[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
This is yet another godawful attempt to create a VR metaverse, this time with improperly disclosed use of AI slop. Valve's T&Cs for developers explicitly requires that developers admit and warn gamers that disgusting, lazy, insulting AI slop is used as a substitute for doing their job properly, to help gamers avoid AI Slop like this game uses.
Anyway, AI slop aside (although that is enough to warn gamers away from this crap), this really just was a "gamers will make the content for us when this goes viral!" Second Life ripoff, only worse in every respect and locked to VR, because a lot of developers see that multiplayer/PvP games require a lot of players, then they see the Hardware Survey results that show nobody uses a VR headset, then they shoot themselves in the foot aggressively by making a VR PvP "metaverse" for nobody. Ugh, this kind of crap is cancer. Cancer, now with AI Slop!
So, "Riff XR" is a dead PvP/multiplayer game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
[i]Almost every PvP exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so.
Competition amongst PvP centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost.
First and foremost, there's no meaningful single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the Game. They lost that bet.
Without a huge community of players or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies.
Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game.
The developers haven't touched this in months (remarkable, I suppose, because this hasn't had players for a much longer period). It will never be completed. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuinely, completely made games.
I'm not sure if this is an asset flip, but it's one of those cases where the assets just look much better than the rest of the quality of the game... a glaring inconsistency. There's no evidence, but as always, the biggest problem with asset flips besides the plagiarism is the deplorably low quality of the other aspects of the game, and even if the game assets are genuinely created for the game, the quality of the rest of the game is indistinguishable from that of asset flips.
As mentioned, this features really godawful, "wrong" looking AI slop. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating real game assets or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks bad because of that decision. AI slop sticks out like a sore thumb... and it comes across as insulting.
There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too, and that's glaringly obvious here.
It's VR exclusive, and that shows the developer failed to understand the most basic axiom of VR game design... if the only cool thing about your product is VR support, your product is not cool.
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 to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
All other issues aside (any of which would disqualify this from being worth your time), this is a game that relies on other players for it to be viable, and because there's not enough players, it's not viable. I can't recommend anyone downloads this, it's basically dead.
