This is yet another student project, one of literally thousands self-published on Steam Direct. It's from Chungkang Game School in South Korea. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" games, we must still question what value they have for gamers. This isn't a fully fleshed out game. It's the result of an academic exercise and has much more limited value than a professionally developed game.
Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments. It helps their marketing and makes students feel good, but it puts the business before the needs of gamers.
The students made a co-op only 2.5D side scrolling platform shooter with an anime girl theme and do boss fights. It's shallow, uninspired, and the co-op requirement rendered this unplayable for the tiny number of gamers who even bothered.
It also bugs me that games exactly like this one seem to be designed for consoles, but get launched on PC instead. What exactly are they teaching the students at these game dev schools?
On the important subject of visuals, this features fairly low quality stylised/cartoony low poly 3D graphics. It comes across as the kind of thing you see on mobile phones and Nintendo games, which will deter a lot of PC gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and to be considered one of the best games on Steam, the graphics have to be some of the best on Steam. That's not happening here.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say.
There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers?
It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff.
In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone.
Even as a free game, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 5 players[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time playing this.
This student project/tech demo/glorified homework assignment provides no Steam profile benefits, no +1 to your game count, and little value to gamers (because it's just a small, unpolished student project), so I can't recommend this over the thousands of full, professionally made games on Steam.
[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]
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.
The developer breach here is arrogant and alarming. The developer sees NO problem with polluting Steam with garbage nobody wants. Why? Because HE got something out of it. The developer doesn't give a crap about gamers, or polluting Steam, or the harm this causes to genuine game developers who have to compete with student projects to get visibility for their sincerely made games.
Nothing at all matters in the gaming industry but this single student's own ego. This is a disgusting, and alarming take.
However, with only 5 concurrent players, this was a dismal failure... we can be thankful, especially given this highly toxic, egocentric ignorance of Valve's guidelines for developers (and presumably every other rule in the book), that this guy will probably never get a real development job. That kind of toxic attitude is what leads to loot boxes, microtransaction scams and crapware like "banana"... nothing of value for gamers, totally harmful, but it makes the developer feel good, so nothing else matters, right?
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 failed student homework assignment to anyone.
