"Ruka" is a student project from USC Games. One of the first things students should be taught in game development is that 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid 1990's with dedicated 3D cards like the Voodoo3 and the ATI Rage. But the students were deliberately mistaught that's it's okay to release obsolete 2D games in the 3D era of gaming... certainly any professional developer seeing a prospective new hire who doesn't even know about 3D gaming probably isn't going to give them a job.
The students were told that PC gamers in 2021 really crave 2D Sokoban ripoffs instead of real PC games. I feel bad for the students being mislead like that. Anyway, as a result this is a small student tech demo, a Flash tier turn based box pusher. The students added monsters that move one square at a time so you need to plan your moves carefully. Or you could just play Sokoban. This is obviously delivering nothing of serious value to the PC gaming industry.
It might make the students feel good about themselves to get this published on Steam Direct (even if no gamers actually wanted it), but this has no benefit for us PC gamers. We have to question the value of institutions flooding the store with low quality 2D video game homework assignments while gamers wade through this stuff to find professionally made 3D games.
On the topic of visuals, the weak looking 2D retro assets seem like they'd be more at home in a browser game or a mobile app. 3D graphics accelerators hit the mainstream of PC gaming in the mid 1990's with cards like the ATI Rage and Voodoo3D, there's no excuse for such poor 2D graphics in 2026. That alone is enough to disqualify this for recommendation.
This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Now onto pricing and value.
It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say.
There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers?
It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff.
In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone.
In terms of public reception, the "free" price tag didn't help. This peaked at a handful of players and then immediately cratered. With a peak count of less than 50 gamers (out of over 130 million gamers and over 40 million daily logons), it’s safe to say the PC gaming community has collectively decided to ignore this, probably because of the reasons supplied in this review.
Keep in mind this student project won't increase your game collector count or show up in your Steam profile showcases, and because it's a short, unpolished and unmaintained student homework assignment, I can't recommend you spend your valuable time on this one when you could be playing any of the thousands of fully made games for gamers.
