement effect with each drone's color, same as mouse hover. Fixed bugs when starting a second run in the same session, a survival timer that kept counting on the reward screen, and a keyboard-only tip showing up on controller. Defeat is quicker and more dramatic — a short slow-mo beat instead of a long crawl. New here? There's a free demo — play a full run, no strings attached. As always, this came partly from your reports — keep them coming in the Hub. — Solo dev behind Starfend ▶ Play the demo / Wis...

Pick up a controller. Starfend was waiting for this.When I first built Starfend, it was a mouse-and-keyboard game that happened to tolerate a gamepad. Not anymore. I rebuilt control from the ground up — and the game I always pictured, the one you play leaned back on the couch with a drink in the other hand, is finally here. Dashing your main drone through a swarm of meteors, snapping the shield up at the last second, calling the next wave early because you want the pressure — it all flows now. No menus fighting you, no "where did my cursor go." Just you, your fleet, and the color you chose to win with. What feels differentIt plays like it was made for a controller — every action sits where your thumbs already are. LT dashes, RT raises the shield, the sticks fly the camera, the D-pad fires your skills. Steam Deck, properly — full Steam Input support, readable HUD, the layout already configured when you launch. Pick it up and play. Menus, runs, upgrades — all on the stick — navigate the whole game without ever reaching for a mouse. Your buttons, your icons — the prompts in-game match the controller in your hands (Xbox, PlayStation, or Deck), and you can remap everything in Settings → Controls. This is the kind of update I'll keep making: not patch notes, but the game getting closer to what it should feel like. New here? There's a free demo — play a full run, no strings. And Starfend is 30% off during the Summer Sale (until July 9), so it's a good week to jump in.If you play on controller or Deck, I'd genuinely love to hear how it feels — drop a note in the Hub. — Solo dev behind Starfend\https://url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/2540820/Starfend/]▶ Play the demo / Wishlist Starfend