StarCrawlers is a space-punk dungeon crawler that offers a great atmosphere, a splendid combat system, an engaging set-up and a rather interesting story. Besides several minor flaws, the major fun killer is an unfortunate focus on the procedurally generated content that can‘t compete with manually created work yet.

After a dozen hours, it’s all just variants of the same dungeons over and over again. By the time I grew a bit bored of the dungeons, however, I was already invested. So that I didn’t need to keep checking the corp information menu, I even scribbled down my grudges or the names of groups I needed to butter up in my Little Book of Debts. Even more than Syndicate or Shadowrun Returns, StarCrawlers manages to capture the essence of cyberpunk and turn it into compelling systems. Despite the concessions made in the name of ambition, it’s an impressive dungeon romp.