"Dystopy" is another school project, this one from Campus ADN in Montreal, Canada. And, weirdly, just like the last game I reviewed, it's another one of those games where the developers seem to think Dance Dance Revolution is the pinnacle of gaming and try to shove QTE/rhythm mechanics into every other game genre they can find. And, as always, it fails disastrously. This time they decided that retro platforming would somehow be better if you had to play Dance Dance Revolution while you platform. This does not make platforming better.
No, this is not a good idea. Do not do it, game developers. And this is even more disgraceful because the teachers at the college allowed the students to think this kind of thing is okay... how are these guys going to get jobs in the industry if the teachers teach them wrong on purpose?
The graphics in this game are really quite good, which at least makes the game look more appealing. 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. In fact it's a real shame to see such great graphics wasted on a poor game concept.
Not every "free" game really is. There's often MTX, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of things that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game.
Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable.
Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 5 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?
This is a "maybe" experience... if you have a lot of free time on your hands and nothing else to do, why not? But for the purposes of a review, this isn't something I can say everyone must try. It's not quite there. Valve doesn't give us a "maybe" option in reviews, but if they did, that's what I'd choose for this.
