First Signal | Indie discovery
The most interesting thing about Starfish ROOM: WELCOME TO LOOP ETERNAL is that it doesn’t pretend its arena can ever be truly cleared. You fight, collect Core, pick your chances and start again. Even the title tells you the bargain. The ROOM is yours to defend, but the loop belongs to the game.
Behind that premise is SketBR, also credited as Kittycreampuff, a solo developer building a pixel-art action roguelite in GDevelop. Following our submission, the developer supplied a press kit and confirmed that its original media can be reproduced by Coloured Static Press with credit. The publicly playable itch.io build remains a work in progress, while the separate Steam listing is still marked as coming soon. That distinction matters: this is a look at an evolving indie project, not a final-version review.
A room full of threats, and a reason to keep moving
At its centre is Kibo Wave, a cat-sapien warrior caught in an alien conflict. The game is presented as an overhead, fast-moving arena brawler, where taking down enemy hordes feeds a Core meter. Filling that meter is how the player advances, but it is also tied to the larger cycle. Die or complete another stretch of the journey and the ROOM can become familiar again, even as the threats and choices change.
The developer’s published material describes a mixture of melee attacks, dashes and thrown explosives, with randomized cards interrupting the flow at progression milestones. Those cards are not all friendly. Some promise an immediate advantage; others threaten the run itself. It’s a simple hook with teeth: an action game that occasionally asks you to weigh a gamble against everything you’ve survived so far.
The studio’s own materials lay out a deliberately strange structure. The main rooms give way to alien encounters; collecting sufficient Core eventually completes an Eternal Loop and sends the story back around. Beyond that are rival figures and a later confrontation involving Boki, a version of the protagonist from another timeline. It’s a lot of mythology for a game built around short bursts of combat, and that’s part of its character.
Pixel art with a personality of its own
Starfish ROOM’s identity comes through most clearly in its art. Its small, chunky sprites share the screen with a cast that veers from the cute to the deliberately bizarre. The contrast seems intentional: a colourful little fighter wandering into increasingly vicious encounters. The press-kit character sheet is especially revealing. Rather than a single interchangeable enemy type, it sketches a world with wildly different silhouettes, colours and attitudes.
It also gives the game’s setting some grounding beyond the combat. Kibo’s struggle is presented as part of an ongoing colonial conflict, with new characters carrying the story after earlier cycles end. Those themes sit alongside card effects, exaggerated action and a sense of absurd humour. Whether they hold together across a long play session is something we’d need to test, but the creative direction is recognisably individual.
What can you actually play?
The game’s itch.io page offers a public browser build. The Steam page currently lists the game as coming soon, so we are treating the wider PC release as unconfirmed rather than presenting the project as a finished Steam launch.
We haven’t scored or reviewed the game here, and we’re not claiming hands-on time with a final release. This First Signal feature draws on the current public listings, the developer’s written clarification and original, permission-cleared press assets. The developer also states on itch.io that no generative AI was used in the game.
If you enjoy finding small, personal games before they’ve settled into their final form, this one is worth investigating. The strongest idea isn’t the promise of endless combat. It’s the way a single ROOM becomes a stage for a much stranger story.
At a glance: Developer: SketBR / Kittycreampuff · Genre: action roguelite / arena combat · Status: playable work-in-progress on itch.io; Steam release coming soon · Coverage: independent First Signal discovery, not a review.
Images: Official press-kit materials provided with credited-use permission by SketBR / Kittycreampuff. No fee, review score or coverage commitment forms part of this feature.