Lucky me gets to be the first to hold the dubious honour or reviewing this... thing.
Red Blaster is yet another of literally hundreds of amateur retro arcade bullet hell/shoot 'em ups infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.
This is an old and dead genre, and it doesn't serve the interests of gamers for there to be yet another "me too" entry that looks like it was built from a template/demo engine and rushed onto Steam.
This shooter really made me stop and think, and not for the right reasons. This is an incredibly barebones, minimum viable product shooter... so simplistic it's hard to describe it as a game... this comes across as shallow even when compared to the first late 1970's arcade machines, let alone the state of the art games we get today in 2025. It really is just an ultra simple, ultra basic shooter... move the ship, push the fire button... repeat endlessly. Ok, so there's levels and a primitive, unengaging upgrade system tacked on... the whole thing here probably took less than an afternoon to make.
So why would anyone think something so simplistic would be remotely accepted here on Steam? Was this published on Steam Direct as a joke in the hopes it would "go viral" for being so bad? Or did someone really never look at the 130,000 games this is competing with on the platform and fire away with Steam Direct? But then you look at the ridiculous $5 USD price tag for this next-to-nothing game, and it gets a bit clearer... this is a cash grab. Nobody behaving ethically would consider such a price for this to be remotely acceptable... but that's not the point.
The game is very simplistic, small and limited in scope and ambition. This feels more like a tech demo, proof of concept or student homework assignment rather than a fully fledged product designed for PC gamers. As such it doesn't offer any real value as a serious PC game. It may be the result of an asset flip or just someone reskinning a shoot'em up template.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
The game features lazy minimalist/untextured low-polygon "retro" assets and visuals, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. The lack of textures is a method that lazy devs often use to disguise their lack of talent/interest in doing the graphics properly and trying to disguise it under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, and that's just another reason to avoid it.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH.
The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 130,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 130,000+ games on Steam?
Red Blaster has the ridiculous price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "The Walking Dead", "Killing Floor 2" or "Torchlight". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
Between levels UPGRADE your weapons' systems.