Needless to say if an educational institution taught me incorrectly on purpose, I'd ask for my money back. "Grapplania" is a student project from DigiPen that ignores that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's... there's no such thing as a gaming PC without 3D graphics. The faculty at DigiPen apparently didn't feel it necessary to tell students about that. It's going to be tough for any student to go find work in the industry if they can't even show they know about 3D video games.
The students were incorrectly taught that it's ok to make 2D pixelcrap platformers and put them up against contemporary, real PC games in 2023. As a result we got a game nobody wanted, and of course it's not a full game, it's a student demo that's unmaintained, and full of bugs and polish problems that will never be fixed.
We also have to question what value there is for gamers on Steam when institutions flood the store with low quality 2D video game homework assignments... sure, it might make the students feel good about themselves, but this has no benefit for gamers who have to wade through this stuff to find professionally made 3D games.
The game lacks options for adjusting resolution, which means you can't ensure the game runs at your display's native resolution. This design choice may cause the visuals to appear less than optimal on just about every modern LCD/OLED display.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render this unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them.
You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me.
Now onto pricing and value.
It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say.
There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers?
It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff.
In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone.
A peak of [b]4 concurrent players[/b] (according to SteamDB) for a "free" game is a disastrous public reception. Out of 130 million potential players here on Steam, almost nobody was interested. Even though this is "free". That level of rejection speaks a lot for the quality of the game.
Given that this free student project won't count toward your game collection or add any achievements, and because it's not really a full game and more of a homework assignment, it's not a worthwhile download.
