Depths Unseen

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I had fun with it! For a first game made by a starting developer, i would say thats an amazing way to start. Pros: i really like the death screen, chapter 1 introduction, menu designs and more. Atmosphere is great. I do find the lore interesting! Its not anything crazy yet but i bet it will get better and better with each chapter. Cons: Very wonky physics, making the platforming a little bit.... well wonky a lot of filler walking.

"Depths Unseen" 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 a very badly made, very incomplete 2D platformer where you control some guy in an underwater lab. There's a bit of PvE, a bit of puzzle solving, a few hints of "Sony and Microsoft rejected this for their consoles", and not a lot of quality. 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. The developers haven't touched this for 1 month, basically since launch. It's headed direct development hell and there's every likelihood this will never be completed, especially given the dead-on-arrival reception it got here on Steam Direct. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuinely, completely made games. The graphics aren't great, kind of a ripoff of Microsoft's Limbo (both thematically and in direct "black foreground coloured background" style), only much worse in all respects. At least we know for sure this is not an asset flip, no self respecting asset creator would ever publish assets this bad. That's understandably a turn off for a lot of gamers, and 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. You deserve better than compromises. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. It's free for now, but the developer intends to charge for this if it ever leaves Early Access... but considering the poor public reception, it's likely this will not be one of the 25% of games that ever gets finished and leaves Early Access. We can chalk that up to delusions of grandeur... I think it would be great if, before anyone can publish a game on Steam Direct, they show physical proof that they have seen and played other video games. That would force the would-be developers to at least compare what they have to actual, real games that people want to play. 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 2 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Since free games don't contribute to your game collector badge and other profile stuff, is this a worthwhile addition to your Steam library? This is a "nope". While it won't necessarily cost you money, the time and hard drive space it requires could be better invested in one of the many higher-quality alternatives on Steam.