Catch the Thief, If you can! is a mostly-abandoned Early Access, playerless third person action PvP brawler with a cops and robbers theme.
The focus of the game is pure PvP, there's no single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the game. The vast majority of PvP-only games fail because they don't "go viral", and without 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.
It failed. SteamDB shows the game hit maximum peak players just after launch, with only a tiny 3 consecutive users, which is a pitiful number, and now the game has practically no players, with nobody playing at all, just a one or two people logging on briefly every week or so then quickly deleting the game when they see how bad it is. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
The game has been in Early Access since 2018 and while it's still getting updates, it's deep in Development Hell. One must wonder why patches are being made for a dead game with no players, but this is an irrelevant mystery considering the game is dead. There's no reasonable expectation that this will ever be completed. Whether the developer lacks the time, funds, or skill/talent required to complete a video game isn't really something gamers should be expected to accept as an excuse.
The developers made the terrible mistake of launching a multiplayer only game in Early Access. This is almost certain to kill the game. Most gamers will evaluate a game only once. If they do so when the game is incomplete, they will check it out, then abandon it (just like the developers did). When (IF) the game eventually does get around to release, there will be no players, because the developers burned the first impressions through their faulty Early Access experience. Players who saw the game and didn't like it because it was incomplete [i]do not come back[/i]. Multiplayer games must have a large population if they are to go "viral" and succeed, especially without single player content to fall back on. Releasing a multiplayer only game into early access kills the game population, and thus the game, before the game even launches.
The developers made the fatal, lazy mistake of believing that PvP, other players, would be an acceptable substitute for doing the difficult job of adding single player level design, storytelling, NPCs and other rich aspects of designed game content to the game. As a result of this choice by the developers, the game has little to no actual interactive game content. It's a little considered fact that the vast majority of PvP only, multiplayer only games [b]fail[/b]. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for doing the job of game developers and building a game filled with content. PvP only games must have a [b]huge[/b] player base for them to "go viral" and succeed. But with no single player experience to add lasting value to a game, the developers instead chose to bet against all odds that their game would "go viral" without any actual reason for players to want to play the game. Predictably, they lost this bet.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers. Resolution also seems to be locked, so there's no way to improve the poor quality low poly visuals.
Catch the Thief, If you can! didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievments, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for unlocking the first extra playable character, and only around 29 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game, less than half the players. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game.
Unethically, the developer sold keys to this abandoned Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles, where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete game. This seems to have been done in an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. Often this is done as an exit strategy, as the developer takes the money and runs. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers.
Catch the Thief, If you can! has an overly optimistic price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, the abandoned nature of the game and the questionable ethics from the developer, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
