Gamma Blast is a construction kit copy + paste game. The "developer" got a template for making an arcade bullet hell/shoot 'em up game, copying + pasting and arranging premade assets, using premade level design tools so they could pretend they're an actual game developer. This doesn't result in games of any real serious quality, this is just badly made amateur shovelware.
It does work, though, barely... the level design is extremely poor and gameplay is unsatisfying, but that's what we should expect from copy + paste jobs like this. At least it's not pixel art?
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.
The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort Flash/browser games and mobile apps. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing.
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.
You don't have to take my word about how bad the game is, we can measure the interest in a game by how much people bothered to play it. Gamma Blast has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for killing the first boss, trivial to achieve, but less than 5 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch.
The poor quality of this game is also 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 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.
Gamma Blast is relatively cheap at $1 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.
[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 chooses to breach Valve guidelines for two completely pointless reasons. First, to attack this review and the reviewer with a blatantly untrue and completely unfounded claim that my review contains falsehoods. Secondly, to whine loudly that my review was not "constructive".
Let's break it down.
The developer claims my review is "false", yet cannot identify any aspect of the many important topics my review comprehensively covers. If something really was inaccurate, that would be easy to point out, yet the developer cannot. This is because my reviews are always researched and based on supporting facts and evidence. To do any less would be a disservice to myself and to other gamers. So why has the developer made a completely baseless and untrue claim? This is simply a mental coping mechanism. If he can attack the review, then suddenly he no longer has to face the objective truth that his game is complete and utter garbage. You can see the developers deplorably shallow mindset here. This goes some way to explaining why such a poor quality product could come to exist on Steam, but it does not excuse it.
The developer demands that my review must educate him on how to develop video games. Well, we can all agree he has no idea how to do it as the dismal failure of this product clearly and factually demonstrates (peak player count: 2!!!). However, my reviews are not here to educate developers... they should already know how to make games before they go burning their money and harming gamers by polluting the Steam storefront with garbage shovelware and construction kit copy + paste jobs like "Gamma Blast".
My reviews are written solely for the benefit of gamers, in most cases to warn them away from low quality/badly made products like "Gamma Blast". So why then has the developer demanded that my review be an essay to instruct him on how not to make crap games? Main character syndrome. The developer is absolutely the main character and nobody else matters... especially not gamers. That's what this is all really about. This trashware isn't a game made with gamers in mind. It's made so the "developer" can pony up $100 and dump garbage on Steam through Steam Direct, then he can pretend he's a real game developer... at least that's what he tells himself on his 5 minute lunch breaks at Starbucks. The developer reveals this entire episode is all about his ego, and gamers be damned.
And of course anyone with half a brain could infer from my review that if they made games that don't contain any of the defects I warn gamers about, they have a much better chance of producing a game with some value... but then that's not really what the developer was trying to accomplish here.
When developers, no matter how utterly incompetent they are, put themselves and their egos before gamers, trash like "Gamma Blast" are the inevitable outcome. Now, it's become crystal clear why this garbage was dumped on Steam.
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.
