"Rectangulong" is a completely garbage ripoff of Atari's Pong only awful in every respect. Seriously, that's all this is, a crappy ripoff of Pong that somehow looks worse than the late 1970's originator of the arcade video game.
What do you do in the game? It's Pong. There's some added obstacles and things but the biggest challenge in the game is looking at the crap artwork without going blind.
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. Yes, obviously 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.
The graphics here are particularly awful, so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment. It's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise.
This was made with the godawful "GameMaker Studio" construction kit/toolset, which is popular amongst amateur developers because it handholds you through making really crap 2D games that you can publish for $100 on Steam Direct. This lets you pat yourself on the back for pretending to be a real game developer, which explains why GameMaker Studio is responsible for so much ignored garbage on Steam.
GameMaker Studio has never really been used to make a truly successful game, but that doesn't stop people from trying and failing. It's a particularly bad game engine that can only be used for making low quality 2D products. Like this. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as the old saying goes. Another reason this particular game wasn't successful.
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. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 3 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Since free games don't contribute to your game collector badge and other profile stuff, is this a worthwhile addition to your Steam library?
I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.
[b]Note: Joke reviews[/b]
As usual, with some of the worst games on Steam, all the comedians come out of the woodwork. The vast majority of the reviews for this game are joke reviews, mocking the game for just how bad it is. The comedians give us the usual "this game cured my cancer, saved my marriage, changed my life" story... sarcastic, but not useful if you want to know if the game is worth it.
Because most of the reviews are humorous but also insincere and not reflective of the actual quality of the product, the positive review score for this game should be taken with a grain of salt.
