GRANDFATHER is a fairly basic Unity asset flipped first person horror adventure, one of many hundreds, if not thousands of these glutting Steam. The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store assets, arranged them haphazardly in a first person adventure game template, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.
This is a (possibly autobiographical) interactive first person adventure/story about a Russian's worst nightmare... strict parents? I guess? You play an unemployed Russian guy living with his mother when she brings home your grandfather, who is very strict and mean to you. The entire thing is thankfully over in less than an hour, doesn't make a lot of sense unless you speak Russian, but does make the entirety of Steam slightly worse because it exists.
So, the game might look better than you'd expect from an amateur project, but this is because it's partially or completely made up of stock assets, "borrowed" from asset stores and free asset websites. Very little in this game is truly the creation of the "developer", it's just a bunch of rearranged assets.
While there's no up front price for this asset flip, the other problem with asset flips is that when developers aren't capable of doing their job and creating high quality assets, we quickly find they can't do any of the rest of the job of a game developer either. That's definitely true for "GRANDFATHER".
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.
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.
As mentioned the game assets themselves are pretty mediocre but still better quality than the rest of the game, so they're almost certainly the result of someone misusing stock assets and trying to get YOUR money for someone else's asset creation. That's not okay, plagiarism is morally and ethically reprehensible. Especially when done for profit.
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, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
Those technical issues put this game beneath what is expected from a contemporary, professionally developed 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 all-time peak player number was [b]only 3 players[/b]. 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 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
This kind of asset flipping isn't harmless. It makes it harder for gamers to find genuinely made games from ethical developers. It makes it harder for genuine indie developers, who put hard work into trying to make real games, to find an audience for their products. It gives indie developers a bad name.
Let's talk about price and what this asset flip is actually worth. Is this significantly better than any of the 140,000+ genuinely made games on Steam? Of course not!
GRANDFATHER has the gamer gouging price of around $9 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.
For comparison, the $9 asking price for this game could get you games like "Europa Universalis IV", "Yakuza Kiwami" or "7 Days to Die". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
There are over 140,000 games on Steam, not every one of them is a hidden gem. I'm here to try help gamers find the ones that actually matter in that sea of Steam Direct self published mess. If you don't agree with my findings in this review, you should definitely buy it, download it, and play it to see for yourself. I'm happy to have helped you make an informed choice, regardless of the outcome.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/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]
