If you asked me what Star Overdrive is, I’d tell you it’s a single-player, high-speed sci-fi exploration game with some serious ‘80s flair. It’s all about velocity, momentum, and the pure joy of shredding across an alien world, zipping through the planet to explore every inch of it. But it’s not all speed; the game balances when to hit the gas with when to slam the brakes, giving you slower, thoughtful moments to solve puzzles and unravel mysteries. If you asked me to boil it all down, though? Well. You go fast, and you feel cool doing it… and sometimes you stop to solve a puzzle or two.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Hoverboarder

The long and short of Star Overdrive is simple: it’s all about the main character, Bios, his board and the journey of uncovering the mystery of his missing partner, Nous, on the huge expanse that is the alien planet Cebet. What caught me off guard, though, was the surprising amount of depth that the game offers beneath its high-speed exterior. I mean, you don’t load up Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and expect anything from it other than sick tricks and a good time, right? However, Tony Hawk’s Pro Hoverboarder delivered an intriguing mystery that genuinely kept me interested.

The game opens cryptically with a distress message from Nous. Something terrible has happened on Cebet. She warns of danger, says she misses him, begs forgiveness and ends the message with the haunting line, “we are one.” That’s all the information you get before Bios’ ship is shot out of the sky on his approach to Cebet and he crash lands on the surface. Just like that, you’re alone, stranded and dropped into a strange mystery that you have to solve piece by piece. 

It takes a moment to find your footing, but when Bios find Nous’ hoverboard, the game’s true identity reveals itself. It becomes crystal clear that movement is the heart of everything. Cebet is a massive playground built for your board, and you’ll need to get the hang of traversing it quickly if you want to make any sort of progress exploring it.

Mechanically, the hoverboard is very simple but deeply satisfying. You hop on your board and use the terrain’s natural dips and curves to build up momentum. You prepare a jump and, when at the apex of whatever piece of the planet is your ramp, launch yourself into the air to perform as many tricks as you can squeeze in before gravity wrenches you back down to the ground. Unless you trick too close to the sun and wipe out, your landing is rewarded with a nice speed boost that lets you continue this loop of steering, jumping, tricking and boosting.

The real magic of the movement lies in the tension between Bios’ flight and fall. The constant dance between the weightlessness of airtime and the harsh reality of gravity dragging you back down, alongside the speed that you can rack up while doing so, is thrilling. It’s a constant push and pull between gravity and finesse, and when you’ve got a rhythm going, it’s a great feeling.

In addition to the hoverboard, the game features a pretty simple crafting system where you use resources found on Cebet to upgrade your ride. The system isn’t particularly deep; it’s essentially just depositing as many materials as you can afford to use into components to enhance your board’s stats. Regardless, I still enjoyed customising my components throughout the game to make my board even faster.

The only gripe I had with the hoverboarding was the lack of camera control. While Bios is on foot, you can use the right stick to move your camera freely. However, when you slap Bios on his board and head out for a joyride, your right stick becomes the input for tricks, and your camera is fixed in the direction you’re going. While this wasn’t a complete dealbreaker, it did make it harder to get a sense of my surroundings, which was especially frustrating when scouting for the next location in a race or time trial or when fighting bigger enemies on hoverboard.

The hoverboard isn’t the only item at your disposal on Cebet. Bios has his trusty keytar, a retro instrument that doubles as both a weapon and a puzzle-solving device. On one hand, it’s wielded as a sword, smacking critters and robots into pieces. On the other hand, it channels useful abilities used both in combat and in environmental interactions.

That being said, combat is definitely not where Star Overdrive shines. While the keytar oozes thematic style, fights quickly become tedious. There’s no real lock-on system either, just an automatic targeting circle on whatever enemy is closest, so trying to stay oriented to where enemies are while dodging and swinging just feels awkward. It’s not unplayable, but compared to the freedom and finesse of the hoverboarding, combat feels just like an obstacle to tolerate and not something to look forward to.

To its credit, the keytar’s abilities do add some excitement to combat. You can use abilities unlocked throughout the story to do some unique things in combat. You can grab enemies and hurl them into each other, blast them with a ranged energy pulse, charm them and more. My personal favourite was to use the bounce-pad ability (typically used for traversal) to cause robots to bounce about, stripping them of valuable resources and generally incapacitating them for the duration. It’s a nice addition to the otherwise underwhelming battle system.

Even so, the combat never quite comes together. It struggles to feel engaging, especially during fights with the bigger, boss enemies, which should be highlights but instead suffer from the same awkwardness. It’s even more apparent when the fighting is on the hoverboard, which puts you at a great disadvantage because of the aforementioned camera controls. At points it truly just feels as if you are wrestling against the game itself to progress the boss fights.

Star storytelling

One of the coolest things about Star Overdrive is how it tells its story. Visual storytelling is built into the planet, with the natural landscape constantly interrupted by abandoned mining equipment. You’re never smacked over the head with crazy levels of exposition, but the implication is always there: something went wrong here. And when you pair the environment with the small number of cutscenes and the scattered voice logs from Nous, Bios’ missing partner, you start piecing together the narrative. It’s subtle but effective. Nous’ logs were probably my favourite finds in the overworld. They automatically play on pickup, and while you run about the planet, they help you learn so much about her and the situation that led up to the beginning of the game.

The art style, too, is just wonderful. Each biome felt unique and distinct, with each section sticking to a slightly different colour palette to help create a sense of identity for each area you explore, while still tying each location together. The skybox was quite pretty too, with the vast blue sky, a huge planet in the distance, fluffy clouds and that biting glare of the sun. And thank god for that, as I spent a lot of time looking at the sky, considering how much I launched Bios up into the stratosphere. I only wish that it changed, or that the planet had some sort of day/night cycle to break things up a bit.

A soundtrack to shred to

The soundtrack for Star Overdrive bears talking about. The more you explore Cebet, the more you’ll find music cassette tapes to pick up and add to your collection. Each cassette tape unlocks a new track to blast as you surf through the planet. Interestingly, there’s no persistent overworld music outside of key story moments and fights, which leave the moment-to-moment vibe in your hands. You’re encouraged to pick a cassette tape and let it ride, and it’s absolutely worth doing. The music is a perfect match, packed with gritty, synth-filled 80s-inspired rock bangers to zoom about Cebet to.