Oxygen Caliber

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

I just wish there was an endless mode

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"Oxygen Caliber" is a student project from the University of Southern California, who you would think would know better. Now, I'm not a game development teacher but if I was, the first thing I would teach students is that 3D graphics cards became mainstream in the mid 1990s with cards like the ATI Rage and Voodoo3. I'd even tell the students that mobile phones can do 3D graphics now. I certainly would not set my students up for failure by letting them think that in the 2020's, it's okay to make 2D games in the 3D era of gaming. So basically USC taught their students wrong, on purpose. As a joke maybe? I'd want my tuition fees back the moment I found out about 3D graphics. What do you do in the game? This is a simple tech demo of a game where you use a grappling hook and swing around some planets with some janky video game physics. There's no depth here... in terms of gameplay and dimensions (geddit, because it's just 2D, no depth... that's my way of getting through the day). The game features really lacklustre 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs to pretend they're mobile phones. Not every "free" game really is. There's often MTX, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, or any other number of things that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 4 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.

6/10 A arcade/puzzle with gravity-based mechanics. Good: - free - an unusual system with gravity, antigravity, oxygen and shots. When you shoot at space debris or asteroids, you move backwards yourself and consume oxygen - good gfx So-so: - the big exploding star sets an effective timer in which you need to beat levels. That's just too much or should come in later levels Bad: - difficulty rises too fast. I couldn't beat lvl 7 because there is simply too much to keep track of. And too much depends on dexterity - there are only 2 camera view modes: full level and an extreme close-up. Both aren't optimal. Instead, the mouse wheel should have determined zoom level at gradual increments Overall it's a rather difficult game that's much more of a dexterity challenge than a logic challenge. In any case, it still may be worth checking out the first few levels. Especially because it's free. [table][tr][th][i]I'm a Steam curator, you can [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43946907-Friendly-Nerd/]follow me[/url][/i][/th][/tr][/table]

Very fun but short game! I loved all of the unique ways that each level could be solved. The combination of the gun and grapple hook made lots of cool traversal. I do wish the the game was a little bit more balanced though. My favorite part was exploring the levels and finding cool ways to solve them, but the time pressure of the sun was oftentimes a bit too overwhelming...