Linda & Joan Prologue: “Four Months Earlier”

Linda & Joan, İngiliz bir ailenin hikayesini anlatan bir oyundur. Ailenin bir dizi travmatik olayla başa çıkmasına yardımcı olmak için oğul, anne ve büyükanne olan Russell, Linda ve Joan olarak oynuyorsunuz. Gerçek hikayeye dayalıdır. “Dört Ay Önce” Linda ve Joan'ın hikayesinin birinci kısmı.

"Linda & Joan Prologue: “Four Months Earlier”" is not a game. It's an advertisement for a product called "Linda & Joan". Linda & Joan is a pretentious more art/book-than-game visual novel/ebook that doensn't even exist because the developer gave up after seeing zero interest in the project. Which isn't surprising. It's about a English family that hangs around an asset flip of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, for some reason. Film buffs will remember the asset because it's where Arnie kills Bill Paxton in 1984's classic "Terminator", from James Cameron. At least I think the developer knows that was the asset he was flipping. But this isn't completely relevant because this is not Linda & Joan, it's just an advertisment for it, so it's not correct to try to review that completely distinct product. We must instead review this for what it is... an advertisement. If you enjoy advertisements, you can consume them for free on the web or on Youtube without needing to add them to your game library, download them, and then launch the advertising. It's impossible in a general sense to recommend people should do that over playing real, full games on Steam, and that applies here with Linda & Joan Prologue: “Four Months Earlier” too. This is only free in the same way that adverts on Youtube and banner ads in your browser are. This is a game demo that's been dumped on Steam to advertise another Steam store page in the hopes of raking in some cash. Just because advertisements are free, doesn't mean they're worth your time. It's important to understand there's a formal process to create a demo/page for a game which hasn't been followed here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos While it might seem like an inocuous mistake, publishing demos and advertisements as if they are full games is misleading and in some ways harmful. This advertisement is taking up marketing space and visibility that would be better made available to a developer that's done the right thing and created a full game. Instead, that visibility is given over to a demo/advert that's been published incorrectly and is polluting the marketplace. It's unclear if this mistake was made through incompetence or a deliberate intent to mislead gamers. Often developers may choose to incorrectly publish demo/advertisements as separate games as a cheap way to bypass paying Valve for marketing presence on the Steam front page, which may seem clever to them, but it's harmful behaviour and it's not good for gamers. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 4 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Advertisements and incorrectly published demos don't add +1 to your game collector count, they aren't full games. It's impossible for me to recommend this incorrectly published advertising spam to gamers, you deserve better than adverts. [quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Author Response![/url][/quote]The author has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says: [quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote] The author, who we've already established thinks that books are games and that libraries are packed to the brim with paper video games, demands that at no point was this advertisement intended to draw attention to an e-book the developer gave up writing. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you. The author seems to be having problems coping with the fact this advertisement only ever have 4 concurrent readers and that only happened once; That's what failure looks like. Obviously the intention of this advertisement is to draw attention to the authors proposed but abandoned e-book. Why the author chose to tell outright lies in the face of the obvious is unclear, but then again, when unable to discern the difference between a book, an advertisement, and a video game, basic reason and common sense is too much to hope for when dealing with this kind of cringe. Well, there's a reason Valve puts in those guidelines. The most likely cause is the most common; by throwing shade at reviewers, the author can mentally shift the focus away from the fact that he's a failure. Nothing in the authors pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this advertisement to anyone.