Non-Playtest Review:

Black Star is a rules light system for running Star Wars style games. The core mechanic is rolling 2d6+modifiers against a difficulty of 9. Beneficial circumstances can add bonus dice, in which case you roll all dice and take the two highest in order to obtain your action dice. Negative circumstances impose penalty dice, which are similar but after rolling all dice you take the two lowest as your action dice. Bonus dice and penalty dice cancel each other out. In combat, on a successful result each action die showing a 5 or 6 represents an extra "hit." Similarly, on a failed result a 1 or 2 can represent a negative circumstance.

PCs have Resolve, which is a combination of hit points and hero points, as well as a resource for powering special abilities. Resolve can be spent to reroll dice, turn a failure into a success at the price of a complication, activate some powers, or just get a lucky break.

This is a player facing system, meaning that the GM doesn't make rolls on behalf of NPCs. Instead, PCs make rolls to resist NPC actions. NPCs have descriptive tags which can add bonus dice or impose penalty dice on a PC rolls if the tag is a beneficial or hindering one. NPCs are ranked from relatively easily defeated minions to tougher, full-fledged villains.

Character creation involves selecting two Archetypes from a list of 10. Archetypes are essentially lists of thematically linked talents, including one eponymous signature talent. At character creation, you obtain the two signature talents named after your Archetypes, one talent from each of your Archetypes' lists of talents, and one other talent of your choice.

By default, a character's species isn't a factor in character creation and is not represented mechanically. However, you can choose talents that represent your species abilities, including from a list of innate talents that can be used to represent inborn abilities or cybernetics.

Powers are used to represent the equivalent of the Force and can be obtained by picking up the Attuned talent. There are optional rules for Resonance that essentially model falling to the Dark Side.

There are no detailed lists of gear. Access to or special training with types of gear can be represented using gear talents.

There are rules for operating and fighting with vehicles. However, there are no role-based ship combat rules similar to games like Stars Without Number Revised or Coriolis. There doesn't need to be, of course - I just wanted to mention it. Combat in which PCs operate several ships - like a fighter squadron - seems to be the focus.

Overall I think this is an excellent game for running a pulpy, Star Wars-inspired setting. I can see it working great for a lot of "band of space misfits" settings beyond Star Wars, too, like Firefly, Blake's 7, Killjoys, Dark Matter, and so on. Character creation is fast and fun - putting together two archetypes is straightforward, but it's also enjoyable and feels impactful. The rules feel like a combination of TinyD6 and PbtA - it's a farily lightweight, traditional game system like the former with a bit more mechanical crunch, while the archetypes and player-facing dice mechanic give it a little bit of a PbtA feel. To be clear though, this is a traditional gaming system, not narrative like PbtA. My primary criticism of the game is the lack of clarity that arises when using "Archetype" to refer both a list of thematically related talents as well as for a talent itself. In the character advancement section, it says buying a talent costs 5 Destiny (i.e., xp) while buying a new Archetype costs 15 Destiny. It is not clear from the text whether "buying a new Archetype" means buying access to the list of talents, buying only the eponymous signature talent, or both. On the LakeSide Games Facebook page, the author has stated that during advancement PCs may buy talents from any Archetype. It is good to have this clarification, but I recommend including this information in an errata, FAQ, or some other resource. EDIT: This clarification has also been included in the Black Star Companion.

That said, I think the game is great and can't way to run/play it!