"Lotion samurai" is a handheld (Switch) ported insincere/joke game with Adobe Flash browser game quality levels. You control a samurai who only ever goes to environments where the floor is covered in slippery lotion, such that you slide around almost frictionlessly, with your katana pointed forward. Slide through various enemies to get the key and finish each level. I said it was a joke game, I didn't say it was a [i]good[/i] joke game.
Overall the gameplay is shallow and unengaging and really does remind me of free browser Flash games, only this is being pushed as a paid product on Steam, which really isn't okay. This kind of garbage just drags down the average quality of all video games everywhere.
From a technical perspective, the game 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.
While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.
The developers didn't design the game for modern gaming PCs, as such the display resolution caps out at 1080p, a very low resolution that became mainstream back in 2006 and became obsolete when 4K entered the mainstream in 2014. The game simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The game never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players launching this game every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just aren't using it.
"Lotion samurai" is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 9,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
[b]Note:[/b] Because this is more of a "joke" game, intended to draw attention from controversy or in the hopes of going viral because it's "so bad it's good" (but it isn't good at all), there's nothing here to offer to serious gamers. As usual, with most awful/joke games, all the comedians come out of the woodwork. The vast majority of the reviews for this game are joke reviews, such as "this game cured my cancer, saved my marriage, changed my life" etc. Because most of the reviews are as insincere as the game itself is, and if you removed the fake/joke reviews the game would have a markedly different review score, the positive review score for this game should be disregarded.
