Lost Gray is a construction kit copy + paste game. The "developer" used the craptastic Pixel Game Maker MV construction kit (you can buy it on Steam if you want, just like this game, it's massively overpriced garbage), copying + pasting and arranging premade assets, using premade level design tools so they could pretend they're an actual game developer. On the upside the developer credited some (but not all) of the real developers they stole assets from in this asset flip.
It's yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. That's largely all Pixel Game Maker MV can do, but it's terrible at this job.
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like Pixel Game Maker MV should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", ByteMirage has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
This is an extremely bad platformer designed with the hope it would be confused for a genuinely made professional product and bought on Steam, so the "developer" could try scrape back some of the $100 they paid for Pixel Game Maker MV and the other $100 they spent dumping this on Steam through Steam Direct. $200 spent on the sole purpose of making gaming worse for everyone.
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.
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.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
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 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.
Lost Gray 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, this is impossible to recommend.
[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.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
What's happened here is another clear-cut case of "Main Character Syndrome" as the developer breaches Valve guidelines for no other apparent reason but to confess their crimes against gamers. And of course the first step of this "I'm the main character" journey starts with the developer assuming everyone speaks Portuguese, so they lacked the simple courtesy of trying to respond in the language of the primary region they're selling their game in. But that's ok, I'm as good at using Google Translate as most "developers" in the shovelware section of Steam are.
The developer claims this is their first time trying to make a game. If I went to a restaurant, got sick from eating bad food, and got told "The chef is new and has never cooked food before", would that make it okay? No, it wouldn't. The developer supplied a very valid reason why this should never have been put up for sale on Steam in the first place.
The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.
So the developer admits they have no idea what they are doing, used pixel "art" because they couldn't do better, used a construction kit instead of actually developing a game, and decided to dump this on Steam anyway. I'm not trying to gatekeep Steam, Valve certainly makes sure the gates are never closed even for the worst products imaginable. I'm just reviewing each game as it comes along, but it's difficult to argue anything other than the key point I made in my review... construction kits are for children so they can make demos and toys to pass around with friends and should never be used as a substitute for professional game development.
Why is it good for gamers for garbage like this to be dumped on the Steam store? It's not! This is yet another one of those products that exists for one single reason: To inflate the ego of the "developer", so they can call themselves a game dev without actually having ever done that job. They put their desire to call themselves a game dev before any consideration about what gamers want in games. They never considered gamers at all when publishing this! And the result? Pollution... harmful rubbish that makes the place worse.
This pointless ego inflating makes gaming worse for everyone, it gives indie devs a bad name, and it makes it harder for genuine amateur developers, real developers, who do the right thing and develop real games without using kits and pixel "art", to find their audience.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
