"A Steamboat Willie" is more about taunting Disney for letting Mickey Mouse hit the public domain than it is about being a game. And while we should all celebrate the public domain, it doesn't mean great games are guaranteed. This is a poorly designed, simplistic adventure/simulation game. The story revolves around illegally transporting cargo, a repetitive, uninspired premise.
What do you do in the game? Gameplay involves sailing a steamboat, buying and selling cargo, and dodging customs officers. Upgrades are available for the steamboat, but the mechanics are rudimentary, offering little depth or challenge.
The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here.
On the matter of pricing and value for gamers, most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's often nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game.
Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 7 concurrent players... 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?
Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough. This is almost a "maybe" experience, though... not by far the worst of the "free" games on Steam, but there's no prizes for being pretty tall for a midget. Or a mouse.
