Don't buy this - steam won't let me remove it

Augmented Future is a text based Choose Your Own Adventure/Fighting Fantasy novel/hybrid text adventure slapped together with the craptastic Visual Novel Maker construction kit, although it's worth noting that some effort went to convert a very bad (worse than Ren'Py) visual novel construction kit into something that could make something that could be called a game... barely. Which does raise a lot of questions, all of which are variations of "what does this have to do with Steam gamers on PC in 2024?" and the answer to that question is "nothing". Certainly it's applaudable (I guess) to see a product churned out with a video game construction kit that the construction kit wasn't intended for... a lot like people applauding because someone managed to make a car fly (temporarily). But then we all feel sad with the resultant, and predictably disastrous outcome of such an ill conceived action. See... this is terrible by the standards of video games in 2024 (or 2021 when this was first carelessly flung at Steam). The text adventure has a cyberpunk theme, if that matters, I guess I'm compelled to describe the "game" as part of the review, but the presentation here is of such poor quality that the content is irrelevant... nobody is going to engage with something with such a weak technical delivery. The game is very simplistic, small and limited in scope and ambition. This feels more like a tech demo, proof of concept or student homework assignment rather than a fully fledged product designed for PC gamers. As such it doesn't offer any real value as a serious PC game. The game interface is mostly just text boxes/dialogs and features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/HTML games from the 1990s. While that might be fine for the 1990s, gaming has evolved a lot since then, the ATI Rage became mainstream in 1996... it's 2024, and that kind of thing just won't fly anymore, it's just not visually up to scratch. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the video game library/engine, Visual Novel Maker construction kit. It's rarely used, because it's arguably worse than construction kits like GameMaker Studio, Ren'Py and Clickteam Fusion, but it's also much harder to work with. Despite this, Visual Novel Maker has very limited capabilities, which go some way to explaining the poor quality of the game. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. 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 game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. 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 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality game this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Augmented Future has the farcical price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Assetto Corsa", "This War of Mine" or "Left 4 Dead 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/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]