"Lamia's Game Room" is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not). The mobile app is basically the ancient card game, Old Maid, so don't be fooled into thinking this is some kind of cool deckbuilder, this is just a game of randomly choosing cards from other people's hands. There's a little extra added as you can taunt or psyche your opponents if you think they will grab the right card. That's really all there is to it, less depth and interest than a browser/Flash game, but here we are, once more being asked to pay cash money for a cheap nasty mobile app on Steam.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options to change the resolution for the mobile app or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this mobile app is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this mobile app 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 mobile phone graphics.
The mobile app features simple, cartoony 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort mobile apps. 3D graphics programming does require a degree of skill and competence and unfortunately not all developers have the budget or talent to deliver this, despite 3D graphics cards hitting the mainstream in the 1990's. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing.
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.
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.
"Lamia's Game Room" didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the mobile app, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the mobile app didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for completing the first chapter, very easy to do, but only around 21 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the mobile app. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the mobile app.
Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this mobile app was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the mobile app. But this only appears around the same time that trading cards were applied to the mobile app... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the mobile app just has a couple of players every week running up the mobile app and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.
"Lamia's Game Room" is relatively cheap at $1 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.
