"Gummy Jump 2" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not.
This is a painfully generic platformer with a "gumball" theme (ok whatever). Jump around, avoid spinning blades and spikes... yawn. The only amusing thing about this shovelware is how much the developer thought he could get paid for it.
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.
On the topic of visuals, the weak looking 2D retro assets seem like they'd be more at home in a browser game or a mobile app. 3D graphics accelerators hit the mainstream of PC gaming in the mid 1990's with cards like the ATI Rage and Voodoo3D, there's no excuse for such poor 2D graphics in 2025. That alone is enough to disqualify this for recommendation.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging an insane $10 USD for this. Delusional, isn't it?
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.
In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 2 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? What's the verdict?
Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.
[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 response here is offensive and inherently dishonest. Let's break it down, observe the developers lies and the hard truths that directly conflict with his false, misleading and insulting assertions. Remember, take this developers response in the context of their utter failure as a developer. A peak player count of 2 people, a hard fact backed by data, is beyond textbook failure, it's complete incompetence. That's the person breaching Valve guidelines to tell lies and attack a factual review about a bad product.
The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego. This is a "passion product", not made for gamers. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet The Main Character, and nobody else matters.
The developer whines that I didn't finish the game. Apparently, before deciding a carton of rancid milk has gone sour, the developer thinks we must drink the whole carton before we're allowed to tell anyone the milk has gone off. It's immediately apparent this is a defective game. As soon as you launch it, it's obvious it's garbage.
[b]Playing a bad game for longer will not make the graphics better, cause the code to change, controls to become better, or fix any bugs or other defects in it.[/b] So why insist the game needs to be played longer? This is simply psychological denial on the part of the developer. If they can attack the review for any bizarre reason at all, they can pretend their game doesn't suffer from the defects this review highlights. This is outright delusion, unfortunately. [b]It does not take very long for the defects in this game to become apparent. Playing the game for longer will not change them.[/b]
But you can see what the developer is trying to do.. use dishonesty to attempt to misdirect gamers away from the hard facts.
The developer directly states this wasn't meant to be seen by players on Steam. That's a lie. The facts: The developer launched this on Steam with millions of daily gamers on the store. If they didn't intend this to be seen by gamers, they wouldn't have published it. You can't "accidentally" publish garbage on Steam, it's a deliberate process. The developer is simply lying.
The developer lies again, they claim this was never intended to be a paid product. The facts: The developer set a price tag on this. Steam game tracking sites show the developer set a $10 price, then later, a $5 price. The developer is simply spewing BS on this point. Nobody ever said "I intend for this to be free, therefore I will put a $10 price tag on it". Who does this guy think we are by telling such blatant lies to gamers when the hard facts are right in front of everyone?
Complete BS from a demonstrably failed and incompetent "developer".
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
