"hOSHIs Elektronauts" is an abandoned Early Access ripoff of Snake/Blockade (Gremlin Industries, 1976), and is deficient compared to almost every ripoff of Blockade that's come out in the decades since. But there's more here than just a bad, abandoned game.
The game was abandoned roughly a year and a half after launch and hasn't been updated in over four years. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game (3 months after launch) without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. The game will never be completed.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The graphics here are some of the worst, laziest attempt at video game "art" I've ever seen. It's hard to suggest this game even has graphics. It's just untextured, basic pixel blocks and blobs, the kind that an infant child might be able to create in 5 minutes on MS Paint. It's clear the developer didn't even try to produce any real graphics for the game and just phoned it in. It's unclear why such a lazy approach was taken, whether it may be caused by lack of talent, budget, or motivation to do their job properly. It also doesn't matter... what matters is that this has resulted in a game with zero visual appeal for gamers. It's an immediate failure on that measure alone.
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.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
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, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern 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 only 3 players. 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 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
Another unethical act of this developer, knowing full well that this game is abandoned and they will never complete it, they are deliberately trying to scam gamers into buying it by offering it on discount from time to time. It's impossible to "accidentally" discount a game. The developer looked at their abandoned game, and instead of doing the right thing and removing it from Steam, they instead doubled-down and tried to scam even more people into paying for it. Greedy, and completely unethical. Doing the wrong thing, on purpose, for money. This is not okay.
Furthering the unethical nature of this developer, while they are selling this incomplete game under Valve's failed Early Access program, they're abusing that program, and not working on this game full time, as they have other projects in the works. That means there's ZERO confidence anyone who buys this in Early Access will receive a complete game, and it's possible that they're being scammed... the developer continues to deliberately sell the incomplete game, and despite their failure to deliver on their commitment to finish the game, have kept all proceeds from Steam, no refunds have been given.
"hOSHIs Elektronauts" is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend.
