SDIES

"SDIES" is an extraordinarily bad "more art than game" entry from a Starbucks employee after the local art galleries took out restraining orders... basically a 10 minute long puzzle game with an eye harmingly mediocre monochrome art style with a bit of hand drawing stuff in biro or whatever. When the game developer can't even work out how to spell "Sides" properly, you know the rest of the game is going to be a disaster. That's SDIES in a nutshell. This short game has you swirl your finger around on your iPad to move stuff around until you pass each short segment, and that's pretty much all there is to it. There's a youtube video that relates the entire game in less time than it takes for a cup of coffee to cool down... and when the entire video game could have been done better on youtube, it's hard to say it belongs in your Steam library. This game features very lacklustre minimalist "art" for graphics instead of anything remotely contemporary. I'm sure the "developer" thought this would come across as "artistic", but it doesn't, it comes across as "really lazy" and looks bad as a result of their lack of interest in doing their job properly. Developers must try to understand that gaming is a visual medium, and gamers spend a lot of money on high end gaming rigs for a reason. And that reason is not so they can look at lazy, phoned-in half efforts like this. This is "free" enough, 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. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 3 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. 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? Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough.

See that amount of time played? See it? Up there? That's just enough time for me to experience the entirety of SDIES, the shortest game I've ever played. SDIES massaged my eyeballs with the most visually attractive blacks and whites I've seen in a while. It's not hard, it's not long, it's not expensive–at all! Go get this game, it's worth your ten minutes, unless [spoiler]you get a seizure when exposed to this kind of content lol[/spoiler]

While the games' store description can be used to induce vomiting in anyone who doesn't frequent Starbucks, it wasn't an unpleasant 5-10 minutes of light puzzling. [h1]The Good[/h1] +Save anywhere, despite how short of a game it is +Music and sound well done +Light puzzle elements [h1]YMMV[/h1] ~Might bother people with whisper misophonia ~Some backgrounds may cause headaches ~No achievements ~The intended meaning (are you supposed to reveal artistic intention?) came across through play [h1]The Bad[/h1] (None) Played on: Win11, i7-14700K, RTX4060 Ti 8GB, 32GB DDR5-6000 @ 1920x1080 using KB&M

Sometimes our eyes can deceive, while sometimes they don't. However, while there is always a truth, we only ever see in perspectives. We all process things differently, and while some people look at everything with a harsh, critical eye, others cherish the little good they can find. We worry too much about ourselves sometimes when it comes down to everything negative and we overthink it a lot, yet we tend to overlook the positives - whether it's in regards to ourselves or somebody else. While by literal means you can not see with your eyes closed, keep in mind that sometimes the only person looking down on you is you yourself! Cherish the little things, and blossom while you still can. Because even in a world of seemingly only black & white, you eventually realize you can make gray, and by simply using contrast and values you can create plenty of beautiful things! I really enjoyed this game, although I can not quite put my finger on why that was the case. It was just a rather relaxing, and rather satisfying even experience. I would 100% recommend this game to absolutely anybody - unless you are photosensitive or have misophonia for certain audio cues - despite that being a niche thing. It was an experience I honestly think I might have been missing. It helped with putting my mind at ease, and I felt as if the game was almost acting as a sort of therapeutic experience for me in a way. I appreciate games like these as they tend to have such nice atmospheres, and this game is no exception - especially with this sublime monochromatic art-style that this game uses. Overall: 9/10 game, does not have a lot but is definitely worth ten minutes of your day!

Unique art style and very impressive audio work. Amazing job for a small team. I don't think I understood what the narrative was going for. My interpretation was that sometimes external pressure (the smaller dots) and limited information (total lack of UI and tutorialization) can make it feel like we have very few choices in life. The thematic purpose of the final scene with the spiral animations was totally lost on me, but because of the lack of context and traditional storytelling anywhere else in the game, it seems clear that player interpretation was something the creators were going for. The animation is beautiful but I did feel somewhat nauseous during the first scene that switched from white to black. I also thought I was meant to click on the falling circles as clicking on moving circles was a key strategy before this. I spent a lot of time trying to "catch" the circles and getting frustrated/dizzy before figuring out what to do. Even though I can't say I really "got" this game, it was still a challenging and thought-provoking experience. Thank you for pushing the boundaries of what games can be!

Very aesthetic. Chill music. Simple and short.

THIS iS AMAZING but theres like 15 minutes of playtime real fun tho

It's truly interesting really, although being extremelly short and simple, I can recommend it.