Becalm

overall alright for free.

became calm

a lovely liminal screensaver. reminds me of that one time I ate an edible.

This "game" has no gameplay. All you're able to do is to move your camera and hit the Space key to switch between locations. It'd be better to call this game an interactive screensaver rather than a game. As of the relaxing and soothing experience, it's not here. The "game" claims to be calmful, as you can see by its name, but in fact it's just boring. There's no way to explore the world around you, not only because you can't do anything aside from moving your camera, but because the whole "game" world it's not detailed. In this screensaver you're surrounded by a low-poly world made of acid colours, you can even see the borders of the map you're in. There's a knob to add more details, but it's barely helpful. The developers overkill their product with adding too many effects which make this screensaver even less peaceful. The music is nothing special, it doesn't help you to relax, and after a few minutes you simply stop paying attention to it. I also found a bug with collision: objects can go through your boat, and your boat would occasionally get stuck in the… uh, water texture (not sure how it's called actually). Becalm gets my honest rating of 4/10. Thanks for reading.

Feels like you're on LSD

Becalm is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this software. Instead of being a game, Becalm is a software application that allows you to look around a 3D low poly psychedelic scene from a low poly sailboat that you can't control. All you can do is look around. At best this is a glorified screen saver. It's certainly not a game. For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played". This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process. Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software on Steam: [url=https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=925]Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing[/url] It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a software application being published in the wrong place. Publishing things which aren't games on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers. There are no gameplay loops in this software, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. It's a software application and as such has no merits as a video game for gamers. Because of this, I cannot recommend this non-game software as a game to gamers.

Приятный и странный экспириенс!