Line Hopper

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"Line Hopper" is, well, a frankly fascinating and novel concept that's only been done a couple of times before on Steam. The idea is that you're playing a platformer (old, dead genre, I know), but from a literal 2D perspective. Which means for gameplay, you're only presented with a line, and that's how you have to negotiate each level. I said it was a novel concept, not a good one. This was a dismal failure on Steam Direct. It's great when developers try new(ish) things, but I think it helps to stop and first ask, not "Has this been done before?", but instead "Is this a good idea that will result in a fun game?" The answer to that second, important, unasked question is "nope." This is tedious and frustrating to play, the visuals are terrible (on purpose), and the inclusion of a level editor, while welcome, is pointless when nobody is interested in playing the game. Because it's a minimalist line simulator. This game features very lacklustre minimalist "art" for graphics instead of anything remotely contemporary. I'm sure the "developer" thought this would come across as "artistic", but it doesn't, it comes across as "really lazy". Yes, contemporary 3D graphics take a lot of time and effort to create. That doesn't mean it's okay not to bother! Developers must try to understand that gaming is a visual medium, and gamers spend a lot of money on high end gaming rigs for a reason. And that reason is not so they can look at lazy, phoned-in half efforts like this. I know the point is for this to be 2 dimensional only, but wow, that sort of kills any chance this has of competing properly in the #1 most important judging category. Next is pricing and what value this has for gamers. Most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's usually some kind of monetisation, from nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, to any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on. A peak of [b]3 concurrent players[/b] (according to SteamDB) for a "free" game is a disastrous public reception. Out of 130 million potential players here on Steam, almost nobody was interested. Even though this is "free". That level of rejection speaks a lot for the quality of the game. 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? I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.

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