Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space is an indie Point and Click space adventure game developed by Dexter Team Games and published by Dexter Team Games / Flynn’s Arcade.
The story starts a couple of decades ago when Dexter and his uncle Jedo fled, as a Vreesian robot attack that destroyed the life on Earth.
Dexter has lived on Mars ever since. Now, along with his good friend Aurora, he works for Jedo, delivering merchandise to different planets throughout space and taking breaks to get some delicious Tacos whenever possible.
Dexter Stardust feels like an ode to Space Quest and Futurama and a souvenir to 80s/90s kids. It’s packed in a TV-Show-like format, with a catchy opening tune that reminded me of my childhood. Each of the five episodes can be played independently and are full of puzzles to solve and places to explore. You can interact with each location, collect items and use them in a clever way to get the story going.
In terms of playability, there’s no balance in the puzzle difficulty. Overall, it’s easy, but a few parts are hard to go through. For example, there’s a scene in Episode 1 in which you have to ask a character the same question a few times to get the correct answer. Even though I had the necessary items to proceed with, it was frustrating that it took me hours to figure that out.
If I’m honest, I found the dialogues quite cringy at first, but the game grew on me the more I played. Dexter is a clumsy and relatable character and breaks the fourth wall a few times in clever ways. Aurora is a wise sidekick that always predicts Dexter will get into trouble, which gives this duo an amusing touch. The other characters are also hilarious and filled with social critique. I enjoyed the journey more and was eager to know how things unfolded. It was especially pleasing to explore Dexter’s family backstory and how it impacted the whole narrative.
An exciting feature is available: if you’re interested, you can activate the director’s commentary and know more about each scene and development. However, this feature may contain spoilers.
There are some grammatical errors in the subtitles that most people won’t notice. Since some of the lines are in Spanish, naturally, most people will need to read them. Furthermore, I’d love to see the subtitles translated to other languages to allow a younger non-English speaking audience to play.
The art style is simple but gorgeous, even if some animations, such as lipsync, feel slightly off.
Another point that could be improved is the UI. When you finish one episode, you’re taken to the main menu and then have to find your way to the episode selection menu again, when it could be displayed after each episode.
At the end of the day, if you’re a fan of Classic Point and Click or Graphic Adventures, Dexter Stardust is worth giving it a shot.
Dexter Stardust: Adventures in Outer Space is coming on 3rd March on Nintendo Switch, PC, macOS, and iOS.
Note: Nintendo Switch game code kindly provided by Flynn’s Arcade.
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Dexter Stardust feels like an ode to Space Quest and Futurama and a souvenir to 80s/90s kids.
