"BVOVB - Bruising Vengeance of the Vintage Boxer" is what happens when Itch fails it's duty as a containment mechanism for amateur games. Although this one is at least mildly amusing in the theme, as you control some paper cutouts from vintage photographs in a game that visually looks a lot like one of Terry Gilliams animations from Monty Python's Flying Circus. However, joke visuals and a joke premise don't automatically carry on to a rich, deep and interesting game.
What do you do in the game? It's essentially a 2D arcade fighter/versus game not unlike Double Dragon or Vendetta, but more limited in gameplay.
The game features really lacklustre, if amusing, 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs and the latest 3D graphics cards to play 2D games. Even mobile phones and game consoles can do 3D graphics now. There's no excuse.
You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me.
On the matter of pricing and value for gamers, most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's often nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game.
Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on.
Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 4 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
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?
Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.
[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 first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet THE MAIN CHARACTER.
The developers profound failure to understand prior case law fuels much of his ignorant and legally illiterate response.
The developer then indicates he doesn't have enough skill as a game developer to make games so used Unity instead, but then discovered Unity has toxic, harmful provisions that are bad for gamers, [b]and went ahead and used it anyway[/b]. Then seems to think it's actually okay to "debate" with gamers about this and breached Valve guidelines to do so while proclaiming he's not debating. What a complete and utter joke, but you can see how the developers egomania, main character syndrome, ignorance and arrogance fuels his disgusting attitude towards gamers.
None of this would happen if it wasn't for the arrogance and self importance of an utterly, objectively failed developer putting his ego before everything else. That explains why such a failure ended up here on Steam... and make no mistake, SteamDB does not lie... only 4 concurrent players, and that only happened once. That's the textbook definition of failure, and the developers arrogant, whining "I'm more important than YOU" outburst explains why.
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 game to anyone.
