"Dangerous Skies 80's edition" is a "template" flip. The "developer" filled out a basic 2D retro arcade shoot 'em up template in the craptastic Construct 2 (a blight on gaming), changed the name/reskinned a couple of things, and put it on Steam as if it was their own game.
It's from the Russian asset flippers at Conglomerate 5. These guys do nothing but copy premade game templates and game tutorials, fill out a few things/stamp out basic levels using the construction kit templates, slap on an asset flipped set of sprites/assets, and dump them on Steam and into cheap nasty shovelware game bundles as cash grabs. Trying to get paid for someone else's game templates, assets... at best, this is shovelware, at worst, it's a scam/cash grab.
Conglomerate 5/Teamomega have shown a repeat pattern of unethically dumping other people's work onto Steam as a cheap, nasty cash grab, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. Here's some examples so you can see for yourself:
[list]
[*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1075790]Fox and Bunny[/url]" = [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/characters/sunny-land-103349]Sunny Land[/url] developed by Ansimuz
[*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/590870]Planetoid[/url]" = [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/tower-defense-toolkit-4-tdtk-4-91023]Tower Defense Toolkit 4[/url] developed by SongGameDev
[*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/790930]Primitive Shooter[/url]" = [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SviIeTt2_Lc&list=PLFt_AvWsXl0ctd4dgE1F8g3uec4zKNRV0]Create a Game Source code[/url] developed by Sebastian Lague
[/list]
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's an ugly screen filter meant to make the game look even more obsolete... like the game looks bad enough already, but they actually went out of their way to make it look worse. There's no way to turn this off.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, and it's hard to say if this is due to the age of the assets used, if it's a deliberate attempt for the game to look bad/retro on purpose, or if the assets are just, well, terrible looking. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game in 2024, such poor quality 2D graphics in the 3D era just aren't good enough, whether it's a deliberate design fault on behalf of the developer or they just couldn't manage to do any better, this is a compromise gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio, due to the age of the game, it predates the 16:9 widescreen gaming standard established back in 2006. It's possible they're marketing this towards people using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game is being specifically marketed towards people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. It's obviously not going to look right on a modern 16:9 gaming display.
Bewilderingly, the game doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn off the annoying sound/background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop it using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why the developers chose not to include this basic feature.
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, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Construct 2 construction kit. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's worse than GameMaker Studio!). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"Dangerous Skies 80's edition" is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
