Insectophobia : Episode 1 is a construction kit copy + paste game. The "developer" used the craptastic Adventure Game Studio video game construction kit, copying + pasting and arranging premade assets, using premade level design tools so they could pretend they're an actual game developer. They made a really badly assembled, badly written 2D side scrolling adventure game with a reasonable concept and craptastic execution. The idea is that you're in a facility that conducted scientific experiments on insects, and yeah, you guessed it, it went all Jurassic Park (but with insects).
This is for some reason "Episode 1", but the "developer" couldn't be bothered making any other episodes, and dumped this incomplete mess onto Steam as a cash grab.
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like Adventure Game Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Proximity Games has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics.
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.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the video game construction kit/toolset, Adventure Game Studio. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur/unskilled developers as it doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. That's right, only 3. 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, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is to be expected. Gamers just didn't take this low quality game seriously, and for good reason.
Insectophobia : Episode 1 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, this is impossible to recommend.
