Cosmic Flow: A Relaxing VR Experience is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this "art experience".
Instead of being a game, Cosmic Flow: A Relaxing VR Experience is a software application that presents a poorly made art exhibition.
This is a trippy dippy "VR art experience" which means you'd probably need to be on even more drugs to appreciate this than the developer probably took when they thought it would be a good idea to dump non-game garbage on Steam like this. It's not even free, this is beggarware, the developer seriously expects you to hand over six bucks for the experience of more non-game art school dropout garbage on Steam. Digital panhandling, like the homeless guys that splash dirty water on your windscreen at the traffic lights.
We get this non-game shovelware on Steam whenever your usual Starbucks barista/McDonalds frycook art school dropout finally gets a restraining order from the local art galleries so turns to Steam Direct to try get their art published somewhere so they can finally dream of moving out of their parents basement.
It's true that games can be art... art is where the pinnacles of craftsmanship and quality meet vision and narrative to create an experience far greater than the sum of the parts. This isn't a game at all, and the craftsmanship and narrative are terrible. This isn't making art better, it's just making gaming worse.
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process.
Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software on Steam:
[url=https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=925]Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing[/url]
It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a non-game "art experience" being published in the wrong place.
Publishing things which aren't games on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.
There are no gameplay loops in this rejected art school dropout exhibition, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. As such, this has no merit as a video game for gamers, and so I cannot recommend this non-game as a game to gamers.
