‘Starship Home’ Is A Modern Masterpiece (The NoPro Review)

Outer space stretches out in every direction above me, its infinite scope staggering. Music swells around me from otherworldly plants in bloom. Something soft rubs up against my leg. I look down at my cat who’s oblivious to the floating robot hovering above him. “In a moment, my star cat,” I tell Lynx before looking up again. “We have a galaxy to save first.”

Because the long-promised, fabled XR future, with its seamless integration of reality and technology heightening digital experiences, has finally arrived with Starship Home.

From Creature, a game studio and label, Starship Home is an AR and VR sandbox narrative experience for one player. As of this review’s publication, it’s a Meta Quest exclusive that requires either a Quest 3 or 3S headset. Furthermore and most importantly, the player must allow their headset to capture a room (NoProTip — the larger, the better!) to play Starship Home.

Upon opening a misdelivered package, the player uses the components inside to transform their room into a functional starship that blasts off into space. While meeting the package’s intended owner, the amoeba-like alien scientist Wandrin (Brian Diamond), the player is attacked by The Blight, a cosmic force killing all plant life in the galaxy. Upon fleeing The Blight with assistance from Jeff (Bonnie Bogovich), another amoeba-like alien explorer, the player is tasked with finding several plants that together can unlock the secret to permanently stopping The Blight.

At first, I was apprehensive about Starship Home, as previous mixed reality and passthrough experiences on the Quest 2 simply felt like clever gimmicks. Those experiences seemed to be the creators showing off their tech prowess with narrative and emotional engagement being an accidental benefit rather than an intentional choice. The Quest 2’s black-and-white passthrough wasn’t helping to elevate these experiences either.

But I was instantly struck by not only Starship Home’s seamless and painless startup through the Quest 3’s full-color passthrough but its charmingly playful tone. The “loading page” instantly had me smiling, making me feel relaxed and at ease. This continued when pulling a multitude of components out of the misdelivered package to build the starship, the act mirroring a Looney Tunes’ ACME bit. Every component or viewport is irregularly shaped, not a right angle to be found, instilling a perfect balance of otherworldly transformation without totally overtaking my room’s decor.

Once assembled and flying through space (NoProTip — highly recommend putting a viewport or two on your ceiling!) the player constantly interacts with several fantastic starship elements. My favorite is the ship’s main controls and large viewport component that curves outward, successfully creating an illusion of true depth. Constantly throughout Starship Home I’d find myself leaning against the viewport, craning my head to witness massive planets, colorful stars, and magnificent creatures in total wonderment. Similarly, sending and receiving items through the airlock filled me with childish joy, pressing my face against windows watching items come and go. These simple acts of engagement are a delightful highlight, as Creature clearly understands how observation helps elevate an experience just as much as interaction does.

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In order to stop The Blight’s spread, Starship Home’s gameplay consists of visiting planets, tending to plants, and exploring each plant’s dreamscape. And of these three elements, exploring planets gets unfortunately tedious rather quickly. While each planet’s biome is visually stunning from space and on its surface, the player repeats the task of sending a lander down to scan elements on the surface until discovering a plant specimen worth harvesting. Don’t get me wrong, the sense of accomplishment and discovery I felt the first time was palpable. But by the third planet and onward, I found myself scanning each planet’s surface quickly, simply going through the motions like a passionless drone rather than an excited explorer.

But a big reason for my humdrum feelings on exploring planets is because tending to the player’s growing collection of plants is absolutely gratifying. Once a harvested plant is aboard your starship, the player needs to not only take a series of actions for the plant to bloom, but constantly keep it happy and healthy. This process kept me excitedly on my toes as upon blooming each plant is incredibly unique in both style and function. I never knew what to expect, always being in awe as each flower bloomed. Additionally, thanks to each plant’s liveliness, I took care of where I placed each one in my starship, these choices furthering a subtle yet dramatic change in my room’s landscape.

Yet this is merely a prelude to Starship Home’s greatest element of exploring a plant’s dream, where not only is the gameplay engaging and creativity breathtaking but a stunning showcase of Creature’s AR capabilities.

As the final step in blooming a plant, the player must enter a plant’s dreamscape to help it “awaken.” To discuss any dreamscape in detail would delve into spoilers, and I can not and will not take that away from any future player. But simply put, each dreamscape is widely distinct in presentation and interaction along with how it transforms part or all of your room. Of all of Starship Home’s AR elements, it’s these transformations where the experience not only shines but makes a massive leap forward technologically. While I’ve played many Quest experiences where I got caught up in the imaginary world around me, Starship Home is the first experience where I totally forgot about the physical space I was occupying. It’s an impressive testament as I was in my own living room, a place I spend time in each day and know like the back of my hand!

Bringing the entire experience together is Starship Home’s thoughtful and tightly crafted narrative. It’s not shy about its pro-environmental messaging, focusing on how simple mindfulness of our everyday surroundings can have a profound impact. Yet the tone never approaches preachiness, simply reminding the player they too are affected by climate change. It also helps that these moments are few and far between, as Starship Home elects to focus on charm first and foremost. The dialogue is a perfectly mixed balance of being incredibly witty and utterly goofy, landing each time thanks to Diamond and Bogovich’s tremendous performances.

With the release of Starship Home the long-promised age of XR is finally upon immersive audiences. Creature’s creative team has made not only a fantastic experience but one showcasing the magical merriment VR headsets can offer anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Starship Home is Meta Quest exclusive, playable only on a Quest 3 or 3S. It is available now for $19.99.

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