Lost & Found Collection

The second VHS beat me up and stole my pocket change......

"Lost & Found Collection" is yet another first person horror jumpscare adventure game (amateur developers LOVE these, because they're so easy to pump out). This one has hideously bad graphics and was intended to be released as a series of chapters, but incredibly low demand from Steam seems to have caused this to be overall abandoned. Let's go into why. The game is presented as a series of low quality FPS horror adventure minigames on old school VHS tapes. Each tape represents a slice of the overall first person horror jumpscare narrative. Heck, another game that might have even been a huge success if the production values were remotely acceptable. Even though the game looks pretty bad (and decent visuals are a minimum requirement for any game), we can be fairly sure this is not an asset flip. This is because the game assets look so bad, no self respecting asset creator would publish them. That's a fail. There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets of any level of quality usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too. Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us gamers. This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too. A peak of [b]4 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? This is a hard pass. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time. [quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer 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] Let's take this breach of Valve guidelines in the context of the success of this game... it had NONE. 4 concurrent players, peak, which only happened once, is beyond the textbook definition of failure and incompetence. The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet The Main Character, and nobody else matters. This is a little disturbing as the developer indicates they started stalking me and feverishly reading through my reviews... either just obsession with me on their part, or desperation to try find something in one of my other reviews that would somehow change the objectively terrible quality of this failed "game". Whatever their motivation, creeping on reviewers like this is [b]not okay[/b]. The developer makes the rather serious claim that my review is inaccurate/contains information which isn't factually evident. But this simply isn't true... the facts of my review can easily be verified with just a glance at this godawfully crap product. We know that if there was any glaring inaccuracy in my review the developer would have jumped on it and pointed it out right away... but they can't even cite one single example. Because [i]they know my review is accurate[/i]. They just don't like being presented with the facts. So they make up these false accusations of inaccuracy to soothe their ego. Anything but facing up to the truth. But why is this intellectual dishonesty good for gamers? It isn't. The developer complains that while this review closely addresses serious problems with this product, it resembles other reviews I have written for other products that share the exact same problems and deficiencies. There's over 120,000 games on Steam. Hundreds, in some cases thousands of these games share the same defects which gamers should know about before wasting any time on those products. However, the "developer" of this failed product arrogantly [b]DEMANDS[/b] that I find completely unique ways to describe [i]the exact same defects[/i]. What a completely ignorant, arrogant demand from a demonstrably failed developer. The developer demonstrates thier appalling attitude here. It's a sheer insult to gamers everywhere. If I used completely different language to describe the same defects, [i]this product would still suffer from the same defects[/i]. Changing the wording of my review would not make this product better. But let's stop for a minute... why is the developer so desperate to make this review for HIS product about ME? If you know your product sucks, deflect and attack. What a disgusting, arrogant attidue from a demonstrably incompetent and failed developer. And now his disgusting attitude is on display for all to see. Only 4 concurrent players. And this guy attacks me for HIS failure. What a joke. Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.