Crappy controls – Black Stars Review

Unlike some other reviewers, I like the difficulty level, since I've played other similar games and need a challenge to make it interesting. On that level, the game is great. But the controls are substandard. There is no easy way to deselect a planet, so once you have it selected, you have to send ships to another planet or waste precious seconds trying to tap the space outside the playing field to deselect. There is a power up bar that you can make appear sometimes, but I still haven't figured out how... Double tap the bottom of the screen? Swipe up from the bottom? None of them consistently work for me, and when time is of the essence, you don't want your power ups to be inaccessible because of poor interface design. Add the fact that there is no in-game guide or help manual to explain how to do this, the tutorial can't be repeated once you've completed it, and you have to exit out of the app and then relaunch it (which auto-pauses your game) if you want to access the menu, and this is all-around just very poorly designed. Cool idea, fun game, bad execution.
Review by shavip on Black Stars.