Dillo's Dilemma

Mag schön gemacht sein, aber Steuerung und Laggs haben die überhand.

"Dillo's Dilemma" is an unusual entry here in Steam Direct because it's a game that doesn't completely suck at first glance (so I'm guessing this is a student project). "Free" games on Steam are usually either not free (MTX, DLC, beggarware) or they're not made for gamers (game jam crap, student projects, whatever). Here, we have something that doesn't look like an asset flip, has real, genuine gameplay, and yet is also no-strings-attached free. What do you do in the game? This is a simple consoley 3D platformer, Sonic-esque, where you control an armadillo character. The gimmick is you can turn into a rolling ball and go through "pinball" like platformer sections. And I guess that's where the first of the problems spring up... similar to student projects, this is janky and unpolished, and almost certainly the polish will never arrive. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. 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. In fact, this feels a lot like it was intended for consoles but is here on Steam instead... regardless, my gaming rig is not an X-box, and neither is yours. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. Most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's usually some kind of monetisation, from nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, to any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on. 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 5 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? This is a "maybe" experience... if you have a lot of free time on your hands and nothing else to do, why not? But for the purposes of a review, this isn't something I can say everyone must try. It's not quite there. Valve doesn't give us a "maybe" option in reviews, but if they did, that's what I'd choose for this. Of course, a million reviews for a game that all say "maybe" does nothing to inform your buying decisions.