ForkJump

best 5 hours of lyfe

"ForkJump" is in some ways a bit of a tongue in cheek "joke" game, but it does mostly work... it's a third person platformer with a grappling hook mechanic, somewhat unpolished and a little janky. This serves as a demo/proof of concept showcase piece for burgeoning Norweigan developers, "intety", who don't know about the "shift" key on their keyboards apparently (or do they not have title case in Norway?). What do you do in the game? This mildly horror themed demo has you running around being chased by a large, scarey fork. Yeah, me neither. Anyway, the game sort of works, but the "ForkJump Gun" mechanic is weak and imprecise. Gameplay is a little tedious evasion/platforming/find the key, blah blah. Nothing to write home about. The game was not successful on Steam Direct. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. Let's talk about pricing and the actual value this has for gamers. Even as a free game, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 5 players[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time playing this. 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? This is a "maybe" experience... if you have a lot of free time on your hands and nothing else to do, why not? But for the purposes of a review, this isn't something I can say everyone must try. It's not quite there. Valve doesn't give us a "maybe" option in reviews, but if they did, that's what I'd choose for this. 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.