[quote][b]Warning: Third Party Account[/b]
This game requires you to create a third party "PlayFab" account... there's no valid reason for this in a PC game when SteamWorks is available. This is often done to harvest private data and profile you, with potential sale and transmission of your private data to third parties. The developers will probably argue that you can trust them, but if they were trustworthy they wouldn't demand you create a third party account.
This represents a considerable risk to gamers due to the privacy and security implications of developers that wish to bypass Steam and harvest user data. Remember, sometimes if the product is free, YOU are the product.[/quote]
[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: In-Game Cash Shop[/url][/b]
This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money/credit card details to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote]
[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There are no available servers and no player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
This game, Blocky Ball, is a 2.5D soccer-style online multiplayer game for 1v1 or 2v2 matches. The subject matter is generic, focusing on players competing in the sky to score against each other. You play as a character in a match, either against random opponents or your friends, using rudimentary controls. The gameplay is repetitive and uninspired, featuring basic movement and no compelling story or progression beyond simply playing matches. The game's release date was March 26, 2021, and it requires a 3rd-party account like PlayFab. This game is not worth your time.
This is, I guess the best you could put it, a dead PvP ripoff of Rocket League but with worse graphics and on a 2D plane, because, you know, I guess the developer didn't know games like Rocket League exist. Games don't exist in a vacuum... sure would be nice if developers looked around a bit before dumping garbage on Steam through Steam Direct. Of course this isn't a nice or genuine product, it's a nasty cash grab misleadingly pushed as free, but it's for profit and features that toxic mobile app like cash shop... never okay, really.
So, Blocky Ball is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
[i]Almost every PvP exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so.
Competition amongst PvP centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost.
First and foremost, there's no meaningful single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the Game. They lost that bet.
Without a huge community of players or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies.
Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game.
This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
On the important subject of visuals, this features fairly low quality stylised/cartoony low poly 3D graphics. It comes across as the kind of thing you see on mobile phones and Nintendo games, which will deter a lot of PC gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and to be considered one of the best games on Steam, the graphics have to be some of the best on Steam. That's not happening here.
Even after that, this still isn't really free as the game is infested with mobile app store like microtransactions. This is a consumer hostile model that we don't need to see on PC.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 13 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception.
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?
Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.
[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 pukes out a bunch of utter BS and dishonesty. I made it very, very clear in my review that there is ZERO reason for anyone to use anything other than Steamworks for netcode that's acceptable for a PC game... these guys [b]went out of their way[/b] to shove third party data collection/account tools into their game and now they want you to know they embedded this data harvesting with ZERO intention to use it? I have a fricken bridge to sell you.
See the bit in my review where I said "The developers will probably argue that you can trust them, but if they were trustworthy they wouldn't demand you create a third party account."? Just as the prophecy said... the developer DEMANDS you trust them while acting in deliberately untrustworthy ways. If this guy was honest he would have removed the third party requirement and data harvesting... but it's still there.
Worse, the developer is insecurely storing the data they are harvesting about you in direct, potentially criminal violation of the GDPR.
The developer whines that this toxic cash shop they embedded in this dead, playerless game doesn't directly involve your credit card... and whines Valve doesn't allow third party sellers to collect credit card details? What utter BS, and it's unclear why the developer chose to lie about this. Valve has no interest in preventing developers from using third party cash handlers from collecting credit card details from gamers... EA does it, Blizzard/Activision does it, Zenimax does it. This bizarre BS is just an attempt to distract you, the gamer, from these two very important points:
1. This is a dead game
2. This is cash shop infested cancer, a cash grab
And the "tell" is here:
"its an indie game... We don't have the clout and trust of a playerbase yet to charge users upfront"
Most amateur developers, and while I hold them to the same standards as I hold everyone else when they make awful games, don't try to "get rich quick" off their garbage code.
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 dead PvP cash grab to anyone.
