Dungeons Forever

Dungeons Forever is one of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam, but this one has a difference, the developers didn't bother with any level design, instead they allow the community to make the levels. When you play the game, you're forcefed random community levels. Which seems like a really good idea on paper... turns out it's not, because, you know, if you think Valve has zero quality control for what they let on Steam, you should see the QA here. It turns out not everyone in the community is good at level design. Who knew. It's like getting your favorite game and removing all the content and shoving in as many mods as you can as a substitute. Putting the dubious choice to not make any properly designed, balanced content aside (although that is enough to warn people away from this), the technical implementation is exceedingly poor. Resolution and controls are locked, and can't be changed or customised to improve the visuals or the control experience (there is an option to change the resolution, but this just forces upscaling the low res pixel assets). A choice was made to use obsolete 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, even for a pixel game, the pixel "art" is poorly done here. These flaws push this game far below minimum acceptable standards for PC. The game is completely free (fair enough considering they don't pay for their "content"). Nothing speaks more to a developers belief in themselves and their product than making their game available for everyone without remuneration. This is certainly a gesture that shows dedication to the gaming industry. It's a shame in this case that the implementation is below the minimum standards a dedicated PC game should offer to enthusiasts. There's no "maybe" option in Steam, unfortunately, but I hope to see more work from this developer, perhaps as part of a professional game development company that can make full use of their talents without needing to make budget/quality compromises.