Developed by IKINAGAMES, a game development studio founded in South Korea in 2011, STARBITES is an upcoming science fiction RPG that takes some inspiration from the likes of Octopath Traveler’s combat and Cyberpunk in terms of game setting.
Taking place on the desert planet, Bitter, 45 years after a devastating interstellar war, STARBITES is the story of Lukida. As a salvager, Lukida actively fights for freedom, and in doing so, certain events are set in motion that may or may not result in the fate of the world hanging in the balance. (It does.) But, on the plus side, certain secrets lost to time are free to be uncovered by those willing to take the journey.
Nevertheless, with no other choice and refuse left over from interstellar warfare, causing much of Bitter to be a barren wasteland, criminals, troublemakers, and fugitives alike must live alongside one another in Bitter’s only city, a little place called “Delight.”
Gameplay is a mix of exploration and turn-based combat, with each character having their own unique Motorbot to ride around on, with Lukida favouring her “slingshot-slinging mecha” and Gwendoll utilising a “swift hoverbike.” Each motorbot can be customised to match each player’s playstyle. You are also free to customise each Motorbot with other parts, altering their base design and strengthening your characters by levelling up their talent trees.
During exploration, STARBITES has a variety of terrains to investigate, with each landscape vaster than the last. Whilst limited by what we could see and do with the demo available to us, we did play through a dungeon where some item gathering was necessary, in the form of having to find the keys required to continue our advancement.
Enemies roam freely in the overworld, but by interacting with them, a turn-based battle is immediately triggered. With a party of three characters, players will need to rely on strengths and weaknesses, should they wish to attack an enemy with a super-effective skill enough times, triggering a Barrier Breach (fractured break state), which leaves them wide open to your continued assault.
But to deal some real damage, you will need to fill your Driver’s High meter to allow your characters to kick it into overdrive and use more powerful attacks. Not only that, but by triggering your Driver’s High meter, you can also take full advantage of an extra turn immediately and deal even more damage. Additionally, while you can only have three characters in a party to attack, additional characters can be put into support roles. One such benefit of this is that by performing a Barrier Break, the associated support character can run out and perform a follow-up attack. (Every little helps, right?)
But, if you’re looking for a game where how you spend your Talent Points matters, long boss fights, where a boss can take a back seat, causing you to fight their minions instead for a couple of turns, or really want to take on raiders and robots alike, STARBITES could very well be the game for you, when it releasing in early 2026 for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and PlayStation 5.
