Thousands of retro 2D platformers are infesting Steam, and "Gpi" is just more pollution in a crowded market of terrible games. There are over 17,000 platformers on Steam, literally thousands (you can go see for yourself if you search for the platformer tag on the store, I'm not kidding). And this is far from being one of the best of those.
This is a pointless and laughably bad platformer-lite, a one button platformer where you jump based on the direction of an arror that shifts ever couple of seconds to a different direction. Get your timing right and tap that button and you too will discover there is no mercy, it doesn't end after the first level, please make it stop.
Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming.
This comes across as something unambitious and "simple" in terms of implementation and technical quality and depth, more like a game dev tutorial or an experiment. It's a classic case of a developer prioritizing the low effort needed to get a game listed on Steam over the actual delivery of a technically sound or compelling product. Whatever is needed to hammer out something "good" enough for Steam Direct self-publishing.
The graphics here are particularly awful, minimalist pixel garbage... I think the graphics took roughly 5 minutes to create for the entire game, so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment.
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.
This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $1 USD for this.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
Even as a free game, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 7 players[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time playing this.
Given that this free game won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library?
Nope. I didn't have to pay for this, but I still feel like I got scammed.
