Star Overdrive promises an exciting adventure across an alien open world on a jet-powered hoverboard. It's a simple pitch, but after playing a few hours of the game, it feels a bit rough.
What is Star Overdrive?
Star Overdrive was released on April 10, 2025, and is available on Switch, Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox. It's published by Dear Villagers, who have a fantastic portfolio including The Forgotten City, Big Helmet Heroes, and Caravan Sandwitch. It's developed by a team called Caracal Games.
I've not played their other titles, but it seems like playing with movement is a key focus for them, so I'm not surprised that they decided to throw the player on a hoverboard and let them rip.
Three Gameplay Modes
From what I've seen so far, there are three primary things you do in Star Overdrive.
On the surface of the planet, you cruise around from landmark to landmark on your hoverboard. Sometimes you race, sometimes you chase Dune-like sand worms, and sometimes you just vibe as you head towards new landmarks.
At landmarks, you'll often have to jump off your board and thwack at enemies with a keytar you use as a sword. Why a keytar? Who cares, it's cool.
Finally, once you've dealt with mobs, you open up portals that take you into Breath of the Wild-style shrines where you solve some puzzles. Solve the puzzle, get the loot, hop back on your board.
Fast Yet So, So Slow
While you're on the hoverboard in Star Overdrive, everything is great. You can boost, you can do tricks in the air to gain speed, and there's a great backing soundtrack that just makes you want to go and go and go. I played this on the Switch, and there was definitely some chugging at high speeds.
It wasn't unplayable, but it's also not nearly as smooth as such a fast-paced game should be. Still, ever since I saw Back to the Future II, the siren's song of a hoverboard has been enough to get me to try a lot of mid-tier games.
Unfortunately, you spend a lot of time off your board, and that's where things go wrong. Moving around on foot in Star Overdrive feels bad. Of course, your character feels slow on foot compared to when they've got a cruise missile strapped to their feet, but they also just feel slow compared to any other third-person action game.
And the worst part is that when you are on foot, the camera doesn't follow your character. A lot of the on-foot action has you swiping at enemies in the exact perfunctory way that Caravan Sandwitch did not. With the camera obstusely stuck in one direction unless you take your thumbs off the attack button in favor of the right analog stick, every time I had to fight enemies felt like a chore.
Is Star Overdrive Worth Your Time?
I think I'll keep dipping in on this one, if only to cruise around the landscapes, but I really hope we get an update that makes the on-foot camera follow your movement (the way it already does on the board). Until then, this is a really uneven experience. Still, it's got some great PS2 era vibes, so it's worth checking out if you liked modern games with throwback vibes like Wavetale.
You can check out my first impressions of Star Overdrive and loads of other games on The Power Play-Throughs Podcast.
