"Foothold" is a game jam tech demo rather than a full game, made for the Christian Game Developers Conference (CGDC) in the USA. This entry for the CGDC is a simple VR tech demo that involves collecting scrap and using it to build towers that then make up the main tower defense gameplay that's the core of this thing. What there is here is not good, but at least it's not asset flipped. Regardless, I don't think Steam should be treated as a dumping ground for unfinished/half baked tech demos... that's not good for gamers, who deserve professionally, fully developed games.
This is the product of a game jam, which immediately tells us it isn't a sincere piece of software. Real games take years of professional work, not a single weekend of amateur hacking. You cannot expect a product slapped together in a week or less to have any value, and "Foothold" shows that these rushed game jam entries are just shovelware impersonating a real game. Badly.
Imagine if airlines held "airplane jams" and tried to see if people could build aircraft single handedly in less than a week. Would you fly on that plane? Of course not. So why are we expected to accept "Foothold" as a functional game? These jams are just ego-trips for amateurs that result in half-baked projects being dumped on the public.
It's improper for shovelware game jam junk like this to be published through Steam Direct because it's harmful. This half-baked product is taking up space that should be given to genuine developers who actually put in the hard work over years to create complete, fully made games. This makes it harder for gamers like you and me to find real, finished products.
Visually, the game looks pretty bad (and decent visuals are a must, gaming is a visual medium), we can be sure this is not an asset flip. This is because the game assets look so bad, no self respecting asset creator would publish them. That's a fail.
There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets of any level of quality usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too.
It's VR exclusive, and that shows the developer failed to understand the most basic axiom of VR game design... if the only cool thing about your product is VR support, your product is not cool.
Now onto pricing and value.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
At the time of this review, SteamDB shows us the all-time peak of ONLY ONE player. That's right, just one. When I launched this, I personally equalled the highest peak player count, just by myself. How bad is that?? SteamDB shows people loading it up just to see how bad it is then deleting it maybe once or twice a month and that's it. Given the vast number of gamess on Steam (over 140,000 games!), it's understandable gamers ignored this... but this is an embarrassing failure in terms of public reception.
Given that this free game won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library?
This isn't good enough for me to suggest PC gamers spend their time and hard drive space on. There's thousands of better alternatives on Steam more worthy of your time.
At the end of the day, my reviews are intended to help gamers find quality and avoid the dregs (with over 140,000 games on Steam... not all of them are masterpieces). If you think my review is wrong, definitely add this to your library, download it and play it... it's surely exactly the kind of game you'll love (but I doubt it will work out that way). Game reviews are for gamers to share their thoughts and help others choose where to spend valuable time. If my review helps you to grab or reject this game, then my job is done.
