Life's Playground is yet another construction kit template copy+paste from serial shovelware pushers, Trinity Project. These guys do nothing but copy premade game templates and game tutorials, fill out a few things/stamp out basic levels using the construction kit templates, slap on an asset flipped set of sprites/assets, and dump them on Steam and into cheap nasty shovelware game bundles as cash grabs. Trying to get paid for someone else's game templates, assets... at best, this is shovelware, at worst, it's a scam/cash grab.
This crap boardgame looks like it was made in the 1990's and stolen by Trinity Project/Dnovel and dumped on Steam as a cash grab. That's what they like to do, so there's no surprise here if this is another one of those kinds of scams. The quality is deporably bad, we'll get into the technicals later. This is a very direct ripoff of The Game of Life (copyright Milton Bradley, 1960), with some minor elements of Monopoly. At this stage it's unclear whether Milton Bradley has taken any legal action against the Russian asset flippers at Trinity Project/Dnovel/Freeanimals_Software (this guy uses a lot of aliases to try hide his identity) to enforce their intellectual property rights.
SimProse Studios/Trinity Project have shown a repeat pattern of unethically dumping other people's work onto Steam as a cheap, nasty cash grab, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. Here's some examples so you can see for yourself:
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[*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/512410]69 Ways to Kill a Zombie[/url]" = [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/simple-apocalypse-cartoon-assets-44678]Simple Apocalypse Cartoon Assets Pack[/url] developed by Synty Studios
[*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1075790]Fox and Bunny[/url]" = [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/characters/sunny-land-103349]Sunny Land[/url] developed by Ansimuz
[*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/790930]Primitive Shooter[/url]" = [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SviIeTt2_Lc&list=PLFt_AvWsXl0ctd4dgE1F8g3uec4zKNRV0]Create a Game Source code[/url] developed by Sebastian Lague
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One of the big problems here is in terms of the general design and the way the boardgame was ported. There's two aspects of any game. The mechanics of the game, and the interface that the players have with that mechanic. Poker, for example, is about randomly generated hands that players get, and the interface is the randomly drawn paper cards. If you keep the random hand, but remove the physical cards, the game still works, but it's streamlined, more pure. That's video gaming. The best video games put the players directly against the core game mechanic. We don't love games because of their interfaces, we love them for their mechanics. The less that the interface gets in the way, the better. So here, we have a boardgame/cardgame conversion, and the focus of the developers has clearly been to keep, and emulate the annoying physical interface, without bothering to improve on the mechanics or put the players closer to them. As a result of this hamfisted decision, the game is clunky and annoying to play compared to games that were designed from scratch to be PC games.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game 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 graphics.
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 all-time peak player number was only 2 players. That's right, only 2. 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 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.
It's also important to note the "developer" here has connections to a number of shady Russian asset flippers and review manipulators who show an organised pattern to scam and defraud gamers with fake reviews and asset flipping the work of others for profit. While reviews are about the games, gamers should be informed when developers act unethically. Whether these connections are the same developer using multiple accounts, or just working closely with other unethical developers, gamers should be warned about the harm to gamers by this developer and their associates. Buying games from unethical developers puts your money at risk.
Life's Playground is relatively cheap at $1 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.
