Pixelscape: Oceans is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this software. This software lets you drag and drop various undersea/aquarium themed pixelcrap "art" objects onto your screen then have fish randomly spawn and swim across your picture. That's all there is to this software.
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process, rather than a specific malicious act.
Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software on Steam:
[url=https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=925]Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing[/url]
It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a software application being published in the wrong place.
Publishing things which aren't games on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.
There are no gameplay loops in this software, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. It's a software application and as such has no merits as a video game for gamers. Because of this, I cannot recommend this non-game software as a game to gamers.
From a technical perspective, the software doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the software is extremely low as a result.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this software will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
Some of the defects in the software can be attributed to the choice of using the Clickteam Fusion construction kit - the "No-Code" construction kit that "Anyone can make games with!!". Including, you know, people who aren't game developers. Which is a problem. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it's free (so they don't have to pay for GameMaker Studio) and doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's arguably worse than GameMaker Studio). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
These technical defects push this software below acceptable standards for any modern PC software.
Pixelscape: Oceans didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the software, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the software didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for dropping a certain number of objects onto your painting, trivial to get, but less than 18 percent of users bothered to get that far before uninstalling the software. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the software.
Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this software was with users reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the software. But this only happened once, and isn't consistent with the achievement stats, that show less than 18 percent of users bothered playing the software for any reasonable amount of time. How is it possible for this software to have so many concurrent users who didn't bother engaging with this software? Trading cards. People will use card idling software to collect the cards and sell them, but this won't trigger any achievements in-software.
That tells us people only really bought this software for trading cards, and that's a damning indictment of the woeful quality. A closer look at the numbers shows the software just has a couple of users every week running up the software and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.
Pixelscape: Oceans is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 9,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
