Epiphany! is yet another minimalist puzzle games that's somehow here on Steam instead of locked onto the app stores where this kind of shallow game belongs. In fact this seems more like a 1990's browser app than a mobile app, and that's worse. It really is very simplistic in terms of UI, but the gameplay is a real kick to the cranium.
The situation is made worse by the extremely badly translated "rules" that are your only clue on how to play this game, and as a result, nobody played this game. Check the player stats down below and try to keep a straight face... it's bad, it's really bad.
Anyway I guess to try explain how this works, you're presented with a clue object, and this object has a couple of properties... colour, number value, and shape. You're presented with a bunch of objects with slightly different values for each for those three properties. You must choose the correct one in the sequence... but how to know you're choosing the right one? That's where the game is... there's hidden rules for what determines the correct match. You may need to choose a value greater or smaller than 5, or the same colour, or the same shape, or the same number of sides... thing is, you don't know and you have to use trial and error to determine the rules, get enough matches and finish the run.
That's all there is to it... it takes more time deciphering the badly written tutorial pages than it does actually playing the game and realizing how utterly un-fun it is even for a browser game. And this is on Steam! For PC games! No wonder it cratered.
On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.
While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.
The game features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/flash games. While the artwork itself, while mediocre, might be considered passable, the visual presentation here is negligible, it might as well be a slideshow or a Youtube video. Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids had more advanced animation and visuals going on than this game does.
For gameplay purposes, because the user interface for this game is mostly just 2D static images... it might as well be a browser game. And we all know, Steam isn't here to compete with Chrome and Firefox. If the game can be done in a web browser, it's just not rich or compelling enough to appeal to serious gamers on PC.
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 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 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game?
Epiphany! is relatively cheap at $2 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. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
