What would otherwise be a fine solar empire builder, Hades' Star is marred by one mechanic that throws a wrench in the fun of it all: Red Stars.

In Hades' Star you colonize planets, trade resources between them, uncover new planets, and spend credits to research new technologies. Like most F2P mobile games, there is a currency that can be used to speed things up. However, this is by far the most innocuous implementation I've ever seen. You get the currency (crystals) for just playing the game, and you get enough to use pretty frequently. I'm sure there is a "whale" point where it becomes more necessary, but in my month of playing regularly I found it very easy to work around.

The Red Stars I mentioned before are a real problem for me. The game is very passive and chill, with a soundtrack to match. I loved it. But then you must enter these Red Star systems and battle enemies, and get out before a 15 minute timer goes off, lest you lose everything!

You can send 2 battleships and 4 transport ships into a Red Star system and lose it all because you put your phone down for too long. This happened to me, because I was playing in bed and put my phone down to talk to my wife...And it was my end of playing Hades' Star, because I lost like 2 days worth of credits because I lost 6 ships. I really enjoyed it, but having to be engaged with it fully for 15 minutes, a couple times a day was annoying. That's not what I signed up for. I wanted a relaxed game I can put down whenever and be fine.

I was at work once, playing around because I thought my boss was on lunch. I was wrong and my boss walked over to my desk and started talking to me. So I put my phone down. I WAS IN A RED STAR! When I picked my phone up again I had only 30 seconds left to get my ships out of these, and I did, thankfully.

It would be find if Red Stars were optional. They are not. You need them to find new technologies to improve your ships.

Hades' Star would have been a game I'd have poked at for months and months. But not if I have to worry about losing ships. I'll stick with a clicker game, I guess.