LabyrInk

[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b] This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote] This complete garbage, rejected by almost everyone on Steam, was slapped together in 5 days as a direct insult to anyone who takes gaming or game development seriously. It takes years to create a professional game, 5 course banquets of exquisite roasts and delicacies. This crap is chicken that's been left in the sun for 5 days. By all means people should play around with development, but the garbage that comes out of them, below the quality of a tech demo, should never waste the time of gamers with unprofessionally, insincerely made crap by publishing it in the same place where real developers who do the right thing are struggling to find an audience for their genuinely made games. And this is truly crap... it's just beneath the standard you'd expect from a minimum viable product. I've played better asset flips from Russia. It really is a dead, contentless arena PvP game with no players. So, "LabyrInk" is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! [i]Almost every PvP exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so. Competition amongst PvP centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost. First and foremost, there's no meaningful single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the Game. They lost that bet. Without a huge community of players or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game. This is not a sincerely made product, it was made for a game jam, which is a problem. It was done in a constrained period of time; professional game development takes years of effort from teams of talented and qualified 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 developers, especially untalented ones, put themselves before gamers, garbage like "LabyrInk" is the inevitable result. It's improper for shovelware like this to be published through Steam Direct, because it's harmful. This half-baked, rushed, non-professional product, not designed for gamers, is taking up space on the Steam store that should be given over to genuine, talented developers who do the right thing and make fully developed, not rushed products for gamers. This makes it harder for gamers like you and me to find these genuinely made products. The graphics here are particularly awful, so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment. It's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. Now on to pricing and value 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. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 6 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. 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? What's the verdict? This is a hard pass. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.