"Falling Into Dreams" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not.
This is a particularly awful, pretentious "narrative" platformer about platforming through your own nightmares, but the biggest nightmare I see here is "Falling Into Dreams", and if that's not bad enough, stop and think someone actually thought this garbage was so good they burned $100 to fling it at Steam Direct where everyone has to push it aside to try find decent games.
Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming.
The game is really simple and unambitious in terms of implementation, more of a tech demo or one of those cases where an amateur developer spends $100 to publish something on Steam Direct to see if it's possible. Yes, obviously it's possible. A proof of concept, tech demo, or something that's less than a little blip on the radar isn't offering anything truly valuable to gamers.
The graphics here are particularly awful, so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment. It's mostly some of the worst pixelcrap I've seen, which makes this a lot like being the least attractive guy in the burns ward. It's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $3 USD for this. That's some hefty delusions of grandeur.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 3 concurrent players[/b]... 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? What's the verdict?
I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet The Main Character, and nobody else matters.
The developer whines that this game must only get good reviews because he was 14 and absolutely unqualified to make any kind of video game, let alone publish it. Yeah, that's his reasoning. If a game is utter crap, people should be told. The developer demands people lie, give him participation trophies and only write nice things about the crap he polluted Steam with, because his feelings are more important than the 130,000,000 monthly gamers on Steam.
Absolutely insulting to every single gamer out there... we have to put up with this crap that should never have been published on Steam just because this guys ego is the most important thing on the planet. What a disgusting attitude, laid bare for all to see through this appalling breach of Valve guidelines.
The insult to gamers continues... the developer demands that telling the truth about bad products hurts his feelings. Again, ZERO consideration was given to how harmful it is to the gaming industry when garbage products like this with absolutely ZERO value for gamers spam the Steam store, polluting the place with garbage that nobody wants... and this isn't just my opinion, it's a hard fact. The SteamDB figures don't lie, only 3 concurrent players, only once... this is garbage that gamers never wanted.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this garbage from a failure and egomaniac to anyone.
