Sea of Stars

Sea of Stars Review: The $35 RPG for $9.99, Minus the DLC and the Co-op

$9.99 Once, With Two Things Cut

Both stores charge $9.99 — Google Play listed it at exactly that on the day we checked, after a 10% launch discount to $8.99 that ran until April 14, 2026 — and neither carries an advertising badge or a currency shop. What you get is the game that won Best Independent Game at The Game Awards 2023: two Children of the Solstice, Valere and Zale, combining sun and moon into Eclipse Magic against The Fleshmancer, across a world you cross without grid movement, random encounters or separate battle screens. What you do not get is the Throes of the Watchmaker expansion released on PC and consoles, which Playdigious says it may bring later based on interest, and the three-player local co-op, dropped for the obvious reason that a phone has one screen. Prices vary by region.

Timed Hits, Locks and Wheels on a Touchscreen

Combat is where the port has to earn its price, because Sea of Stars asks for timing: pressing at the moment an attack lands boosts damage and blocks, combo attacks spend a shared bar, and the Locks system shows the exact damage types needed to cancel an enemy's next move. Playdigious redrew the interface for touch — large action buttons, a d-pad for the free-roaming overworld — and kept full controller compatibility, so the timed hits can be played the console way. The side systems made the trip too: sailing, cooking at campfires, fishing, and Wheels, the tavern tabletop game a May 2026 Play reviewer with 22 helpful votes singled out as the thing they could not put down. An August 2026 review adds the port's rough edge: with a controller connected, some prompts still show touch icons, and the reviewer hit combat crashes.

3 GB, Dynamic Lighting, and the Battery It Eats

The iOS build is 3 GB and asks for iOS 15; Android needs version 9 and the current build is 3.0.60158, updated in June 2026. The size is the price of Sabotage's custom lighting pipeline — the game's 2D pixel art is lit dynamically, which is why it looks the way it does and why phones notice. The two most-upvoted Play reviews are both about that cost: one reports the game draining the battery quickly, the other, on a Galaxy S22 Ultra, that after 30 to 60 minutes the frame rate collapses until the app is restarted; Playdigious replied to both that the feedback was passed to the team. Six months after launch the audience is small — 10,000-plus installs and 1,660 reviews at 4.3 on Play, 215 ratings at 4.4 on the App Store. Google's data-safety card declares no data shared with third parties.