"Dark Sun" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not.
This is not to be confused with Dark Sun (copyright, Wizards of the Coast), the very cool post apocalyptic fantasy Dungeons & Dragons setting... it seems the "artist" here just likes ripping off trademarks from other IP.
This is trying very hard (and failing) to be an "art experience" rather than a genuine game... the graphics are awful, yes, but it's important to know the gameplay itself is even worse. You do some bland and banal surrealist platforming with a crap narrative goes on. It's all so tiresome.
Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming.
It's difficult to call this a game; it feels less like an entertainment product and more like a digital art exhibit trying to pass itself off as a game. What negligible gameplay there is serves only as a flimsy excuse to pass this off as a game when gameplay wasn't the developers intention... and that's a problem. We're here for games.
It's true that games can be art, of course... art is where the pinnacle of creativity, craftsmanship and expertise come together to form something greater than the sum of its parts. This product does a poor job of all of those three. The Mona Lisa would not be hanging in the Louvre if she was drawn as a stick figure in crayon on a napkin.
The game is quite short, and can be run through in just 30 minutes. The lack of content here makes it hard to suggest it's worth spending the time to add to your library and download.
The graphics here are particularly awful, some of the worst pixelcrap "art" I've seen in a long time... and it's not all pixelcrap, which means it doesn't even look authentic, just awful, so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment.
It's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise.
Insultingly, the developer insists that you should play this with a console peasant children's toy gamepad instead of KB+M. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're designing games for. It's the responsibility of the developer to ensure the game runs well on the platform they're selling it on, with the primary peripherals that PC gamers use.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 4 concurrent players[/b]... 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?
I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.
