Line #11 VideoGame/HoshiSaga


1	A point-and-click game of discovery, ''Hoshi Saga'' revolves around finding stars. In each stage, you have to find a star and the fun is figuring out just what you need to do to uncover or create the star. The puzzles are many and varied, and range from the mind-numbingly easy to the hair-pullingly hard.
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3	The ''Hoshi Saga'' series has thirteen installments so far, all of which can be found [[http://hoshisaga.s3-website-ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com/index.html here]]. The series started as a trilogy of games all containing 100 stages in total, before more were added and the naming themes changed accordingly. ''Minnano'' entries to the series are all ''Hoshi Saga'' stages designed and submitted by the community.
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5	!!This game series contains the following tropes:
6	* ArtShift: Stage 74 of ''Hoshi Saga 3'' has a hand-drawn scene and stars compared to the normally perfect shapes of other levels.
7	* BulletHell: A difficult iteration as stage 10000 [sic] in ''Dokuringo'', further compounded by your ''huge'' hitbox. After losing the first time, the game offers you a shield to make it easier. Of course, that locks you out of the 'good' ending.
8	* CuttingTheKnot: Stage 21 of ''Minnano 3'' has a present-switching game with a wonky music player that's always rigged to ensure the star is out of your reach. What to do? [[spoiler:Break the music player to prematurely halt the game when the star's in your grasp.]]
9	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The first three games. The next number of games are fully-colored and are much more detailed.
10	* EasyLevelTrick: Several stages have an inconspicuous solution to an otherwise difficult-looking puzzle.
11	** Stage 40 in ''Ringoame'''s esoteric solution does not involve the circles in it to reveal the star at all.
12	** The number of stars ranked as the difficulty can give it away, as in the stage 48, which initially appears to be a difficult {{Klotski}}, but is in fact, just a click-and-drag to the solution.
13	** Stage 70 in ''Ringoen'' can be difficult to align properly five times in a row, until the player realizes the background keeps track of previous attempts, so he can use those attempts to continue progress consistently.
14	** Even the final boss of stage 10000 has three strategies that make it a lot easier:
15	*** [[spoiler: Staying at the bottom middle of the screen during the first attack allows you to evade all but one of the bullets.]]
16	*** [[spoiler: If you move your mouse cursor out of the game border and move it back in from another side, your ship INSTANTLY teleports to the cursor. This allows you to dodge the "spinning laser" and "rings" attacks easily.]]
17	*** [[spoiler: Finally, right-clicking anywhere on the screen pauses the game, and left clicking anywhere else will teleport your ship to your cursor. This is VITAL for the boss' LastDitchMove.]]
18	* {{Fanservice}}: In each of the first three installments, there's one stage that requires you to do something almost {{ecchi}} (pulling down underwear [but not ''that'' far down], blowing up women's skirts to reveal [[GoofyPrintUnderwear star-printed underwear]], trying to get a woman to uncover her breasts [[SceneryCensor so that they immediately get covered by stars]]...). The hints of fanservice disappear entirely after the third installment... until ''Dokuringo'', where there are no less than an entire column (five stages!) that feature nude or stripped women in full color, one requiring you to ''unzip a girl's {{Meido}} outfit'', and the winning screen you get if you clear the final stage the hard way is a drawing of a naked woman whose nipples and crotch are just barely covered by other objects.
19	* GenreShift: Several final levels: ''Ringo''[==]'s final level gives off RPG tones, and ''Dokuringo''[==]'s final level is a flat out ShootEmUp.
20	* GroinAttack: What you need to do in one of ''3'''s stages.
21	* GuideDangIt: Stage 9982 in ''Dokuringo'' has a solution unrelated to the original puzzle, stage 77. It also has to be found in a field of 35 blocks with four positions each.
22	* KaizoTrap: On Stage 10000, the boss's particles from after its explosion damages the player's ship.
23	* {{Klotski}}: In the 48th stage, a deceptively difficult Klotski puzzle appears. It just requires a [[EasyLevelTrick click-and-drag]] to be solved.
24	* LastDitchMove: Stage 10000's boss uses a very nasty one when its health is depleted.
25	* MinigameGame
26	* MoodDissonance: ''Dokuringo'' only allows one stage when it's first started, which is a revamped ''Ringo'' stage 7 with a skull in place of a star. It tells you that the rest of the puzzles (unlocked after solving that one) are not simple and are not as light-hearted as the previous games' puzzles.
27	* MoonLogicPuzzle: Some of the stages qualify as this, giving you next to no indication of what to do in them. Especially prevalent in ''Dokuringo'', where you often have to completely ignore the obvious puzzle to search for a completely non-obvious one.
28	* OddlyNamedSequel: All the installments after the third one, perhaps to signify that they're in color instead of black-and-white and are considerably easier than the first three installments (or ''harder'', for the eighth one).
29	* OneHitPointWonder: Stage 10000 in ''Dokuringo'' is pretty much the same as Stage 100 in ''Ringohime''... except you can only take ONE hit before losing.
30	* OutsideTheBoxTactic: EVERYTHING in ''Dokuringo'' requires this.
31	* RecurringBossTemplate: The stage 10000 boss in ''Dokuringo'' is the exact same boss in ''Ringohime'', except faster, and with a LastDitchMove. And you only take '''[[OneHitPointWonder ONE HIT]]''' to fail it instead of having infinite lives.
32	* RedHerring: Plenty in ''Dokuringo''; for example, the clock puzzle (stage 21 in ''Ringo'') turns out to be irrelevant to the corresponding stage 9991--not even mashing the arrow to make it fall will grant you the star. A blend of stage 60 from ''Ringoen'' and 96 from ''Ringohime'' have no relation to finding the star in stage 9997. Instead, the "'''Sta'''ge:" letters and "'''R'''eturn" button provide the clue.
33	* RemixedLevel:
34	** ''Dokuringo'' is almost entirely made up of stages strongly resembling that of past installments but with very different (and more difficult) solutions.
35	** The stages in ''Hoshi Saga 13'' are the same as those found in the original ''Hoshi Saga'' trilogy, only the game is now controlled using arrow keys rather than the mouse.
36	* SchizophrenicDifficulty: You can go from a 1-star puzzle that just requires you to mouse your cursor over star pieces to a 5-star puzzle that requires you to have almost superhuman reflexes.
37	* ShellGame: One of the stages in ''Ringoen''. Gets a CallBack in ''Dokuringo'' where it's amped up in difficulty (instead of selecting the correct cup just once, you have to do it 5 times in a row).
38	* ShieldedCoreBoss: Stage 10000's star, whose core is protected by four walls as well as the spinning spikes of the star itself.
39	* ShoutOut: The very first stage in the first game recalls the ''Mario'' series.
40	** Stage 10000's star boss in ''Ringohime'' as well as Stage 10000's in ''Dokuringo'' are obvious references to Big Core from ''VideoGame/{{Gradius}}'', down to the design of the boss's hitbox.
41	* SomeDexterityRequired:
42	** Stage 30 in ''Hoshi Saga'' asks the player to type 'I will find a star' 10 times in 40 seconds to find the star. That might not come easy to some people.
43	** Stage 9979 requires some rapid-fire mouse-clicking to form the star faster than it can dissipate.
44	* SongsInTheKeyOfLock: One stage in the second installment requires you to play "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on water-filled wine glasses.
45	* StarShapedCoupon
46	* ThemeNaming:
47	** Ringo = Apple
48	** Ringoame = Apple Candy
49	** Ringoen = Apple Garden
50	** Ringohime = Apple Princess
51	** Dokuringo = Poison Apple
52	* WaitingPuzzle:
53	** In the first ''Hoshi Saga'' game on stage 35, the in-game switch has to be kept on for a real-time minute before turning it off to reveal the star.
54	** One stage in the third installment requires you to keep your cursor still (or keep it away from the game screen) for the star to form.

Context VideoGame / HoshiSaga