Lucky me gets to write the first review for "Rise of the Funkys".
"Rise of the Funkys" is a 2D retro pixel brawler/platformer hybrid where you control a number of Brazilian characters and brawl (badly) against a bunch of enemies. First up, this isn't an asset flip and it features bespoke, hand crafted "art", so this is a genuinely made game and shouldn't be confused with Brazilian asset flips and shovelware from Brazilian asset flippers like SA Industry. I would also like to preface this review with a note that it's early days for the game, it's only been out for a week or so, and thus some elements of the game may be subject to change. We can hope.
Unfortunately there's quite a few problems here. The story is impossible to get into given the poor technical implementation (and the in-scene language is Portugese), so that can be disregarded. What's left is lacklustre and unpolished console-esque arcade gameplay.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old 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.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The controls and game handling are notably very clunky and unsmooth here. Your attack animations take a while to play out, and yet you can't interrupt them or dodge... this is awkward. It's janky and unsatisfying to play... and any experienced gamer will tell you, the handling, responsiveness and general gameplay feel of the control scheme must be well polished for this kind of game to succeed. Unfortunately, this is something the developer seems to have phoned in, with little to no apparent gameplay testing. They dropped the ball on this one.
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. To make matters worse, there's no mouse input, despite this being sold on PC as if it were a PC game. This is unacceptable and somewhat insulting to PC gamers. It's a good demonstration of the poor attitude the developer has towards PC gamers, and this attitude has resulted in yet another defect in this game.
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.
For most amateur games, unless they have trading cards added, peak player count occurs within 48 hours of launch. And this single player peak count also co-incides with the developer livestreaming their own game.
"Rise of the Funkys" is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.
[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.
[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]
First up we have a bit of a bombshell... apparently the developer [i]paid someone[/i] for the "art" in this crap game, and that tells us the developer [i]got robbed[/i]. Heck, I feel like I was robbed just by owning the game, and my time was definitely stolen from me when I played it... I'll never get that time back. Imagine paying cash for such bad graphics! What a joke. Of course such bad graphics are ultimately the result of a lack of talent at some part. If the developer could come up with visuals equivalent to games like Starfield or Spider-Man 2, [i]they would![/i]. But they didn't. Why not? Because they couldn't! For the reasons I've already explained.
So why does the developers inadequacy, lack of talent/budget/capability have to be a problem for gamers? Well, it doesn't. That's why gamers completely ignored this title. The developer deciding to breach Valve guidelines just to argue about their deficiency/incompetence with reviewers, instead of accepting their failure is just embarrassing.
This next revelation is a little disturbing as the developer indicates they started stalking me and feverishly reading through my reviews... either just obsession with me on their part, or desperation to try find something in one of my other reviews that would somehow change the objectively terrible quality of this failed "game". Whatever their motivation, creeping on reviewers like this is [b]not okay[/b].
The "developer" argues that I review a lot of games, therefore this game review isn't valid or truthful. Huh. If I changed all my other reviews to positive, would the graphics and gameplay of this crap game suddenly improve? No. The developer seeks any possible angle to throw shade at me personally to discredit my review. You can see what they are trying to do. If this was the only review I have ever written, would that change any of the properties of this game or alter the facts contained in my review? Of course not. [b]My reviews for other games have no bearing on the dismal quality of this failed product[/b].
The entire developers response is aligned at attacking this review and this reviewer as a mental coping mechanism, cognitive dissonance as they try to find any way to attack others instead of accepting their failure and inadequacy. This defective behaviour on the part of the developer goes a long way to explaining the dismal quality of this failed game... but it doesn't excuse it.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
