Bells 'n' Whistles

"Bells 'n' Whistles" is an ultra simple platespinner non-game... basically a Fischer-Price activity set where you have to interact with all the things at the same time. Called a platespinner because it's like the daft circus act where the clown spins a bunch of plates on poles and needs to keep running between them to keep them going. This is the video game version of that, and it's every bit as awful and pointless as you could imagine. The developers abandoned this 5 years and 11 months ago. It will never be completed. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuinely, completely made games. 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. The graphics here are particularly awful, minimalist flash like controls and basically nothing else... as little effort as possible went into this, so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment. It's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. This game is fairly dated at 6 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $5 USD for this. Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded. Even as a free product, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 3 users[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time with this. 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? What's the verdict? This is a "nope". While it won't necessarily cost you money, the time and hard drive space it requires could be better invested in one of the many higher quality alternatives on Steam. Finally, I write these reviews to try help people navigate the thousands of games on Steam so they don't waste time on low quality products. There's over 140,000 games on Steam... Steam Direct is allowing an influx of around 40-50 new games [i]every day![/i]. If you think I'm wrong about this one, go ahead and add it to your library, download it, install it, play it and see for yourself. Maybe you'll come to agree with me after wasting your time. Either way, consider writing your own reviews too. I'm just glad if my review helps give gamers enough info to make a better informed choice.

Игра Bells 'n' Whistles оказалась неожиданно увлекательной! Простой, но затягивающий геймплей в стиле match-3 с оригинальной изюминкой в виде колокольчиков и свистков держит в напряжении. Цветовая гамма приятна для глаз, а звуковое сопровождение совсем не раздражает, а наоборот, добавляет очарования. По мере прохождения уровни становятся все сложнее, что заставляет продумывать каждый ход. Несмотря на кажущуюся простоту, игра предлагает достаточно стратегических возможностей. Нужно не просто составлять комбинации, а учитывать расположение специальных элементов, чтобы получить максимальный эффект. Единственным небольшим минусом я бы назвал отсутствие какой-либо сюжетной линии, но это с лихвой компенсируется динамичным геймплеем и большим количеством уровней. Отличный выбор для тех, кто хочет скоротать время с пользой для ума! Рекомендую!

☀️

᠌ ᠌

[h1]Before I played Bells 'n' Whistles, I had a small pp, no friends, no gf, depression, and no life. These things havent changed, but the game is pretty good[/h1]