GORILLA TOWN is a an Early Access ripoff of Gorillas (copyright Microsoft 1991). It's intended to be a simplistic 2D "artillery" game (popularised by the ripoff, Worms), a dumbed down rival to 1991's DOS game, Scorched Earth. Gameplay consists of aiming and choosing the right power level then flinging an explosive "banana" at enemy robots. There's also multiplayer mode, in case you have some friends and you want them to never speak to you again because of your terrible taste in games.
The game has been in Early Access since 2020 and while it's still getting updates, it's deep in Development Hell. There's no reasonable expectation that this will ever be completed. Whether the developer lacks the time, funds, or skill/talent required to complete a video game isn't really something gamers should be expected to accept as an excuse.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics.
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.
The very poor quality of this game puts it squarely on-par with ancient 1990's Flash/Java games, and given it's 2022 (and this was released not so far back in 2020), gamers and the industry expect and deserve better than this kind of low effort shovelware.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Unethically, the developer sold keys to this Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles, where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete game. This seems to have been done in an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. Often this is done as an exit strategy, as the developer takes the money and runs. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers.
GORILLA TOWN has an overly optimistic price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. And, you know, you can play those old DOS games for free if you wanted to, so why reward these unethical developers?
[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 launches on a tirade defending the woefully poor quality of this objective failure of a game, and tries to pretend they didn't act unethically when they acted unethically. Ugh. Let's unpack this mess.
In an attempt to discredit the validity of my review the developer seems to think that the game must be played for several hours before determining any objective facts about it. Apparently, before deciding a carton of rancid milk has gone sour, we must drink the whole carton before we're can tell anyone the milk is off. Rubbish. [b]Playing a bad game for longer will not make the graphics better, cause the code to change, or fix any bugs or defects in it.[/b] Why insist the game needs to be played longer? This is simply denial on the part of the developer. If they attack the review, they can pretend their game doesn't suffer from the defects this review shows. This is outright delusion. [b]It does not take long for the defects in this game to become apparent. Playing the game for longer will not change them.[/b]
The developer, unable to refute any of the facts about the game in their pointless, rambling repsonse, attacks the reviewer, and indicates they've stalked me by feverishly reading thousands of my other reviews. But the content of my other reviews has ZERO bearing on the terrible quality of this failed Early Access abuse. If I changed all of my other reviews to positive, would GORILLA TOWN suddenly get all of the defects fixed and leave Early Access? Of course not! The developer simply seeks to attack the reviewer so he doesn't have to accept the cold, hard truth that he's a failed, unethical developer. Denial and delusion won't make this game better, but it does explain it.
The developer acknowledges they lacked the skill, talent and budget to do their job properly and make the game work with all the various features and settings that PC gamers expect, but acknowledging they failed is not the same as excusing their failure. To date the developer has made no effort to add the various minimum standard features to the game, and seems to spend more time stalking me than fixing these problems.
The developer claims to be a hobbyist and not a professional or capable game developer. Once more, explaining their failure here, they were simply unable to make a video game properly. Why is this good for gamers?
The developer has launched their game on a AAA platform, for profit, and is now insulted it got held up to the same rigorous standards that the vast body gamers hold AAA games up to... attacking this reviewer instead of trying to understand their failure is delusional, again this explains how this defective game got to be here. The developer claims this reviewer is "lazy" because I played their game when millions of other Steam gamers ignored it. The developer, in a fit of delusion, seems to think movies are the same things as video games. When their game doesn't even have a narrative plot... this is simply incomprehensible gibberish coming from a failed developer at this point. But yeah, let's play pretend. If Avengers was made by two guys in their backyard who didn't know how to make movies, people wouldn't like it. Duh.
> You have to be able to back up words like "poor" and "unethical".
Poor: Evidenced by the woeful quality of the game (no fullscreen!) and overwhelming rejection of the game by gamers.
Unethical: The developers own response is incriminating, they knew what they were doing was wrong, but out of greed and a desire to inflict this garbage on gamers for as much money as possible, instead of finishing the game, they deliberately set out to mislead gamers by publishing the game as a finished product in game bundles. Whether their publishers are complicit in this is irrelevant.
The developer finally makes the outlandish claim that my review has nothing to do with the game, but that's [b]all my review addresses[/b].
It's important to note that the developer has failed to address or refute any of the undeniable facts of my review. They breach Valve's guidelines for developers to attack the reviewer and embarrass themselves, drawing further community attention to their unethical behaviour. You can see from their terrible attitude towards gamers that they are just trying to sell a garbage product for money.
The developer has been unable to properly address any of the reviews objective facts, my review stands unaltered.
