Karolina

Karolina is an abandoned Early Access point and click adventure game with a disturbing/horror theme. Gameplay consists of clicking around various elements in each room to progress through puzzles and work towards the end of this incomplete and abandoned game. The game was abandoned one month after launch and hasn't been updated in almost 9 months. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game several months ago 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 game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, and 2D DooM like pixellated sprites instead of 3D models for the in-scene characters and interactables, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with. The game is very badly optimised, with low framerates and janky gameplay even on a high end rig. Developers must take the time and polish their games and ensure they are optimised and will play well on any potential customers system. 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 game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. 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. Unethically, the developer sold keys to this abandoned Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles, where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete game. This seems to have been done in an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. Often this is done as an exit strategy, as the developer takes the money and runs. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers. Karolina is relatively cheap at $2 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 and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend.