"Minigames Master" is a series of badly made/incomplete and abandoned low effort platformer type minigames that never got finished, and were intended to be a knockoff of Nintendo's WarioWare... a bold move to invoke copyright over someone else's ideas, bolder to charge money for it, and even bolder to be completely unable to actually make said knockoff but publishing it on Steam anyway.
What do you do in the game? Platforming so bad you'll have an aneurism.
The developers abandoned this 2 years and 4 months ago. It will never be completed. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuinely, completely made games.
The game is really simple and unambitious in terms of implementation, more of a tech demo or one of those cases where an amateur developer spends $100 to publish something on Steam Direct to see if it's possible. A proof of concept, tech demo, or something that's less than a little blip on the radar isn't offering anything truly valuable to gamers.
The graphics here are particularly awful, so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment. It's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
So this is "free", but it's abandoned. Worse, it was never intended to be free. The developer intended to charge for this if it ever left Early Access... but the developer just couldn't be bothered. Making this abandoned pollution that gamers need to filter through when searching for products made by more ethical developers who fulfill their promise to deliver on their Early Access commitment instead of breaking that promise.
In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 2 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
[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]
First, the context: This game and the developer are complete failures, with a peak player count of only 2. SteamDB does not lie. The developer response should be viewed in the context of this proven failure.
The developer's breach of guidelines is a direct assault on gamers' decency and respect, a disgusting show of arrogance that is an insult to gamers everywhere. The response is devastating to the cause they pretend to advocate.
The arrogance is so bad it needs to be broken down. The developer delivers a series of insulting attacks on the factual basis of this review and the reviewer, attempting to excuse their unacceptable behavior.
We must ask why this developer is so desperate to make the review about me instead of his failure.
Why is it okay for crap products to interfere with the business of genuine developers? When developers like this one dump unacceptable garbage on Steam, it harms everyone: gamers who deserve better, and real, ethical developers who have to compete with the crap to find their audience.
The developer lies, abusing the Developer Response feature to claim the game is not a WarioWare rip-off, despite their own store blurb stating it is. They incoherently attack the facts, suggesting it's not copyright infringement if you claim it's "just the same genre." What utter bullcrap.
The developer, bizarrely, confesses that the game does not have the same quality standards as other games on Steam that are professionally produced. Why the F do we care about the reason the quality is bad? The developer thinks gamers are here only to worship him for dumping incompetently made, incomplete garbage on Steam. If you try to play a real, genuinely made game, that's unacceptable, you have to play this crap instead. I say "NO", we'll play the games that are genuinely made. We'll play Silksong, we'll play Baldurs Gate 3, we'll play anything we want. The developer attacks every single gamer for having good taste and rejecting this crap.
The developer whines that he lacks the skill, budget, and competency to make a game, and then demands a positive review. If you can't do the job of a game developer properly, don't assault gamers with your garbage unfinished product. Why does he think he's so much more important than you are?
The developer whines and DEMANDS that gamers accept unfinished, abandoned crapware, because he can't be bothered to finish the game he tried to make. I had a look at his profile, seems like he has all the time in the world to pore over game reviews, and play a bunch of games all the time, but no time to adhere to his commitment to finish this game: Yes, he deliberately and wilfully breached Valve conditions around Early Access, and acted on bad faith. And now is whining because he got caught out on his bullcrap. Jesus.
The developer claims victory, stating he didn't want anyone to play his game, so the peak player count of 2 is "GREAT SUCCESS." This is pure delusion, and we must question the mental health of a developer who spends $100 to dump abandoned crap on Steam while claiming he didn't want it to appeal to anyone. Seriously, look at what he wrote.
The "developer" argues that because I review a lot of games, this review isn't valid or truthful. Would changing my other reviews to positive suddenly improve the graphics and gameplay of this crap game? No. The developer seeks any angle to throw shade at me personally to discredit the review. If this was the only review I'd ever written, would it change any of the properties or facts? Of course not. [b]My reviews for other games have no bearing on the dismal quality of this failed product[/b].
Finally, the developer of this train wreck [b]demands[/b] that my review instruct them on how to make video games, because they obviously don't know, looking at this dismal failure of this product.
There is no obligation for reviews to be constructive. Reviews are not written to teach developers how to make games. They should know this before they release products on Steam. If they don't, why does this have to be a problem for gamers?
[b]Video game reviews are to inform gamers on their decisions around which games to buy, download, or spend their time playing.[/b]
The developer response here is an exercise on pure, disgusting, arrogant self-centredness. It's an insult to gamers everywhere, but he doesn't care about anyone but himself. You, the gamer, and what gamers care about doesn't matter. This guy is THE MAIN CHARACTER.
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 crap to anyone.
