[b][quote][b][URL=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware]Spyware Warning![/URL][/b]This game acts as spyware and performs personal data gathering and transmission, as indicated in the games EULA, under the guise of "telemetry". There's no immediate apparent way to opt out. This is completely unethical and reprehensible. Gamers must be aware of the dangers of installing this harmful software and should avoid this completely.[/quote][/b]
Fuzzy's Quest is an extremely crap spyware app wrapped around an even more crap 2.5D platformer. And it's bad really bad. There's a slew of technical problems and ethical problems, which we'll get into, but first this seems to be aimed at children (so why is the developer so keen to spy on them with the "telemetry" baked into this "game")? You control some bear thing blob of pixels and bounce badly over platforms collecting stars. Controls are extremely floaty and unresponsive, so no testing apparently went into the game. We can only wonder how well the spyware component of this works. There's certainly no opt-out feature... or any options at all, for that matter.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
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 game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets with crap 2D retro pixel "art" sprites for the characters, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. This very poor quality visual style is a method that lazy devs often use to disguise their lack of talent/interest in doing the graphics properly and trying to disguise it under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, worse, it doesn't authentically recreate the 1990's vibe the developer is hoping people will accept instead of doing their job properly, and that's just another reason to avoid it.
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, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
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 game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. 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 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Unfortunately for the developer, that means his spyware probably hasn't collected much data on users.
You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement. This agreement includes questionable (and possibly law breaching) privacy requirements that no gamer should ever have to engage in. 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.
Fuzzy's Quest is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.
[b][quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/quote][/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][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 weirdly insists my review is a "copy + paste" but I can assure you all, with over 10,000 reviews under my belt, this is the first and only time I caught a developer hell bent on gathering as much personal info as possible on children on Steam. Delusion on the part of the developer? Certainly, but there's more, and it's worse.
The developer contorts himself weirdly to try explain why he likes to spy on children, then tries to pretend Valve's opt-in, well explained and justified survey is spyware, while his unavoidable, no way to opt out spying on children is not. As I said in my review, there is [b]no way to prevent the developer spying on you if you play this children's game[/b]. This is [b]by his design[/b]. Then he tries to explain that "telemetry" is an optional thing.... so, autodisqualifying his spyware actions as "telemetry". What a joke.
The developer insists (presumably as part of his legal defense) that he's not collecting enough information to fully identify all the children he spies on, but fails to explain why he designed this childrens game to be fully infested with spyware, as his toxic EULA fully confesses to.
Here's a link to the EULA: https://store.steampowered.com/eula/676600_eula_0
The developer "pinkie swears" he's not doing what he's doing. Do you trust him? You shouldn't... because if he was trustworthy, he would have made his spyware opt-in, or maybe, you know, not have infested this childrens game with spyware in the first place. What was his goal, making a childrens game with no opt-out data gathering on children?
I've done over 10,000 reviews on Steam now. I know when developers are ethical, and I also know when they make childrens games infested with spyware with the intention of gathering as much data as possible on children.
Gamers, you be the judge. Stay safe out there.
