"Dragonflight" is basically an abandoned Early Access VR tech demo that was at some point, possibly (hopefully) intended to be a real game. I say hopefully because we give the developer the benefit of the doubt... they charged money for this, but didn't deliver a real game, it's a short tech demo "experience", only mildly interactive.
What do you do in the game? Almost nothing. This is basically a virtual rollercoaster... you're on the back of a dragon, wave your arm around to point your weapon at the enemy... it shoots automatically. Almost no gameplay, and this is incredibly short even for a VR "art experience". It's best to approach this as if it isn't a game.
But the problem is that this WAS sold as a game, a direct abuse of Early Access. This is not okay.
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.
It's VR exclusive, and that shows the developer failed to understand the most basic axiom of VR game design... if the only cool thing about your product is VR support, your product is not cool.
You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, 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.
This game is fairly dated at 8 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $10 USD for this. The developer then abandoned the project and kept all the money they took from gamers.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
In terms of public reception, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
Given that this free title won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library?
Nope. There's no up front cost here, but I still feel like I should be asking for my money back, and I didn't even spend any. That's how bad this is.
