Mirage

"Mirage" is a student project from DigiPen who really should know better. I guess the first thing I would teach game dev students is that 2D games became obsolete when 3D accelerators became mainstream in the mid 1990's, and failing to understand that means failing as a game developer. But DigiPen chose not to teach this important fact to students this year, and in fact told them it would be okay to dump yet another 2D retro platformer onto Steam, alongside literally thousands of these platformers that have no players because nobody wanted them. If I was a DigiPen student I'd be asking for my money back. Do they teach the finance students how to use an abacus??? What do you do in the game? This is a barebones 2D platformer with a bit of shooting... the quality is as poor as the concept. It's not worth playing. The game features really lacklustre 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs to pretend they're mobile phones. 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. 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. Not every "free" game really is. There's often MTX, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of things that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 4 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. 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? Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.