Jade's Dungeon Descent is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. This mobile app is at least a little bit better than your usual Steam mobile app (most of them are just cash grab clicker scams with mobile app cash shops). Instead this is a genuinely made game for mobile phones, and it's the mobile phone thing that's the problem.
If you pretend this mobile app is a real game, it's just a shallow Chinese themed top down brawler-lite with a bit of VN stuff tacked onto it. Tap on your screen to explore a dungeon/temple/whatever and tap on baddies to fight them.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The mobile app features low-polygon "retro" assets with a cel-shading type shader effects instead of doing their job properly and texturing the game assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. This visual style is a method that lazy devs often use when they have a lack of interest/capability to create highly detailed, high poly models and instead use shader effects to disguise that shortcoming under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the mobile app. It's far below the state of the art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. All you do is tap on your iPhone screen to move/attack/push buttons. Tap tap tap.
The game even says "tap to continue". At least they could lie to us and tell us that's rain.
Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.
These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this mobile app 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 2 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 130,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.
So, should you buy this mobile app? Is this one of the best of the 130,000+ games on Steam?
Jade's Dungeon Descent is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the mobile app, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this mobile app as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the mobile app (to date). Until this status changes, this mobile app will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this mobile app.[/quote]
