Lucky me gets the dubious honour of being the first to review Mardori.
Mardori is yet another of literally hundreds of amateur 2D retro arcade bullet hell/shoot 'em ups infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This one is 3D rendered instead of the usual 2D retro pixel shovelware, but that doesn't mean this is even close to being a good game.
I will say, however, importantly, that while this is a terrible game, it does at least appear to be genuinely made, not an asset flip as far as I can tell, no evidence of stock asset use or any other kinds of plagiarism or asset flipping.
This is an old and dead genre, and it doesn't serve the interests of gamers for there to be yet another "me too" entry that looks like it was built from a template/demo engine and rushed onto Steam.
There's a bit of a progression system associated with this shooter, but I think the game was dead out of the gate when the developer decided that what Galaga really needed to break the 21st century and put Counter-Strike 2 in its place was limited ammo... that's right, you can only shoot a certain number of times before you stop and wait while your ship reloads. Spaceships designed by space morons in this sci-fi universe I guess? Anyway the game is disastrously awful to play because of this decision.
Also because the control handling is a bit sluggish, the game is unpolished, it's just a very poor quality "me too!" in an old dead genre.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The game assets are fairly mediocre/low quality, in some places they appear mismatched... Ultimately the quality of these assets, and thus the overall visual quality is lower than average, and low quality always makes for a less than optimal gaming experience. Remember, we're looking for the best of the best of 100,000+ games on Steam.
The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
Mardori has the far too high price of around $9 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
For comparison, the $9 asking price for this game could get you games like "Rainbow 6 Siege", "Assetto Corsa" or "Shadow Warrior". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
