"Boxed-In" is one of those games that, while being genuinely made (amazingly rare in the Steam Direct section of Steam), doesn't really come up to scratch as a PC game and might have fared better if it was published on mobile app stores where it would find an audience more aligned to the simplicity and low production values of the game. Mobile gamers aren't quite as demanding, you see.
Anyway this is a quirky, if poorly implemented top down Sokoban like puzzle game where you trap little enemies running around a block-grid "maze" by pushing blocks to trap them in. Not the worst idea for a casual mobile game, failed incredibly hard when the developer thought they had devloped something that would appeal to PC gamers. Nobody stopped playing DOTA2 for this.
This is another case of Itch failing the one single job it has... to protect and preserve the gaming industry from badly made amateur games, by containing them to their group-hug website so they don't leak out to platforms like Steam where gamers look for professionally made, high quality products.
This looks, feels and plays like a mobile app. I checked the app stores and couldn't find it there, maybe it was rejected, maybe the developer thought Steam Direct was easier than trying to self publish through Google and Apple. Either way, this might as well be a mobile app. That's enough by itself to disqualify this. We don't spend thousands building gaming rigs so that we can pretend they're iPhones and play iPhone games and mobile apps.
This game features very lacklustre minimalist "art" for graphics instead of anything remotely contemporary. I'm sure the "developer" thought this would come across as "artistic", but it doesn't, it comes across as "really lazy". Yes, contemporary 3D graphics take a lot of time and effort to create. That doesn't mean it's okay not to bother! Developers must try to understand that gaming is a visual medium, and gamers spend a lot of money on high end gaming rigs for a reason. And that reason is not so they can look at lazy, phoned-in half efforts like this.
This game is fairly dated at 5 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.
Let's look at the price and what kind of value this actually offers gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $3 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.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at [b]only 3 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
This "free" game won't count toward your game collection count on your profile. With that in mind, is it something you should still download?
Pass on this one. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.
