"Eyes in the Dark" is a 2D "twin stick" console platformer that apparently never made it to the consoles it was designed for. Huh. I'm not here to tell game developers how to do their business, I'm just here for gamers, but one would think that releasing their game on the right platform is key to maximising sales.
Anyway this platformer runs on a simple gimmick, you've got a flashlight and you shine it around to reveal parts of the procedurally generated levels (more on that problem later). I guess the best part about this is the core gameplay is polished well enough and the cartoony 2D graphics are "ok" (much better than pixelcrap, at least). However, there are many reports of game breaking bugs, while I didn't experience any, your mileage, as always, may vary.
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 no proper level design or game/story flow/plot, as they opted to try to use samey repetitive procgen algorithms as a substitute for adding such content to the game, to avoid doing the important job of level/map design. As a result, the game doesn't actually have any content worth mentioning, just endless, boring, repetitive, soulless algorithmically generated sameyness. Developers must learn that procedural generation is not an acceptable substitute for content.
While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics (some effort was made to ensure the twin-stick mechanic does work with KB+M, but we must ask why the developers here thought PC gamers don't play PC games with KB+M and commonly use console peasant children's toy controllers instead). There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this game was never accepted on the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"Eyes in the Dark" has the total ripoff price of $15 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $15 asking price for this game could get you games like "Doom Eternal", "Wolfenstein - The New Order" or "Lethal Company". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[b]Note:[/b] "Gearbox" has colluded with Tencent backed interests to withhold some of their games from Steam in a brazen act of anticompetitive behaviour. This is harmful to gamers and to the gaming industry, and is completely unethical behaviour intended to cause this harm for short term profit. While games absolutely should be considered on their own merits, as I have in my review above, gamers must be cautious when buying games from unethical developers like this. There's no telling when they will accept more bribes and pull their games off Steam again... they've done it once, they can't be trusted. Gamers have a right to know about this. If you buy this game you may be putting your money at risk.
