Retro War is a 2D retro pixel arcade shoot 'em up that's been slapped together with the godawful GameMaker Studio video game construction kit from Yoyogames. It's an extremely generic, low effort sci-fi shoot 'em up that seems to have been copied from a GameMaker Studio template/project.
They chose to use obsolete retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. Controls are locked. These flaws push this game far below minimum acceptable standards for PC. There's nothing distinctive or interesting about this low quality template/asset flip. While you can change the resolution, the developer couldn't even work out how to make GameMaker Studio template flips work in full screen, so there's no working full screen mode.
GameMaker Studio is a very poor quality game construction kit, and unsurprisingly results in products that have little to no value as games, especially when compared to the work of professional developers who create genuine products for gamers. Using a video game construction kit requires little to no talent or skill as a game developer. Very often, GameMaker Studio is used to make shovelware and lazy cash grabs, although in this case the game is completely free.
While this is free, and that's noble, the quality here is far to low for this to be recommendable to anyone.
[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 admits they don't know how to make video games and are "learning". That does explain the poor quality of "Retro War" but it doesn't excuse it.
The developer doesn't actually address any of the serious problems with the game and insists that because fullscreen works for them it will work for everyone. I guess software testing is something that not every game developer thinks is necessary before shipping.
The developer then attacks me for being "critical of other people's games without taking into account the value and effort involved in publishing them". I've already described in my review in some detail why "Retro War" is without any substantial value, and also how very little effort went into the game compared to professionally, properly developed games. Even so, the effort that goes into any video game is irrelevant, because as Retro War clearly shows, no matter how much effort you put into putting lipstick on a pig (or a GameMaker Studio template), if the resulting product is of terrible quality, it's still valueless to gamers. There's literally thousands of GameMaker Studio asset flips on Steam, Retro War is just another one amongst the rest, and lacks sufficient quality or merit to be recommendable against games like CS:GO, Skyrim, Mass Effect and so on.
If the developer put in the same number of man-hours (several hundred years worth) as it took to make Grand Theft Auto V, and the output was "Retro War", it still wouldn't be recommendable to other gamers. So why should effort be taken into account when recommending a game? It shouldn't. But the tone of the developers response here is revealing, this game wasn't really made for gamers.
The goal of the developer was self-satisfactory ego stroking as they try to learn how to develop games. That's why they think their effort filling out templates in GameMaker Studio is more important than the quality of the resulting game. There's thousands of games on Steam. Which ones will I recommend to gamers? Not the ones made by people who don't even know how to make video games and are just experimenting. Not the ones made for the sake of the developer instead of the sake of the gamer.
The developer has only done one thing right here, and that's publishing the YoyoGames GameMaker Studio template flip for free, but even then, as we've established, that's still a questionable decision as the game has little to no merit or value as a game, so one must wonder what was accomplished here in terms of furthering the game industry or the quality of experience that gamers should enjoy.
Video game reviews are about the games, and not about developers, no matter their self-centred goals. My review stands as is, the quality of "Retro War" is simply far too low compared with literally 10's of thousands of professionally developed, gamer orientated video games on Steam.
Edit 2:
The developer once more ignores Valve's guidelines to claim that he didn't use a template in GameMaker Studio, this seems unclear because the game is very close to a 1:1 from the existing YoyoGames templates and tutorials. If what the developer is saying is true, then they just wasted a huge amount of time re-inventing the wheel to emerge with an outcome exactly the same. Well, this should be no surprise as the developer already admitted to not knowing anything about game development and needing to learn.
Edit 3:
For a third time the developer blatantly ignores all good advice and Valve's guidelines with a wall of text highlighting more deficiencies in "Retro War".
The developer claims all developers work "in their own way". I agree, and the developers who work badly come out with bad products, like Retro War. The developer claims a bad engine can result in a good game... no, it can't. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, you can't make filet mignon from brisket, and you can't make a recommendable game from a garbage video game construction kit like GameMaker Studio. The developers misguided attitude here explains a lot.
The developers inability to create a video game directly, and reliance on construction kits, is firm evidence that they aren't capable of doing better. Surely if they could do better, they would? Or is this an admission from the developer that Retro War is indeed a bad product? We already know it is.
The developer now seems to want me to do software testing for them. They should probably conduct their own testing, that's part of development, and also do so before launching their garbage on Steam where people have to review it.
The developer then states I have no right to compare good quality products against bad quality products, and accuses me of defamation. This is a very serious charge to make. An unfortunate aspect of the law that the developer has not considered is that defamation cases fail when the information is true, as it most certainly is here, as I can supply evidence that proves Retro War was not professionally developed, and that a video game construction kit was used.
It does not take longer than 5 minutes to confirm the objective facts about a deficient product. If I play for more than 5 minutes, will the game stop having crap, lazy retro pixel "art" and become a 3D rendered masterpiece? No. If I play longer than 5 minutes will the developer replace "Retro War" with a game that wasn't made using the garbage video game construction kit, GameMaker Studio? No. The developer seems to simply want to avoid facing the facts by attacking a reviewer by suggesting it takes longer than 5 minutes to identify garbage.
