Ortheo

Dev revoked keys for Rhythm Knight 1 (which he defaced and is currently attempting to delist). Game was bundled 4 times. Banned me from multiple game hubs for having a problem with it. Update following dev response. Since the game was revoked, obviously, we are unable to leave feedback on that game. When I posted in the game hub, I was immediately banned and my thread deleted. Because I own 4 of this guy's games, I posted in other hubs, only to be banned there too. Following bans from 3 hubs, an automatic Steam-wide community ban was placed on my account. This meant I was unable to use the market, my profile was forced private and I could not post, review or comment ANYWHERE on Steam. I had to contact Steam support and explain about our guy here and his consideration for his customers. My community ban was lifted by Steam support. This dev also commented a personal attack on my profile page. Which, I'm sorry, I really regret it, I deleted.

[quote][b]Warning: Developer Fraud[/b][/quote] In an act of brazen theft and fraud, the "developer" revoked all keys to the "Rhythm Knights" game sold through third party sites like DIG, keeping the money taken from DIG but removing the game from paying customers accounts. This is essentially theft through hostile, fraudulent action on behalf of this unethical developer. There's no guarantee the developer won't repeat this act of theft on other titles too. Under no circumstances should anyone by a game from this con artist and copyright thief. Ortheo is a very small 3D retro platformer, ostensibly a ripoff of Sonic Adventure from the 1990's, but considerably worse in every respect. Gameplay consists of collecting coins and cogs on one of 4 very small levels, with art styles that seem directly borrowed from the Sonic universe. Given there's only 4 levels, this seems like a demo or some kind of student project on Steam, but it's not, they have the gall to try sell this junk on Steam. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers. Camera controls particularly are a nightmare, it's apparent little to no gameplay testing took place, further reinforcing the theory this is just a demo/project and not a seriously developed video game (despite the hands out asking for gamers money). While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this game was never accepted on the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. That's right, only 2. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is to be expected. Gamers just didn't take this low quality game seriously, and for good reason. It's also worth noting many of the reviews for the game seem highly suspicious, they all have the same writing style and hit exactly the same talking points for the game. While this doesn't match known patterns of Russian review manipulation, it doesn't rule out "friends, family and fake accounts" writing reviews... many of the accounts don't own many/any products on Steam (but they managed to pay $7 for this unknown game... huh). So, take the positive reviews with a grain of salt. Ortheo has the completely unrealistic cash grab price of around $7 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality 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 developer provides a long and rambling response that fails to address any of the problems highlighted in my review. One of the key admissions from the developer is that they have a "small team". What this means is the developer lacked the correct budget, staffing and talent to produce a video game of sufficient quality for gamers to accept. This inadequacy absolutely does [b]explain[/b] the failure of this game, but it absolutely [i]does not excuse it[/i]. The developer admits they didn't care enough about gamers to bother budgeting time and resources to look after basic features like control customisability. Again, an explanation, not an excuse. Why do the developers faults need to be a problem that gamers have to deal with? The developer then disingenuously suggests the game was received "positively", but this flies against the fact (and their own admission) that most gamers didn't touch it with a 10' pole. Participation trophy reviews (and fake reviews from friends, family and alt accounts) are a terrible indicator of whether a game is accepted by gamers. Sales numbers and player numbers, however, don't lie. If people don't buy the product, there's a reason. The developer insists the small player count for the game was intentional... clearly some kind of joke. If they didn't want a lot of players, why launch on Steam and why dump this in shovelware trash bundles? The developers actions directly contradict their rambling response. They priced the game at $7 USD when Sonic Adventures DX is frequently available for $1 USD, and that's a professional, AAA product. This ridiculous, insulting pricing can be interpreted as nothing but a cash grab. Likewise it doesn't take 2 seconds to look at the checkered brown ground textures and "collect the rings" gameplay style that both Sonic Adventures and Ortheo both feature. The developer expects us to believe this is just co-incidence? Another joke, surely, it's self evident this is a derivative work, or a "rip-off", especially given the developers apparent dishonesty and the cash grab pricing. Whether the developer has hurt feelings because they have a hard time accepting their failure is irrelevant, because reviews are not written for developers, they are written by gamers for gamers to advise their purchasing decisions. If developers want positive reviews beyond sockpuppet "friends and family" accounts, they should consider developing high quality games that gamers will enjoy, instead of trash shovelware. Nothing in the developers pointless, embarrassing response changes any of the objective facts about this defective game. My review stands unaltered, I do not recommend this game.

considering the lack of polish within the design and errors this imo shouldn't cost money.

I hate giving independent developers bad reviews especially on 3d platformers but I can't in my right mind recommend Ortheo. The Platforming while having the foundations of a solid idea felt unfinished especially on Controller. The camera is always inverted and super sensitive with no option to change either. Ortheo the character is great but the environments don't look great to be honest. Enemies are sparse and buggy alongside a lot of the collision. The final boss was also not fun. I will say though do look out for Ortheo 2 when that comes out as what I've seen of it looks way better than this.

ortheo is a good game, its a lot of fun to move in, the music is amazing, and the graphics are nice. though its a hard game to recommend, the bugs are just too much. the pause menu breaks all the time and just feels weird, the game seems to become choppy after a couple of resets, and the main menu is just broken, when you touch two buttons at once you have to go through two menus, its just weird. however if you think you can deal with these issues, please pick it up! its worth your time regardless of the bugs.

It looks like a sandbox test... at least for now, a test that went wrong. Awful camera controls, lots of bugs... I don't like leaving bad reviews, but the main reason is to try to get the developer to improve the game. This game is a missed opportunity and I hope the developer fix the game someday. In its current state, the game is not enjoyable.

if you are coming from cross impact, no, this is not an obscure classic indie game you thought you had just never heard of. I like the idea and the character, but this is a hat in time meets the gameplay of mort the chicken, and even then that game looked and played better than this 99 cent game. heck this game looked better in the early trailers for this game? where did it all go? Why is this just a gloried roblox game?? for a literal 1 dollar game, I had to get my money back on this for both this experience and what I've heard the dev do for his other projects (I'll get back to that). I will say this, I will buy the sequel... like straight up. This has so much potential to be something good if enough time and budget is spent on making the platformer fun and graphics good. Stick to a style that makes it look good, consistent, AND easier to work with. If you are gonna have enemies, make some sort of combat. Make the menus and cutscenes on par with playstation games. Most importantly, Focus on the gameplay and how you want it to go because this shows a collect-a-thon in small open world areas where you dash, jump, and gain speed would have to be executed really well to work. for ortheo's movement kit i personally would love to see either a open world game with the level design of Celeste where you instead of going to one big area to find collectible, you go to multiple areas to get a collectible each HECK you could have it so its one huge level with multiple obstacle courses that each have a collectible and you could have multiple routes and ways that a certain order could be done for even faster runs THERE IS SO MUCH YOU CAN DO THIS IDEA! but you need to execute it RIGHT. Now, I know this game because of Dallen himself DMing me about help he needed on fraymakers. I was curious and checked his bio to see he made all of these games. months go by and i find out about cross impact and see ortheo on the cover, seeing appear in other games and official mods at that, I was curious and wanted to see what all it was all about. I messaged Dallen I bought Ortheo with him saying that a nintendo switch verison was planned too, So I DMed him I had started the game with good views, and then never DMed him. Thing is when I said I played Ortheo, I said i was the exact same time in other discord servers, and in one of them showed me all this stuff Dallen was accused of as well as when i started to stream beating the game and a guy I will not name described their experience with working on cross impact and Dallen. I never DMed Dallen back because like... what would you even say after that? I thought this this person was a bad person just because I was told they were so I refunded the game and my reason pretty much dissed the heck out of the game and Dallen. I later had a conversation back in the fraymakers server and luckly other people who worked on cross impact started to defend Dallen on how he isn't a bad person. Dallen if you are reading this, I don't know what else to say honestly but I hope your future projects get better. I haven't bought Cross Impact but I played the demo a few times and have come to appreciate it a little more as I am a sucker for platform fighters (shameless plug but like I mean have you SEEN the stuff I've made in roa and fray? I know what a good platform fighter is and Cross impact has potential if it gets enough polish. I want to end this ramble on a good note, as this game could be a whole lot worse.

Orthkino

Ortheo combines aspects of Skyrim, Darksouls and Minecraft to formulate a game that takes the player on a trip unlike no other collecting gears to help Ortheo's father repair his truck thank you Ortheo, thank you.

Ortheo's latest update has transformed a broken game into a enjoyable experience. The new controls are fluid and fun to use, the level design is a massive step up, and the OST goes crazy. The biggest glowup of 2023.