Bargain Platformer

Lucky me gets to write the first review for yet another 2D retro pixel platformer. Bargain Platformer is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This shovelware platformer is painfully generic and features shooting, double jumping and a little upgrade/shop system that do nothing to properly differentiate it. You're a badly animated blob in a world of 2D blobs and platforms and you must jump over the platforms for whatever unclear reasons. Talk about motivating gamers. On the upside this doesn't seem to be any kind of asset flip, but instead is a genuinely (if badly) made game. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers. The controls and game handling are notably very floaty and imprecise here. It's just unsatisfying to play... and any experienced gamer will tell you, the handling, responsiveness and general gameplay feel of the control scheme must be well polished for this kind of game to succeed. Unfortunately, this is something the developer seems to have phoned in, with little to no apparent gameplay testing. They dropped the ball on this one. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Godot game engine/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it's free (so they don't have to pay for GameMaker Studio) and doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's arguably worse than GameMaker Studio). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game only ever reached a peak player count of 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, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is remarkable, but also to be expected. This complete and utter rejection of the game from gamers should be a keen information point for anyone considering buying shovelware like this. Gamers just didn't take this seriously, and for good reason. Bargain Platformer is relatively cheap at $4 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.