"Andromeda" is a very poorly made 2D retro side scrolling shooter that looks like someone dropped a bunch of MS-Paint created sprites onto a basic GameMaker Studio template, then rushed off to Steam Direct with $100. It failed to garner any interest from gamers.
This features really godawful, lazy retro pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. 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 bad because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them.
Not every "free" game really is. There's often MTX, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of things 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.
Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 3 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.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The developer boasts that they had no idea what they were doing when they made this. That explains the godawfully bad quality of this train wreck, but it doesn't excuse it. At no point in time did the developer consider what would be good for gamers, their only goal was to give Valve $100 so they could call themselves game developers when being ignored by girls in bars. That's the kind of thing that results in all this valueless pollution on the store... developers being the centre of the universe, and value for gamers being non-existent.
The developer claims a "pixel artist" came up with the nauseatingly awful visuals in this tech demo. There's no such thing as a pixel artist, although we can say with great certainty that anyone pretending they are is NOT an art school dropout. We know they aren't an art school dropout because no art school would ever allow someone so utterly untalented and unable to even understand what art is to enroll in the first place.
Oh yes, they demand lazy pixelcrap is "art", but we know it isn't... it's just the flimsiest excuse known to man to explain away the fact they don't know how to do video game graphics properly. This intellectual dishonesty, lack of skill and sheer laziness is a huge disservice to gamers. They can't even admit they can't do the job of a game developer properly, and they come up with this trite, and frankly awful excuse instead.
Developers need to stop putting themselves before gamers, or this kind of garbage is going to keep pumping into the shovelware section of Steam.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
