Friend Ship

"Friend Ship" is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from Tokyo Cool Japan Professional Training College in Shinjuku. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. This is a very simplistic top down twin stick wave survival shooter, you're on a boat with nobody else (because nobody else would play this) and you shoot waves of sharks to defend the boat. There's no English translation for the game, but that's okay. The language of bad games is universal. The graphics aren't great, really low quality low poly assets so bad even the mobile app stores would reject them. That's understandably a turn off for a lot of gamers, and 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. You deserve better than compromises. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers? It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff. In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone. 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. This student project/tech demo/glorified homework assignment provides no Steam profile benefits, no +1 to your game count, and little value to gamers (because it's just a small, unpolished student project), so I can't recommend this over the thousands of full, professionally made games on Steam.

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Игра 'Friend Ship' оказалась на удивление приятным и увлекательным опытом! Простота механики поначалу слегка смутила, но вскоре стало понятно, что за внешней легкостью скрывается глубокая тактическая составляющая. Неожиданные повороты событий и постоянная необходимость адаптироваться к меняющейся ситуации держат в напряжении до самого конца. Особенно порадовало взаимодействие с другими игроками. Невозможно выиграть в одиночку, и необходимость координировать действия с партнерами создаёт настоящее чувство товарищества (иногда, конечно, и предательства!). Юмор в игре тоже на высоте, множество забавных ситуаций заставляют смеяться. Единственный минус, пожалуй, - небольшое количество карт. Хотелось бы больше разнообразия, чтобы каждая партия была уникальной. Но в целом, 'Friend Ship' - это отличная игра для компании, которая гарантированно подарит много положительных эмоций и запоминающихся моментов. Рекомендую всем, кто любит кооперативные игры с элементами стратегии и юмора.