Reviews

Stela plays like a cross of Snake and Crazy Balloon clone Balloonacy, where you guide your ‘snake’ to the exit while avoiding the obstacles in your way which cause instant death if touched.

The game starts off simply enough as it introduces you to the concept and different obstacles in your way such as walls and timed gates. The difficulty increases gradually until it becomes quite challenging, though it never feels excessively so or that the difficultly is such that it is not in your control to master the level if your reactions are quick enough.

To help you along your way you can briefly enter a ‘turtle’ (or should that be tortoise?) mode where everything slows down for a limited time, useful for when you are stuck waiting for a gate to open in a confined space.

While the graphics are basic, the good use of colour keeps it from being monotonous and there are enough nice touches, such as the funny faces that appear on a monitor below the screen, to make the game visually interesting. The sound effects make good use of the Spectrum beeper although the continuous buzzing noise that plays when your ‘snake’ is moving seems needless and mildly annoying to boot.

Stela is a well polished little arcade game for the Speccy and well worth checking out

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

A highly amusing game rewarded for its original gameplay.

Original conception , clumsy game-play -too many interruptions hinder the action- ... pretty addictive , nontheless !!

A different kind of labyrinth .

On first impressions you wouldn't think Stela is much of a game, especially if I tell you that the game's concept was you simply move from the start of the screen to the goal of the screen...yeah that's not much. However this is quite a gem and is a simple idea worked superbly. Graphics aren't the bad and the sound isn't great but the gameplay is very charmful. Definately worth a look.

2012 J.B.G.V. (Spain)
by José B.

No doubt about Stela's originality. But what makes a game interesting is the right dosage of challenging, not too difficult nor too easy, but none of José's games are hard enough to engage the player after the game is complete. I can even say I finished all but two. Don't take me wrong, I like the game, simple graphics but good for it's purposes, nice sounds, cute fx's and another great intro (plus the keys screen which is also very nice). But before level 9 it's so easy, you can even play it while paying more attention to Television. And then again after level 12 it only gets slightly harder and so on. I finished the game in 3 goes. The author even eased things a bit with an array of unnecessary lives to complete the game.
Half of the game almost feels like a scene demo walk thru.

Just for that I will rate it with a 2,5 points.