Svavelstickan has been working on Start Fetchers: Episode 1 for a few years so far, and it might take them a bit more to finish. In the meanwhile they released this short fighting game, Star Fetchers: Escape From Pork Belly as an apéritif to help with the waiting. I really enjoyed the Star Fetchers pilot, so I bought Star Fetchers: Escape From Pork Belly as soon as I received the email of availability from Steam.

The story continues some time after your actions in the first game. The Thornz, your gang with 2 members, gets captured by a rival gang, the Rhinestone Cowboys. They promise they will release you if you survive 10 fights in their underground ring at Pork Belly. And you, playing as Zambezi, the blondie from the first game, promise them you will take their heads once you are out.

Reminiscent from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! for NES, during the fight, you will see the back of your character and the front of your enemy, but the fighting style is very different. Here, you use your mouse to target the head of your opponent, using left and right clicks to punch with your left or right hand. You are also free to move from left to right of the screen, and perform dodges with the keys A, S and D. Missing a punch will stagger you for a brief moment and leave you open for an enemy attack.

The enemies you face are random, so is the order you face them. Except for the bosses who happened every 5 fights, none of my attempts to finish the game were equal.

The bread and butter of the enemies would move around and throw a single punch. It seems they are randomly generated variating face, body and accessories. I think those affect how they behave, and can give you important telling of their actions. I noticed the chihuahua face often dodge and attack when their face becomes more rabid.

There are also some special fights that reminded me of Street Fighter 2 bonus levels, and change the dynamic of the fights. One enemy looked like a cloud of bats, another hid behind a shield, and there was even a fortune-teller “follow the right cup” kind of fight.

Every 5 levels you will face a boss, I only fought 2 different bosses so far. They have unique fighting styles. One boss pulled 2 machine guns after I defeated its first phase, and it was quite difficult to predict and avoid the bullet spray.

From what I saw in the promo material, they might have more enemies and bosses than what I encountered in my ~4 hours of gameplay. The game itself is not that long, once you get the gist of it, you might finish a run in less than 30 min.

After every fight, you are rewarded with some money and have the options to refill your health bar or buy some items - they increase your max health, speed or damage, add effects to your attacks like lifesteal or poison, and many others. You can also click on the shopkeeper (who is also the nurse and ring announcer) for some dialog, and some interactions show signs that you are increasing your relationship level. I am not sure what does relationship levels do, but the dialogues help to learn more about that character.

If you die and choose to continue, you go back for the first fight with no items or money. Also, the story elements that happen after some fights do not play again. If you wish to watch those again, you need to start from the menu, rather than continue.

Limited spoilers ahead, if you did not predict it so far; the game does not end after 10 fights, instead you play through one of the most cathartic scenes I had in recent gaming.

The game continues delivering that creative and unique art style, and an excellent soundtrack. The story is short and not as deep philosophical as the first installment, but it does justice to the franchise.

I like how Svavelstickan uses simple mechanics to tell their stories and then push it to the limit. From the first fight to the real last boss, they introduced new elements that make my gameplay very enjoyable and fresh.

It works great on Linux with proton. I experienced a problem that all my inputs, except mouse reticle move, would stop working after selecting continue, but it does not seem to be Linux related, and it would go back to work after restarting the game

Star Fetchers: Escape From Pork Belly is available on Steam as a DLC for the Star Fetchers pilot.

The DLC could be its own game, but I liked how they arrange the selection of the modes you are going to play when you start the main game (ESC menu -> select episode).

If you haven’t tried yet, Star Fetchers pilot is free and it is worth a try.

Steam Deck

The game was made for the mouse and keyboard, so you will get a warning related to controls from Steam. The default profile will use the trackpad and triggers to simulate the mouse.

The power consumption would vary between 7W and 9W. The game only had 3 video configuration options: full-screen, resolution and quality. The resolution only had the option for the Deck’s screen resolution, so I could not reduce it and let the Deck scale it. I did not see any major change in Watts from tweaking the quality. You can still use the Steam Deck profile to tweak it to your needs.

The performance was fine, and I did not see any difference from the PC.