Marvel and Disney might be the last vestiges of monoculture, but that doesn’t mean the average person is guaranteed to know every major superhero or comic book character. Dark Dimension, the developers behind StarLords, claim they didn’t know about Guardians of the Galaxy up until very recently. Now the team is apparently scrambling to figure out an alternate game name.
StarLords is a hand-drawn sci-fi bullet hell game with roguelike elements. Think Enter the Gungeon, but with base-building mechanics and a cartoonish, Borderlands-like style. The game lets you pick between 10 “StarLord” commanders, each with their own unique loadout, training facilities, and strategic options. The Spore Entity, for instance, can terraform the battlefield, while the Clone Master excels at overwhelming the enemy with endless units. There’s no specific release date, but you can already play a StarLords demo on Steam.
The game looks intriguing, but the Chinese developers are feeling some anxiety after reportedly discovering there’s a major Marvel character who is also named Star-Lord. “No one on the team watches Marvel movies,” one developer wrote on Reddit. “We desperately need a new name before Disney notices.”
