Abacus

(Ooh, unsurprisingly struck a nerve! Replies to the lying dev are in edits throughout.) When I dropped an honest review for Abacus in the past, I was pressured to take it down, which I can but won't post screenshots of. But that's corruption (Edit: Look up nepotism), and part of then-ongoing borderline psychological abuse so here we go! (Edit: That was the "disagreement". It's a "nasty thing to do", and we aren't friends anymore due to it. This review exists because I now have freedom to say the game is crap.) Honest feedback isn't wanted because feelings mean more than people's wallets, but now it shall be given publicly because that's what's right, and because this game needs a bit of a whistleblower from inside. Almost all reviews for this game is by somebody listed in the credits. (Nepotism.) Firstly, some behind-the-scenes is necessary to appreciate where I'm coming from in this review: I'm credited in this title as a tester or something along with most of the others, however the majority of problems with this game stem from how it was tested - there wasn't really any room for real feedback during the alphas, as it was a group of friends in a Whatsapp group with an unspoken rule that meant people were too polite to be 100% honest. Everything had to be sugarcoated. I was an exception to the unspoken sugarcoat rule, intentionally because I was under the impression that we were testing a game to be released to the public for money. Without real genuine honest feedback during the testing phases, you're going to make more mistakes than you otherwise would, and that applies to any creative outlet. So, when I did suggest something or point anything out, it was usually ignored or shot down, probably because I didn't also say it was the best game ever in the same message. (Seriously, that's only a slight exaggeration of the group's content. Most of the positive reviews could've been copy-pasted from the group. None of them mention any negatives at all.) Do you want honesty? Is this a celebration or is this real game testing? Yes it is cool that a game you made by yourself over 10 years is getting released onto Steam, but people will be paying for this. And yes, indeed, when the game released into early access, and the same exact issues came up from genuine players (All of who have ~30 mins or similar playtime to this day), they were then implemented in a half-arsed "okay if you insist" way that didn't truly fix the issues. I should probably say that I am 90% sure I was the only person in the group with professional testing experience. It's not all bad. Abacus has a solid premise that is sadly absent in the modern resurrection of 90s genres, but forgets key (and mostly obvious) details that drag the entire experience down: - Shockingly for a platformer, controller support is near-absent. This is one of those "if you insist" barely-implemented features. Not really playable. On paper yes, but you won't have a good time because controller support was not something that the developer cared about until it was brought up by early access players. It's got digital movement too, not analogue, so ignore those analogue sticks. (See forums where it's suggested that players use a third party middleware application for controller support.) (Edit: source: I and others played it. Controller support is terrible. This wasn't a hobby project - the dev tried crowdfunding (lol) many years prior, and you have to ask why wasn't this feature obvious? "It's not that sort of game" was the answer. But it is.) - It hurts my eyes on a desktop screen. Indie platformers with retro graphics are meme material because they're everywhere. It does nothing to stand out, and nor does it inspire. The interface is poor, with an icon for an in-game shop for items that isn't labelled as such, and could look like any sort of building from a house to a small office. Graphics aren't everything, yes, but truly good graphics communicate what the objects they're representing are meant to be, and Abacus doesn't really do that very well on *many* occasions. - The level design fails to communicate key things to the player, such as if a suspected death pit is a death pit or not - put some lava or something down, otherwise it feels cheap to die like that, and there's a difference between a lack of hand-holding and a lack of communication with the player - have the player deserve their death and learn from it. (Edit: The reply is a lie. From level ~2 you have to guess if you can jump down a pit or not.) - The audio is subjective, but feels somewhat out of place and leans into sounding like a late-80s or early-90s console rather than the Apogee-style platformer sound (IE, SoundBlaster 16 or MIDI of similar ilk) that the game is going for. - 60fps cap. In a modern fast-paced game with deathmatch multiplayer advertised as a key feature... -... and said multiplayer is TCP/IP only. That means messing about with IP addresses and possibly even your router. There is no server browser. No Steam integration (edit:...that works properly, cos it was "if you insist"). You need to know something about networking if you want to get anywhere with this. - This is more a pet peeve but it *can* lead to problems: the uninstaller doesn't work correctly. Abacus leaves a good chunk of itself behind. In fact it leaves behind more individual files than I've ever seen with any other game that doesn't properly uninstall itself. (Edit: Nope, I didn't create those files - Abacus did. I was a user of Abacus, yes, but you programmed it, so fix your ****. Not everyone is comfortable digging around directories. They aren't "harmless" either, look up winrot. Most games remove themselves fine, but you're likely behind.) If you want more accurate system reqs, I tested it during late alpha to be working at the capped 60fps with an i3-2130 with the integrated GPU, which was the lowest specced machine I had access to, so you can shove off the "tested with an i7" hilarity. I'm still not sure why the effort I put into that (digging up ancient parts and building a PC just for that purpose) was ignored, but I clearly still gave a toss about Abacus at the point. Surely it's a good thing that Abacus works on hardware more commonly found in recycling centres even four years ago? If your computer boots and isn't regarded as a retro build, it can run Abacus. Maybe I didn't say enough about the game being awesome in the same message for it to be taken onboard, but don't waste my time especially after asking me to go through that hassle, and at least thank me for doing it. Do I recommend this game? Surprisingly, yes if you're into niche indie platformers, but the 100% positive review score does not reflect the quality of the game, and this review is here to fix that. It has that personal touch that indie games have, but a little too personal in this case, because screw constructive criticism. Whatever I am credited as, I disown it. I want my name removed, and I know you're reading this so please do it. We all still had to *buy and promote Abacus* though, not to mention (speaking for myself at least) play the multiplayer and pretend it's an alpha to get through it, out of some sort of peer-pressure social obligation. Even the non-gamers I know in that social group felt pressured *to get a Steam account just to buy the game*, so I of all people wouldn't have been able to escape it. I'm surprised that the developer didn't know that it's standard practice to hand out keys to people that aided development. (Edit: We weren't offered keys. The dev is lying. Again.) Moral: Don't get a bunch of friends in for "feedback" if all you want them to do is be yes-men and say that you're brilliant, along with wasting their time. Don't have a testing group at all at that point, but testing wasn't really the main point, was it? (Edit: Learn to accept criticism. I thought Steam reviews are "almost meaningless" anyway, DanJB?) Pathetic. One rule for you...