"Precision" is a poorly made puzzle/reflexes game where you move a minimalist blob around a minimalist maze and wonder what happened to the gaming industry. I mean, this came out in 2023 alongside Hogwarts Legacy and Jedi Survivor... and this crap. I know Steam Direct has no quality control whatsoever, but it needs it.
The game is really simple and unambitious in terms of implementation, more of a tech demo or one of those cases where an amateur developer spends $100 to publish something on Steam Direct to see if it's possible. A proof of concept, tech demo, or something that's less than a little blip on the radar isn't offering anything truly valuable to gamers.
This game features very lacklustre minimalist "art" for graphics instead of anything remotely contemporary. I'm sure the "developer" thought this would come across as "artistic," but it doesn't, it comes across as "really lazy." Developers must try to understand that gaming is a visual medium, and gamers spend a lot of money on high-end gaming rigs for a reason. And that reason is not so they can look at lazy, phoned-in half-efforts like this.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this. But just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial; your time is valuable too.
In terms of public reception, this failed. With over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month, SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 3 concurrent players[/b]... 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? This is a hard pass. There are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.
[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's response is nothing short of an appalling display of ignorance, arrogance, and disdain for gamers. Nobody on the planet is more important than this guy and his ego. And before we break down why this response is so offensive and disgustingly arrogant, let's frame this behind the data I provided... this crap only had a peak player count of 3 people. Three very disappointed people. This is textbook failure, incompetence of the highest order.
The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character." You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego.
Indeed, they incriminate themselves by admitting they have no concern about what's good for gamers:
[quote]I spent my time making this for me.[/quote]
Not for anyone else, nobody else matters but The Main Character, remember? When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet The Main Character, and nobody else matters.
The developer claims this is their first time trying to make a game. If I went to a restaurant, got sick from eating bad food, and got told "The chef is new and has never cooked food before," would that make it okay? No, it wouldn't. The developer supplied a very valid reason why this should never have been put up on Steam in the first place. Yet they did so anyway. Why? Main Character.
The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. Which airplane are you going to fly on? The one made by a team of scientists and engineers, designed and tested over a period of years? Or a rusty pile of junk made by a delusional imbecile in his backyard?
Be honest. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.
The developer complains that they "worked very hard" to make this, therefore it cannot be a bad product. If I had "worked hard" for years and the result was this godawful game, I'd be utterly ashamed. I certainly wouldn't go ahead and publish it knowing how bad I had failed. Hard work doesn't mean quality work, and in this case, it just highlights incompetence. This is not the flex the developer thinks it is.
For us gamers, for whom games are made (the developer seems to have forgotten that), it doesn't matter if GTA:V was made by one guy in a shed over a weekend and Depression Quest took 1000 staff working for 5 years to make; what matters is the resultant quality of the product (but let's face it... you couldn't make GTA:V without the right resources and talent... and that's part of the problem).
The developer complains, after putting their game on the same platform as professionally developed games, that it has been compared to those actually successful products. If the developer did not want their awful product to be compared, they shouldn't have put it on that platform! But this shows clearly the developer never considered the needs of you, the gamer. They're angry that you have better choices.
Finally, the developer of this train wreck [b]demands[/b] that my review instruct them on how to make video games, because they obviously don't know, looking at this dismal failure of a product. There is no obligation for reviews to be constructive. Reviews are not written to teach developers how to make games. They should know this before they release products on Steam. If they don't, why does this have to be a problem for gamers?
[b]Video game reviews are to inform gamers on their decisions around which games to buy, download, or spend their time playing.[/b]
The developer's entire, bizarre, whining complaint here is a direct insult to all gamers. He complains that honest reviews about bad products are not rewarding for crap, failed developers, and may in fact discourage them from dumping more garbage that nobody wants on Steam. The developer does not consider that dumping complete crap like this onto Steam is bad for gamers and bad for real developers who know what they're doing.
He doesn't care that this garbage pollutes Steam with valueless junk that gamers have to push aside when searching for decent games. He can't perceive anything except for what's good for himself.
Nothing in the developer's pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this failure to anyone.
