POE

"POE" is one of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of games everywhere just by existing. Now, while there's no good 2D retro pixel platformers (Super Mario Bros doesn't count because it's not retro, it was made like that because they couldn't do better graphics with the hardware of the time), this is not even one of the less bad ones... it's truly awful. What do you do in the game? It's a basic precision platformer that looks like someone's homework assignment (they were expelled from the institution as a result of making this garbage). It's (badly) narrative driven as you help a father and son get back together. Whatever. This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them. 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 3 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. [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] Weirdly, the developer uses their breach of Valve guidelines in this pointless response to heavily advertise their products... you can see their presence on Steam has nothing to do with gamers and everything to do with being a marketing exercise. When developers put themselves before gamers and before the gaming industry, this is the kind of disservice to gamers that we see. The developers arrogance and self obsession explains why such a crap game came to be on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. 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.