Cures & Curios

Cures & Curios is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from DigiPen. 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. This time the students made a VR tech demo, a simple tycoon game where you concoct various potions and elixirs and flog them to rubes in a wild west themed backdrop. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. It's VR exclusive, and that shows the developer failed to understand the most basic axiom of VR game design... if the only cool thing about your product is VR support, your product is not cool. 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. This game is fairly dated at 6 years old... it's showing a bit of age and won't give you a very up-to-date gaming experience. 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. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 5 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? This is a "maybe" experience... if you have a lot of free time on your hands and nothing else to do, why not? But for the purposes of a review, this isn't something I can say everyone must try. It's not quite there. Valve doesn't give us a "maybe" option in reviews, but if they did, that's what I'd choose for this.

I want to say yes, because it's a fun game and free, but every time I launch it it starts me over from the beginning. I only see options to Start Game, or Quit. So frustrating and I don't understand why it won't save my progress.

Pretty good to be honest, played it with less then minimum playspace just fine, and had quite a bit of fun, only wish it was longer.

Ist ein lustiges spiel für zischen durch, nur zu empfehlen. Es fehlt nur noch ein unendlichkeits-Modus Aber trotzdem ein gutes Spiel mit einer Kurzen Story

Game is super cute and really fun to play.

My girlfriend, brother and I love this game. It does have some small issues but it is a ton of fun. I would love to see more! hell even a paid for version of this game. I'd buy it. My only small issues are: if you did not have enough money for the things you put on the scale, you cannot proceed, kinda have to restart the entire game because it doesn't save progress. Everything else works perfectly. I use the Index and the "knuckles" controller. Hoping to see more. Eventually when i get another pc to do recording I'll post a review on youtube, as vr and capture software are both very demanding.

neat but very limited