Dave is yet another of literally thousands of retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. Departing from the usual MO for shovelware platformers, this 2D platformer is rendered (poorly) in 3D, and doesn't feature crappy pixel "art", which is an improvement over most. It is, however, buggy, clunky, and it's also yet another ripoff of Limbo, which I'm really getting tired of running into. Just because Limbo was a decentish game, doesn't mean ripping off the art style from the game is a guaranteed win in terms of game design.
This platformer has just one notable gimmick, you can create platforms to jump on, and also destroy them. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but the platforms self destruct almost immediately after you create them or if you move. This makes them near impossible to use... perhaps this was meant to be a "Soulslike" difficult game, but much more likely, it's just unpolished shovelware.
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.
The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the mid 2000s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
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.
While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this game was never accepted on the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
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 5 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 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
Dave has the cash grab price of around $4 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.
[b][quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/quote][/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.
