"Escape the Kreegan" is, well, complicated. It's in Early Access but still within the developers commitment to complete the game early next year. It's a twin stick shooter with a Sci-Fi theme. It doesn't actually work properly and can't be played by most gamers on Steam, which we'll go into.
I suppose the most important thing to note (and this is Early Access so this problem may be fixed), the game does not work unless you plug in a console peasant childrens toy gamepad. There's no instructions or control customisability, so if you play this as any PC gamer would, with KB+M, you can't turn the ship around, because why would you want to do that? So the game is unplayable for PC gamers.
The game was has never been updated, no additions or patches have been provided since launch. While there's still time before the game reaches the developers committed deadline to complete the game, it's deep in development hell. There's no reliable indication the game will ever be completed, which is another reason for gamers to avoid this. It's important to remember that only around 25% of Early Access games ever get completed, often through deliberate unethical actions from developers (more on that later), or simply sheer incompetence as developers dump garbage nobody wanted on Steam and then discover nobody wanted it, so there's no point in doing any more. Either way, we must ask ourselves why that's good for gamers, and in either case, it isn't. Regardless, I feel the chances of anyone receiving a complete game here are slim to none.
There's a lot of technical defects in this game, and before we get into them, we must understand that so many of the defects in this game are a direct product of the developer simply having no idea which game platform they are developing for. And, while they have behaved entirely unethically with the way they are handling this game (more below), I think this is probably just due to incompetence and shortsightedness (and perhaps a bit of greed hoping to make a terrible idea succeed), I don't believe they originally set out to dump garbage on Steam in a malicious way in the same way groups like Atomic Fabrik and RewindApp do. Regardless, PC gamers have standards because it's a better platform than app stores. Developers fail when they don't even know who their audience is or which platform they are working on.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The game assets are fairly mediocre/low quality, in some places they appear mismatched... Ultimately the quality of these assets, and thus the overall visual quality is lower than average, and low quality always makes for a less than optimal gaming experience. Remember, we're looking for the best of the best of 100,000+ games on Steam.
The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, and it's hard to say if this is due to the age of the assets used, if it's a deliberate attempt for the game to look bad/retro on purpose, or if the assets are just, well, terrible looking. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game in 2024, such poor quality 2D graphics in the 3D era just aren't good enough, whether it's a deliberate design fault on behalf of the developer or they just couldn't manage to do any better, this is a compromise gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
PC gamers will be insulted by the demand from the developer that a console peasant children's toy controller should be used, despite this being on PC. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're developing for, and must never, under any circumstances dictate to gamers how their games are to be experienced.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Godot game engine/toolset (the 2D part, the 3D part is actually workable). The Godot 2D component is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it's free (so they don't have to pay for GameMaker Studio) and doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's arguably worse than GameMaker Studio). 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.
For all intents and purposes "Escape the Kreegan" might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones.
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.
Unethically, the developer sold keys to this incomplete Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles (DailyIndieGame etc), where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete PC game. This could be seen as an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. Often this is done as an exit strategy, as the developer takes the money and runs. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers.
Another unethical act of this developer, knowing full well that this game is abandoned and they will never complete it, it seems they are trying to scam gamers into buying it by offering it on discount and selling keys to the game from third party key resellers. It's impossible to "accidentally" discount a game. The developer looked at this incomplete mobile app, and instead of doing the right thing and removing it from Steam, they instead doubled-down and tried to scam even more people into paying for it. Greedy, and completely unethical. Doing the wrong thing, on purpose, for money. This is not okay.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"Escape the Kreegan" has the utterly unrealistic price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer.
For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Torchlight 2", "Civilization VI" or "Mad Max". 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]
