"Obsta-Loop" 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.
While at face value this looks like every other garbage amateur pixelcrap platformer on Steam that nobody wanted, there's a difference. This is based loosely on an ancient NES platformer that nobody wanted. Well, that was quite a journey. Anyway, taking this at face value it's one of the worst 2D retro pixel platformers on Steam, you control some platypus thing and avoid spikes, except the developer didn't bother actually finishing the game... because nobody wanted it. Thanks, Steam Direct.
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.
The developers abandoned this 12 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.
This features really godawful pixelcrap "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. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them.
The developer chose not to do the job of a real game developer and create meaningful bespoke levels, narrative based gameplay progression and so on. Instead, they decided that "Procgen IS content!" and lazily tried to use procgen algorithms to create infinite, samey, repetitive, soulless levels, because that's a lot less work.
As a result of this poor decision, the game gets tired and repetitive almost immediately. Developers must learn that procgen is a terrible substitute for creating real content. It should not be used as "ez-mode" for content creation, as the developer tried to do here.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
It's free for now, but the developer intends to charge for this if it ever leaves Early Access... but considering the poor public reception, it's likely this will not be one of the 25% of games that ever gets finished and leaves Early Access.
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 3 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Since free games don't contribute to your game collector badge and other profile stuff, is this a worthwhile addition to your Steam library?
This is a "nope". While it won't necessarily cost you money, the time and hard drive space it requires could be better invested in one of the many higher-quality alternatives 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 disgusting developer breach here is weird and full of lies... they deliberately tagged this as a "roguelike", meaning procgen, then insist it is not exactly what they said it is.
The developer should clarify about what precisely it is they want to lie about, and which of their lies was the most dishonest.
The developer then tells bold faced lies about patches and content updates, pretending we cannot see the status of the game manifest as published and tracked on SteamDB... more lies.
Take this garbage in context of the developers failure; 3 peak players is utterly humiliating failure, and this is a direct result of the developers incompetence.
The fact that they are now telling outright lies about this garbage, and attack reviewers, who simply tell the truth, explains so much about why they are failures.
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 from a lying, dishonest developer to anyone.
Edit: The developer keeps doubling down by PROVING they haven't touched this failed garbage in months. The developer KEEPS ON LYING.
