Hyperstar Run [Preview] – What’s Eric Playing?

Base price: $12.
1 player.
play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 3 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Hyperstar Run was provided by Button Shy.

Finally seem to be resuming a bit of a review rhythm; I think post-Gen Con always throws me off so aggressively for the rest of the year that I’m continually playing catch-up. Plus, there’s American Tabletop Awards prep now, and so that’s an entire additional thing. Maybe the point of life is just that it never actually slows down too much and we just learn to vibe around it? Don’t know; this isn’t the place for existential pondering. We’ve got a new Button Shy coming down the pipe soon (with more to come this year!), so always exciting stuff from one of my favorite publishers. Let’s see what they’ve got!

In Hyperstar Run, you’re so close to the end of the level! And you better be; you’re running low on lives. You’ve got everything you need to win, in that there isn’t that much you need to win besides your controller, your character’s trusty equipment, and some skillful button-pressing. That’s hopefully enough! Will you be able to make it through before you run out of lives?

Contents

Setup

Not a ton of setup! Take the Equipment cards and Hero card and set them aside:

Set the Level, next, by shuffling the Level cards:

You’ll need 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 to play Tutorial / Standard / Hard / Expert, so place them face-down in a line and place the Hero card so that the 1-corner is pointing towards the leftmost card. Draw three Level cards face-up to form your hand, and set the remaining cards (if any) aside. You should be good to start! Flip the leftmost Level card face-up.

Gameplay

Hyperstar Run! Your goal is to make it to the end before your fourth life is over. Easier said than done, but if you mash enough buttons and execute some cool combos you might be able to pull it off.

To start, look at the current Level card. You can use its ability first, if you’d like, by either turning any card in your hand face-down or discarding a face-down card from your hand. Once you’ve resolved that, choose an enemy. You’ll have to defeat that enemy to move on (known as “Passing” the Level card). You’ll need to use buttons to win! Those buttons can either come from Level cards or Equipment cards in your hand (any unused buttons on the card are lost), or you can “press” previous Level cards by moving them down a bit to use the button on their card. Either way, you move on once you’ve passed the card and flip the next Level card face-up.

Some Level cards have blue, pink, or green glowing lines on them. Defeat the corresponding enemy to enter a Combo, and then, if you don’t use the next card’s Ability and it continues the line, you can discard a card to keep the card going and pass the Level! Otherwise, treat the card normally.

If you can’t continue, you lose a life! Draw the leftmost Level card into your hand along with any discarded cards, and then place your Hero above the new leftmost Level card, incrementing his number by 1. Go again! All face-up cards stay face-up for subsequent runs; you remember the level pretty well by now!

If you complete the final Level card, you win! If you lose on your fourth life, you lose!

Player Count Differences

None! This is a solo game. You could probably play it with multiple people on a team, though, if you wanted.

Strategy

• Manipulating the structure of the level is a good idea. You can do this to set up Combos, which is probably the most important use of it, but you can also do this to break up long patterns of the same button on Level cards so that you have more flexibility with which cards you can Press later for their button.
• There’s no bonus for winning the game on your first life; you can get the lay of the land, first. No sense trying to bum-rush it if you have four shots; even with Tutorial Difficulty, you’d be hard-pressed to finish the game on your first go-round. It’s probably not worth stressing yourself out about it, though if you ever pull it off, please let me know! I’ll be impressed.
• Try to get on combos, if you can! They’re pretty critical at higher difficulty levels. Combos are most useful because they reduce the cost of passing a Level card down to 1 icon. Hopefully, it’s one you have or one you can press, but that’s significantly less than the two or three buttons that it usually takes to get through a level.
• Don’t waste your equipment. You can burn it if you have to, but it’s almost always worth using it against a specific enemy that requires both of its icons, rather than just spending it for one icon and then discarding it. You only get two per round!
• Using Abilities to see cards is probably worth losing a life or two. I use that to not only figure out which cards I should play when but also occasionally use Abilities to try and reorder the cards into a more beneficial configuration. Like I said: lining up Combos is important.
• Generally, I find pressing Level cards is better than spending cards from my hand. The main reason is that then I can use the cards in my hand for Abilities, rather than just using them for their buttons. This only goes so far early in the game, though, when you don’t have a ton of icons to spare.
• The first few Level cards will eventually end up in your hand; keep that in mind. If you’re reordering the level, try to avoid putting your Combos in the first three cards since you’ll eventually draw them. Instead, set them on or after card four, so they’ll always be in play for you the whole game.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• I think this might be one of the less complex Simply Solo games I’ve tried. I managed to actually win my first game, and I was like, am I getting better or was this easier than, say, Food Chain Island? It’s the latter. I’m not getting better at these.
• The button-mashing theme is familiar and entertaining. I do love that speedrun vibe of a game, sometimes, though I’m more the Metroidvania type.
• I always love the portability of these Button Shy games. They’re easy to take places and set up, which is really nice. You can even play this one on a plane tray if you want; you might just need to make some accommodations for how long of a line it is.
• I like the color scheme too! Purple is underrated for games; that’s all I’m saying.
• This is a nice introduction to solo games, I think. Not too complicated and fairly straightforward. You’d think it’s about hand management, but it’s really about setting up the perfect level for you to glide through in one perfect run. It’s nice!

Mehs

• I’m relieved that there’s an Equipment mini-expansion, because I would have liked to see more variety there. You use the same two cards every round in every game, which can be a bit dry. It’s a limitation of the whole 18-card thing; if you put Equipment on the back of every card you would mess with the level aesthetic. So I do get it; I’m just interested to see how other Equipment will change the game.

Cons

• All the Button Shy games where you need to be lifting up and flipping over cards a lot makes me nervous with certain gamers. If you’ve played enough games and you’re type-A enough (like me) you can usually picture it in your mind where someone’s trying to pick a card off the table and their nails keep splitting the card because they can’t quite lift it and they keep picking at it. This is a minor stress point for me, but this and a handful of other Button Shy games are truly best played on a mat or something.

Overall: 7.5 / 10

Overall, I think Hyperstar Run is fun! I was a little worried about it my first time, as I made the mistake of thinking the button icon on the card was an additional cost you had to pay to enter (whoops!), but I got the hang of it a little while in. I think I find the straight-line approach of the game a little easier to follow and I got the hang of it pretty quickly, which I think speaks to the approachability of the game. And you’d figure it’d be pretty approachable, given that it’s designed by Scott Almes, maybe the second-most prolific designer in gaming (behind Knizia)? He’s got a whole system, I assume. But I digress. This is another solid solo for Button Shy’s line, with its own set of fun mechanics and strategy to explore. I kind of wonder if there’s someone with a Quiver mini full of these just, prepped for all seasons, but I have yet to meet them. Theme’s fun, gameplay’s solid, and while I’d love to see more from it in the future, I imagine the KS extras and almost-certain Expansion Collection will sate that urge eventually. If you’re a fan of Button Shy, you’re probably already on the hook for this, but if not (and why not?), I’d definitely recommend it if you’re interested in seeing what solo games are all about! Lots of fun to be had here.

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