"11号小镇综合症" (Town 11 Syndrome) is a badly made Chinese e-book with minor gameplay elements... the godawfully bad premise here is that you read a bit of Chinese e-book writing (bad writing, very cringe) and pick out select phrases which get used to create a (godawfully bad) painting... why, you ask? Nobody knows, it's a pointless, weird experimental train wreck.
There's no English translation for the game, but that's okay. The language of bad games is universal.
There's an overwhelming amount of mediocre Visual Novel/E-book style cutscenes in this game. The developers failed one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of game design.. "Show, don't tell." So you'll spend a huge amount of time not playing the game, but clicking through endless lines of poorly written VN text cutscenes because the developers couldn't work out how to relate their narrative through the game mechanics, and decided instead it would be better to compete with reading a book for your time.
We're here to play games, not read through hours of garbage intersituals. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle.
The game is quite short, and can be run through in just an hour. The lack of content here makes it hard to suggest it's worth spending the time to add to your library and download.
Visually, this features mediocre hand drawn style "Baby's First Wacom Tablet" art instead of contemporary graphics. This obviously looks better than pixelcrap, but that's a really low bar to barely stumble over. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks worse than a professionally made game would look, and that's a major deterrent.
This was made with the godawful "GameMaker Studio" construction kit/toolset, which is popular amongst amateur developers because it handholds you through making really crap 2D games that you can publish for $100 on Steam Direct. This lets you pat yourself on the back for pretending to be a real game developer, which explains why GameMaker Studio is responsible for so much ignored garbage on Steam.
GameMaker Studio has never really been used to make a truly successful game, but that doesn't stop people from trying and failing. It's a particularly bad game engine that can only be used for making low quality 2D products. Like this. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as the old saying goes. Another reason this particular game wasn't successful.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 13 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? What's the verdict?
I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.
