This is yet another student project, one of literally thousands self-published on Steam Direct. It's from DigiPen. This is an academic exercise, not a professional game. While it has more quality than most amateur games, it is not a complete gaming experience. Student projects have limited value for gamers because they're not fully developed games, just barely functional demos that show the students progress.
Steam is not a place for for-profit colleges to dump student homework assignments... and having thousands of these is not good for gamers.
The students made a console-esque (did they know Steam is PC only?) third person puzzle adventure game which is admittedly charming, I guess. The idea is you have a magic flute in a magical world with magical critters and Opera is dead. I don't know how to break this to the students, but Opera has been around for 400 years and it still never caught on. Stop trying to make Opera happen, it's not going to happen.
Anyway, you get to make Opera great again by playing the magic flute to move things around and solve puzzles, and of course doing a bunch of repetitive and boring fetch quests.
As usual with student projects it's unfinished, unpolished, and the students have walked away and will never properly finish this... it's just a tech demo, a portfolio piece, and not a full game for gamers.
The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here.
You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. No student projects should EVER come with terms that users have to agree to! Is this delusion of grandeur?
This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me.
This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say.
There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers?
It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff.
In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone.
Even as a free game, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 3 players[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time playing this.
Keep in mind this student project won't increase your game collector count or show up in your Steam profile showcases, and because it's a short, unpolished and unmaintained student homework assignment, I can't recommend you spend your valuable time on this one when you could be playing any of the thousands of fully made games for gamers.
