"Forest of Strays" is a construction kit copy + paste game. The "developer" used the craptastic "no code needed" ClickTeam Fusion video game construction kit, copying + pasting and arranging premade assets, using premade level design tools so they could pretend they're an actual game developer.
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like ClickTeam Fusion should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Nether Lamp has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
So what is it? "Forest of Strays" is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. They just copied the basic platformer template/blueprint from GameMaker, dumped some lazy (possibly uncredited, flipped assets) pixel "art" onto it and made a bare bones and basic platformer minimum viable product to dump out onto Steam.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
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.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Clickteam Fusion construction kit - the "No-Code" construction kit that "Anyone can make games with!!". Including, you know, people who aren't game developers. Which is a problem. This 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. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
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? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"Forest of Strays" has the insane price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Battlefield V", "Mad Max" or "Assetto Corsa". No pixelcrap is worth $5. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly.
[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]
[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 developer response here is simply bizarre. A link to an advertisement riddled Youtube video? The video itself explains that it's completely foolish to try make a video game alone, we can all agree. Game development is a complex and difficult endeavour. When McDonalds employees and car wash attendants like Akseru Solus try to do game development without knowing now to do the job, and without budgeting to hire staff who know how to do the job, the result is an unmitigated disaster like "Forest of Strays", which isn't even a truly developed game, it's a copy + paste hack job made with ClickTeam Fusion, the free construction kit that boasts it allows people who don't know how to make games to self publish garbage like this on Steam.
The developers weird video response resoundingly proves my point. I don't know how else to say this... game development is hard and people who can't do it [b]shouldn't[/b]. Or, at the very least, they shouldn't publish it on platforms like Steam where it pollutes the place and makes it harder for gamers to find games from professional developers who know what they're doing.
Not everyone gets to be an astronaut.
You must be [i]this[/i] tall to take the ride.
And when people who can't do the job properly, as the developer here seems to be admitting, the result is a waste of time and store space, a valueless construction kit product such as "Forest of Strays".
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 game to anyone.
