"JosPlays' Escape - GameJam April 2024" is just a pointless 2D top down avoidance game... run around a 2D arena, collect 5 things, avoid the enemies, uninstall fast.
This is not a sincerely made product. It was made for a game jam, which is a problem. It was done in a very short time, but professional game development takes years of effort from teams of talented people. A "game" slapped together in a weekend by an amateur simply isn't going to have any value for gamers and that plays out clearly with this shovelware.
Also, products created in game jams were never intended for gamers. They exist only to stroke the ego of amateur developers who can't get a real job in the industry. When untalented developers put their own vanity before the needs of the player, garbage like "JosPlays' Escape - GameJam April 2024" is the result.
Imagine if airports ran a "plane jam" to see who which amateur enthusiast could build an airplane within a weekend with a $100 budget. Would you fly on that plane? No. It takes time and resources to do a job properly.It might seem harmless for hundreds, if not thousands of these game-jam ego projects being dumped on Steam, but it's not. They take away marketing space that should properly be available to genuine developers who did the right thing and spent years making real, serious games for gamers. They make it harder for gamers to find those games... they pollute Steam with garbage people have to push aside when looking for genuinely made games. They give amateur developers and even worse name. All of this is bad for the industry, and bad for us gamers.
This game fails on the visuals because of the use of incredibly lazy, ugly pixelcrap. The developer would probably argue this is a "deliberate artistic choice" but we all know it's because the developer was incapable of producing anything better. The game looks very poor compared to professionally developed games. Whether the developer lacked the skill or the budget for modern visuals is irrelevant, this looks bad because of that developer decision. Gaming is a visual medium, and it's a disservice to gamers when developers don't bother doing their jobs and creating contemporary, high quality visuals. Games like Undertale and Stardew Valley are rare exceptions that succeeded [i]in spite[/i] of their awful graphics. Pixelcrap is never really okay, and there's no excuse for games that look this bad.
This was made with the godawful "GameMaker Studio" construction kit/toolset, which is popular amongst amateur developers because it handholds you through making really crap 2D games that you can publish for $100 on Steam Direct. This lets you pat yourself on the back for pretending to be a real game developer, which explains why GameMaker Studio is responsible for so much ignored garbage on Steam.
GameMaker Studio has never really been used to make a truly successful game, but that doesn't stop people from trying and failing. It's a particularly bad game engine that can only be used for making low quality 2D products. Like this. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as the old saying goes. Another reason this particular game wasn't successful.
Let's talk about pricing and the actual value this has for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
A peak of [b]2 concurrent players[/b] (according to SteamDB) for a "free" game is a disastrous public reception. Out of 130 million potential players here on Steam, almost nobody was interested. Even though this is "free". That level of rejection speaks a lot for the quality of the game.
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?
Nope. I didn't have to pay for this, but I still feel like I got scammed.
The achievements paint an unflattering picture of how the game landed with players. The most attainable achievement is "R.I.P.", Dog dies, yet only 100 percent of players picked it up. Most people who own this apparently had no interest in playing it for any real length of time.
