Relow

Relow is an abandoned low poly PvP only FPS arena shooter of deplorably low quality and no appreciable theme, story or style whatsoever, dumped on Steam as a cash grab. The game is broken and cannot be played; it relies on back-end online servers that the developer pulled the plug on. However, despite being unplayable, this is still up on Steam as the developers optimistically hope to scam even more gamers out of money. Unethical? You bet. Let's get into it. This PvP only cash grab failed. SteamDB shows the game hit all-time peak player numbers just after launch, with only a tiny 14 concurrent users, which is a pitiful number, and now the game has practically no players, with nobody playing at all, because the "developer" pulled the plug on the servers. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! The game was abandoned less than a year after launch and hasn't been updated in 3 years. It blew past the developers commitment to complete the game without any notification or admission of failure from the developer. The game will never be completed. The developer kept all money they took from gamers and offered no refunds... theft, essentially. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's an ugly, blurry screen filter meant to make the game look even more obsolete... like the game looks bad enough already, but they actually went out of their way to make it look worse. There's no way to turn this off. The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with. It looks to me like most of these low poly assets were stolen from demo/tutorial asset packs and used without crediting the actual creators, so on top of the developers other crimes, we can add plagiarism (at least) and copyright infringment (at worst). Because the developer never credited the creators of the assets, we can't confirm if they're legally used or if they're breaching copyright law. 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, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The developers made the terrible mistake of launching a multiplayer only game in Early Access. This is almost certain to kill the game. Most gamers will evaluate a game only once. If they do so when the game is incomplete, they will check it out, then abandon it (just like the developers did). When (IF) the game eventually does get around to release, there will be no players, because the developers burned the first impressions through their faulty Early Access experience. Players who saw the game and didn't like it because it was incomplete [i]do not come back[/i]. Multiplayer games must have a large population if they are to go "viral" and succeed, especially without single player content to fall back on. Releasing a multiplayer only game into early access kills the game population, and thus the game, before the game even launches. The developers made the fatal, lazy mistake of believing that PvP, other players, would be an acceptable substitute for doing the difficult job of adding single player level design, storytelling, NPCs and other rich aspects of designed game content to the game. As a result of this choice by the developers, the game has little to no actual interactive game content. It's a little considered fact that the vast majority of PvP only, multiplayer only games [b]fail[/b]. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for doing the job of game developers and building a game filled with content. PvP only games must have a [b]huge[/b] player base for them to "go viral" and succeed. But with no single player experience to add lasting value to a game, the developers instead chose to bet against all odds that their game would "go viral" without any actual reason for players to want to play the game. Predictably, they lost this bet. 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 all-time peak player number was only 14 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, 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 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Unethically, the developer sold keys to this abandoned Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles, where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete PC game. This seems to have been done in an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. Often this is done as an exit strategy, as the developer takes the money and runs. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers. Another unethical act of this developer, knowing full well that this game is abandoned and they will never complete it, they are deliberately trying to scam gamers into buying it by offering it on discount from time to time. It's impossible to "accidentally" discount a game. The developer looked at their abandoned game, and instead of doing the right thing and removing it from Steam, they instead doubled-down and tried to scam even more people into paying for it. Greedy, and completely unethical. Doing the wrong thing, on purpose, for money. This is not okay. Relow has the unethical price of around $8 USD (for a broken and unplayable game), it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk. [b][quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/quote][/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.

Nobody other players.

i would love to have an option for raw input for my mouse b/c this sensitivity is screwing with me

This game has lots of potential, but first, we need players. Tried RU, KR, IN US all the servers for an hour not a single soul in game :(

Good for early access, easy to learn. A good game to play with friends.

nice game but not many players

GAME IS FUN: BUT WAIT FOR IT TO BECOME FREE AND/OR GET MULTIPLE FRIENDS TO PLAY My friend gifted me this game for 2 dollars, and it's very enjoyable and a lot of fun, but it takes a little bit to be able to maneuver and shoot the AI, but after that it's a lot of fun. There are a few bugs but are all minor, except that the AI can go inside of buildings which is really annoying sometimes. This game will become free to play but the date is yet to be announced, so if your friends aren't willing to buy it and/or you want active users playing the game, wait for it to become free. Otherwise, I'd say it's well worth 2 bucks if you like fast-paced shooter games.