Dine 'n Bash

"Dine 'n Bash" is a student project from DigiPen. One of the first things students should be taught in game development is that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's with dedicated 3D cards like the Voodoo3 and the ATI Rage. But the students were deliberately mistaught that's it's okay to release obsolete 2D games in the 3D era of gaming... certainly any professional developer seeing a prospective new hire who doesn't even know about 3D gaming probably isn't going to give them a job. This time, as a joke from the faculty, the students were told what gamers really want is 2D Flash tier video games on PC. So the students made a really awful hybrid restaurant busy-work/table waiting game coupled with a bit of bullet hell as you need to dodge stuff while serving green ham to people in a medieval fantasy tavern (at least I think that's what it is, the graphics are some really awful mismatched MS-Paint/pixel-like garbage). It might make the students feel good about themselves to get this published on Steam Direct (even if no gamers actually wanted it), but this has no benefit for us PC gamers. We have to question the value of institutions flooding the store with low quality 2D video game homework assignments while gamers wade through this stuff to find professionally made 3D games. Now onto pricing and value. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers? It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff. In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at less than 100 concurrent players... they couldn't even break three figures! Even though it's free, it's a dismal reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. Keep in mind this student project won't increase your game collector count or show up in your Steam profile showcases, and because it's a short, unpolished and unmaintained student homework assignment, I can't recommend you spend your valuable time on this one when you could be playing any of the thousands of fully made games for gamers.

That was an awesome game! The voice acting really pulled me in, the soundtrack was great, and the game play was smooth and strategic. I can definitely see myself playing it again!

Very funs gamess yes. wuold rekomend.

I encountered features of the game which were creative and thematic, but which also felt unrefined or even accidental. The orc customer throwing axes at the player are signaled with an arrow reticle on his person, and yet I feel as though it's a perfect opportunity to just signal a mechanic with your voice actors and do away with the featureless white circle. Furthermore, a sound occurs when he throws the axe; it has a twirling timbre, yet it remains fairly still flying through the air rather than visually twirling. Several customers entering at a time can lead to a situation in which one suddenly emerges from under another and I have more to deal with than I thought, however as dynamic as this makes the game, I can't help but feel it's basically unintentional due to them simply using the same pathing. This could have been thematically grafted on with couples/parties entering; they will quickly stack the workload but they'll wait longer by socializing, and uh, voice acting. Did I mention the voice acting? They have cute characters but all of their lines are stomped on by the grindset 🔥🔥🔥 meter. The game has a strong start in establishing Nerve motivations with an explicit structural flow of items and customers, and a timer-tier-bar combo pressing you to do as perfectly as possible. This clarity, however, is somewhat befuddled by Heart aspirations which run counter to the Nerve gameplay; that is to say that characterizing the customers and giving them voices and reactions to my gameplay actually intrigues me to do worse and acquire the reward of characterization from getting a poor grade. Perhaps you could really have something quite special in revisiting this dynamic; urge the player to do worse and better at the same time and allow them the simple fun of choosing. The challenge of course, is making doing bad fun, and you already have some skeleton-- er orc, in the way of what that looks like. The more I decide to not care about my fantasy tavern job, the more the game could go from a chef management sim to a bullet hell gauntlet. While I think the more finely crafted game loop of obvious inspirations such as Overcooked and Papa Louie's Saga are more fun, the potential for more dynamic relationships with characters is leagues above Mass Effect, because rather than just a little wheel with good guy and bad guy one liners, you get to personify your bad behavior and it becomes a far more replayable experience. What? Did someone say Undertale? Must have been the wind... Dine 'n Bash gets a B for Bar Fight Blitz.

Bad...

☀️