Lucky me gets the dubious honour of being the first to review "Balkan Bloodbath", and let me tell you, the only thing that was given a bloodbath here is the basic common sense standards for video games... this thing is a train wreck.
Don't let the screenshots fool you, they make this look like a kind of competent 4X grand strategy game... nothing could be further from the truth. The game itself is extremely difficult to even try to play because the controls are just so bad... you use WASD to pan around the badly rendered 2D bitmap image that is 100% of the game visuals (I'm not kidding, this game is just a picture of a map). There's some interface elements, and it really is just about spending a resource (like ammo... I mean, that's how economy and war works, right, you spend ammo to do stuff???). In exchange some action happens like you take over a neighbouring Balkan country or something... seriously though, I can't quite put into words just how clunky and unhinged this game is.
If a game could have negative quality, it would be Balkan Bloodbath. In many ways this is the complete opposite of gaming... it's seriously just that bad. I don't understand how anyone could get to the state of mind that something this clunky and barely functional would be okay to launch on Steam... and wait until you see the price!
Let's get into the usual boilerplate stuff about all the technical shortcomings.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The implementation here is of such poor quality, the developer couldn't work out how to make the game display in fullscreen, it only runs in a window.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/flash games. While the artwork itself, while mediocre, might be considered passable, the visual presentation here is negligible, it might as well be a slideshow or a Youtube video. Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids had more advanced animation and visuals going on than this game does.
The controls can't be customised because the game doesn't really have any interface beyond menus and simple UI controls no different from dialog boxes in Windows Explorer. If you think about it, this barely counts as an "interactive" game. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play fully immersive games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
For gameplay purposes, because the user interface for this game is mostly just 2D static text/images... it might as well be a web page. It's functionally no different from a browser game. And we all know, Steam isn't here to compete with Chrome and Firefox. If the game can be done in a web browser, it's just not rich or compelling enough to appeal to serious gamers on PC.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is also reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH.
The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
Balkan Bloodbath didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Belarus Win!", playing the game as "Belarus", trivial to get, but less than 20 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, even the people who own this game weren't interested in it.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?
Balkan Bloodbath has the total ripoff price of $10 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.
For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Disco Elysium", "Wolfenstein - The New Order" or "Doom Eternal". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
