Gun Duel was an abandoned Early Access attempt at making a PvP only retro pixel platformer/PVP arena shooter/Super Smash Bros ripoff. The game featured lazy 2D pixel art instead of contemporary PC graphics, and gameplay consisted of completely dry platformer shooting.
It failed. The developers abandoned the game around 2 months after launch and haven't updated it since. SteamDB shows the game peaked at only 24 players concurrently, which is a pitiful number, and now the game has practically no players, with 2-3 people logging on each week, only briefly, presumably to check it out then delete it. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
First up the game visuals are terrible, controls are locked, the overall quality here is woeful. PvP gamers have literally thousands of games to choose from, hundreds of AAA games that are either free or cost next to nothing. A choice was made to use obsolete retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. Games have to actually offer something if they want to compete for players time.
The developers made the terrible mistake of launching a multiplayer only game in Early Access. This is almost certain to kill the game. Most gamers will evaluate a game only once. If they do so when the game is incomplete, they will check it out, then abandon it (just like the developers did). When (IF) the game eventually does get around to release, there will be no players, because the developers burned the first impressions through their faulty Early Access experience. Players who saw the game and didn't like it because it was incomplete [i]do not come back[/i]. Multiplayer games must have a large population if they are to go "viral" and succeed, especially without single player content to fall back on. Releasing a multiplayer only game into early access kills the game population, and thus the game, before the game even launches.
The developers made the fatal, lazy mistake of believing that PvP, other players, would be an acceptable substitute for doing the difficult job of adding single player level design, storytelling, NPCs and other rich aspects of designed game content to the game. As a result of this choice by the developers, the game has little to no actual interactive game content. It's a little considered fact that the vast majority of PvP only, multiplayer only games [b]fail[/b]. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable subsititue for doing the job of game developers and building a game filled with content. PvP only games must have a [b]huge[/b] player base for them to "go viral" and succeed. But with no single player experience to add lasting value to a game, the developers instead chose to bet against all odds that their game would "go viral" without any actual reason for players to want to play the game. Predictably, they lost this bet.
Even though this seems to be completely free, and not a cash grab, it's very poor quality and compares poorly to almost every other free PvP game out there. Because of these issues, and the way the game is dead and abandoned, I can't recommend it. All this game serves to do is pollute Steam by making it harder for gamers to find genuine, complete games, and making it harder for developers who did the right thing to find an audience for their games.
