INTRODUCTION
I received a copy of Changed Stars to review from the creative team. They were very kind and accommodating of both my schedule and the way that I write reviews. While in the past, when reviews were requested,
I have had issues with developers taking criticism among colonial and racial elements, this did not happen this time. Regardless of any criticisms that I may have of the setting of the book and some assumptions
thereof, I have no criticisms of the creative team. I wish them all the luck in the world and I DO recommend this book! This is going to be a more traditional review than some of my other ones. As per usual,
I am going to go through a short summary of the game mechanics (as best I can, there are a lot of them!), a review of the rules and then a review of the game's "identity". The game's identity consists of the
setting, the narrative voice that the gamebook is written in, the art assets and any author notes present like inspirations or an introduction and so on.
Overall, I actually did like the game's worldbuilding. I generally have issues with the way that fantastical species are portrayed and used as a metaphor for race, for a number of reasons. You may have read
elsewhere in my reviews (if only my private ones) that I do not like fantasy races. This is still true. However, the races in Changed Stars are usually not applicable to real world races. They are not
metaphorically anything because they are written through a lense of xenobiology rather than a lense of metaphor. The intent matters for things like this. Instead, I see the narrative parallels between being
transgender or neurodivergent in these groups. That there exists groups of people who, for some reason or another, engage in sex and intimacy in ways that "average humans" can not comprehend. Mainstream
science fiction is full of transgender and neurodivergent charcters. They may not call them this and they may not intend for this to be the case but they don't have to, like will recognize like. The creepy
android who imitates human emotions, a shapeshifting alien that replaces your loved one, a race with sixteen different sexes and complicated "mating rituals", these are representations of real world experiences.
Cisgender and neurotypical authors will play these for horror or uncanniness. It is a subconscious reaction to living in a transphobic and ableist world. Changed Stars is reclaiming these narratives and is
twisting them, it is presenting these species as they are and telling you that if you have a problem with it, you're the bad guy here. This is how they live. And I find that a far more interesting way to deal
with the metaphor of fantastical species than trying to apply half baked racial politics.
I also enjoyed the ship combat style in particular. It had a lot of mechanics that I had simply never thought about before nor have I seen in any other capacity. In a sense, it actually reminded me of a board
game. That's the type of thing that I think ttrpgs could pull more from. However, I was not as much of a fan of the other game systems. I have sense a lot of traditional games in the past and most of
the other mechanics did not stand out to me as interesting in their own right. But they were solidly designed. So on the other hand, sometimes you see things a lot in games because they work well. So I overall
have mixed feelings on the character level mechanics.
If you are interested in the full review, feel free to click ahead in the tabs where I go more in detail about my thoughts on various portions of the game.