"Nigelopia Mini Mix" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not.
This is a bunch of complete garbage that was dumped onto Steam as a joke, and has no merit as a real, serious game. It was put here in the hopes it would turn out to be "so bad it's good", but truly, there is nothing good about this. It's crap. An MS-Paint platformer with a sexist gross-out theme from an anime weeb so unpopular even the other anime weebs kicked him out of the anime club.
Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming.
In terms of visuals, this features really godawful MS-Paint tier "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. The deplorably bad visuals here come across as an insult to gamers.
This was made with the godawful "GameMaker Studio" construction kit/toolset, which is popular amongst amateur developers because it handholds you through making really crap 2D games that you can publish for $100 on Steam Direct. This lets you pat yourself on the back for pretending to be a real game developer, which explains why GameMaker Studio is responsible for so much ignored garbage on Steam.
GameMaker Studio has never really been used to make a truly successful game, but that doesn't stop people from trying and failing. It's a particularly bad game engine that can only be used for making low quality 2D products. Like this. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as the old saying goes. Another reason this particular game wasn't successful.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $10 USD for this. Yeah, that pricing is an even bigger joke than the game. Ten bucks. Jesus wept.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
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.
Given that this free title won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library?
Definitely not. This isn't worth it. I'm paraphrasing another reviewer here, but this should be a paid product... they'd have to pay people to download it.
[b]Note: Joke reviews[/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, mocking the game for just how bad it is.
The comedians give us the usual "this game cured my cancer, saved my marriage, changed my life" story... sarcastic, but not useful if you want to know if the game is worth it. Because most of the reviews are as insincere as the game itself is, the positive review score for this game should not be considered an accurate representation of the quality of the game.
[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 developer response is a bizarre diatribe that demonstrates nothing but sheer, utter ignorance and delusion. Before we break down why the developer breach of Valve guidelines portrays such delusion to the point of being harmful, we must take this appalling insult to gamers in the context of the incompetence and failure of the developer. SteamDB does not lie, the fact this was an unwanted, badly made failure is a hard fact. A peak player count of 2 people is utter, overwhelming rejection from the 130,000,000+ gamers that play games on Steam every month. Yes, a larger population than [b]most[/b] countries in the world, but [b]nobody[/b] touched this garbage. If unsure why, see my review.
The developer deliberately misrepresents my position as a reviewer with the red herring about whether games should be made or not. It's irrelevant. What matters is what happens when they are... are they used in a harmful or damaging way, such as microtransactions, online gambling, or less evil but still harmful ways like polluting Steam with garbage nobody wants, making it harder for gamers to find decent, properly made games? But you see, Main Character here doesn't care one bit about you, the gamer. Just himself and his utter failure he can't come to grips with mentally or emotionally.
The developer insists that in the massive era of huge immersive 3D PC gaming, platformers are the best of all genres. What a complete and utter joke. I will invite gamers to once more review the facts... take a look at the top 100 games on Steam. One platformer, and yeah, it's Silksong, the exception to the rule. The developer has quite simply lied in a direct attempt to mislead gamers and do anything at all possible to avoid facing the truth about his abject failure.
The developer lies and claims that GameMaker Studio, the garbage trashpile that it is, has made successful games... complete BS. No truly successful game was made with it.
The developer complains, after their put their game up on the exact same platform as professionally and competently developed games by real developers, that this product has been compared to actually successful products. The developer is outraged by... well... their own failure, apparently. If the developer did not want their awful product to be compared to other products on the same platform, [i]they shouldn't have put it on that platform![/i] But this shows clearly the developer never considered the needs of you, the gamer, and your experiences and options on the Steam Store, they only thought about themselves. They're angry that you have better choices. What arrogance.
The developer response here is a delusional, dishonest, arrogant insult to all gamers everywhere.
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 garbage to anyone.
