ChronoClone is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from Dayton Regional STEM School in Ohio. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have.
Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers.
Having said that, this isn't a paid tertiary school project, this is a high school project and putting that into some context, I'll preface this review by saying that while the game itself isn't something I could recommend, the students obviously have great talent and potential and I'm sure everyone will agree they have a bright future in the professional side of the industry. These guys are better at making games in high school than I was at playing them when I was in high school.
Let's talk about the game... it's a pretty mediocre third person puzzle platformer. It lacks polish (it's a school project, so polish isn't a priority for them... but it is for us!)
The graphics aren't great but they don't look flipped. However, low quality low poly 3D visuals which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. It's not coupled with gameplay that would excuse the poor visual presentation.
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.
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. But I'm quite sure one day I'll play a fantastic AAA game, and these students will have their names on the credits. I'm looking forward to that.
