Plasticity

"Plasticity" is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from USC in the USA. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. This is a simple side scrolling/box pushing platformer-lite/puzzle/adventure game... basically think "Black The Fall", only shorter, with simpler puzzles, fewer hints, and a much less interesting "garbage" theme. The game is quite short, and can be run through in less than an hour. The lack of content here makes it hard to suggest it's worth spending the time to add to your library and download. In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D graphics which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. So much for the matter of pricing. Most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's usually some kind of monetisation, from nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, to any other number of shady pricing schemes 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, or something you might want to spend your time on. In terms of public reception, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. 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 "maybe" experience... if you have a lot of free time on your hands and nothing else to do, why not? But for the purposes of a review, this isn't something I can say everyone must try. It's not quite there. Valve doesn't give us a "maybe" option in reviews, but if they did, that's what I'd choose for this.