Deep Madness is an extremely badly made procgen "endless runner" where the objective is to jump downwards as much as you can through various procgen platforms while running endlessly left and right, bouncing from each wall when you hit it. So, an incredibly shallow premise for a game with no real value for gamers (arguably it's on par with Flappy Bird). Unfortunately, it gets worse.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics.
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.
The developers appear to be involved in suspicious data harvesting as they eschew SteamWorks (because SteamWorks does not facilitate privacy invasion in the ways the developers prefer) in favour of demanding users hand over their email address and other private, personal details. Presumably this is so they can profile you, collect data on you, combine that data with other sources and sell your private information off to the highest bidder (and, in fact, anyone else who is willing to pay for it). That's reprehensible and must not be tolerated. I'm sure they'll swear black and blue they don't, so "just trust them", but I wouldn't trust these shady developers as far as I could throw them. An ethical developer would use SteamWorks. Stay safe out there.
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 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.
Deep Madness 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 and the unethical and privacy invading behaviour of the developer, this is impossible to recommend. Buying games from unethical developers puts 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.
