Roots of Tomorrow

"Roots of Tomorrow" is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam... and wow, it's bug riddled train wreck, with most of the content paygated as the for-profit developers trying to shove a lesson about sustainable farming down our throats instead discover something about unsustainable and unethical game pricing. Oh how the turntables have turned. This is a very weak "farming sim" tycoon game, with the bulk of the gameplay presented in such a way the whole thing might have been a website, click through dialogues and play spreadsheet simulator... if you're thinking this is going to be like Farm Simulator 2023, you'll be sorely disappointed, as gamers, who are not farmers, get preached to about sustainability (don't get me wrong, it's important, but it's also important that mobile app developers understand that it doesn't belong in the sphere of PC gaming, just like mobile apps don't). In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D visuals which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. On pricing and value for gamers, this isn't really free as you're expected to pay up an eye watering $33 USD to unlock content/DLC, the game should not be considered completely unlocked until you empty your wallet for the developer. This is some nasty, predatory pricing and PC gamers don't like it. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 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. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.