"One Last Time" is a badly written e-book fan-fiction thing wrapped around a flimsy, pointless grid movement puzzle game. Click through really badly done psychology from someone who is as good at pretending to be a psychologist as they are a game developer (so, not at all), move around a grid to get to the goal, right click and uninstall quickly.
Trying to address serious issues such as mental and emotional health through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good.
The "developer" here is not a professional in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this is not only utterly ineffective, it can be harmful.
It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to address mental health issues. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers.
People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get attention/fame by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here.
So, it's hard to describe this as a game, the focus of the product is more like that of an e-book/visual novel, there's only minor, shallow and uninteresting gameplay elements. The crux of this is to push some very low quality, badly done fan-fiction tier writing, where we see once more a developer fail to understand the importance of "Show, don't tell", and for whatever reason, weren't able to convey their narrative through gameplay, giving us endless lines of badly written e-book text instead. My gaming rig is not a kindle.
This game features very lacklustre minimalist pixelcrap "art" for graphics instead of anything remotely contemporary. I'm sure the "developer" thought this would come across as "artistic", but it doesn't, it comes across as "really lazy". Yes, contemporary 3D graphics take a lot of time and effort to create. That doesn't mean it's okay not to bother! Developers must try to understand that gaming is a visual medium, and gamers spend a lot of money on high end gaming rigs for a reason. And that reason is not so they can look at lazy, phoned-in half efforts like this.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $2 USD for this.
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 4 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?
I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.
[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 here is a disgusting insult to gamers everywhere, it's arrogant, has nothing to do with the problems in this non-game psychology garbage, and indicates the developer suffers from severe megalomania/narcissistic personality disorder. But first, take the developers disgusting response within the context of his utter failure: SteamDB clearly shows this game was rejected by gamers. Facts don't lie. The developer deliberately seeks to avoid the truth.
This is a little disturbing as the developer indicates they started stalking me and feverishly reading through my reviews... either just obsession with me on their part, or desperation to try find something in one of my other reviews that would somehow change the objectively terrible quality of this failed "game". Whatever their motivation, creeping on reviewers like this is [b]not okay[/b].
The "developer" argues that I review a lot of games, therefore this game review isn't valid or truthful. Huh. If I changed all my other reviews to positive, would the graphics and gameplay of this crap game suddenly improve? No. The developer seeks any possible angle to throw shade at me personally to discredit my review. You can see what they are trying to do. If this was the only review I have ever written, would that change any of the properties of this game or alter the facts contained in my review? Of course not. [b]My reviews for other games have no bearing on the dismal quality of this failed product[/b].
The developer comments that this informative review is somehow harmful, and argues that telling the truth to gamers about bad products is harmful. Harmful to who? The people who deliberately seek to harm gamers by pretending to be psychologists and publish thousands of utter garbage. The developers who aggressively seek to silence and censor the truth are the ones we should be most concerned about... you can see the developers appalling attempt to silence those who warn about the harm he causes.
The developer takes the stance that telling the truth about bad and harmful products is bad, but polluting Steam with this garbage is somehow "good". What utter BS... dishonesty from a failed developer impersonating a health care professional to the detriment of all.
Reviews are written to inform gamers about products and provide advice on whether a game is worth money, time, or both. Such developers often do not consider that, just like the reviews, games they make should be made for gamers, and not just to make the developer feel good about themselves.
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 game to anyone.
