"Gary the Gull" is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this "art experience".
Instead of being a game, "Gary the Gull" is a software application that presents a poorly made Youtube video/short film.
So this is a mediocre VR short film, as once more film student hacks try to get Steam to compete with Youtube because nobody will watch their art school dropout stuff. Sure, this is less offensive than most of them, the idea of a talking seagull is cute, but we're not here to review Youtube videos, Steam is for games, and this was published in the games section when it clearly isn't a game.
We get this non-game shovelware on Steam whenever film school dropouts are desperate for anyone to give them validation, so they publish their short film on Steam because nobody watches their garbage on Youtube.
There was a video section on Steam, but it's deprecated and basically closed, so failed filmmakers seem to just try to abuse the Steam games section instead. Why is this good for gamers? It's not.
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game.
Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop.
There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process.
Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software/non-game "art experiences" on Steam:
[url=https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=925]Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing[/url]
It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a non-game "art experience"/Youtube video being published in the wrong place.
Publishing Youtube videos on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.
There are no gameplay loops in this rejected film school dropout exhibition, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. As such, this has no merit as a video game for gamers, and so I cannot recommend this non-game as a game to gamers.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at only 6 concurrent users... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
