SPACEJUMP

SPACEJUMP is yet another construction kit template copy+paste from serial shovelware pushers, HandMade Games. These guys do nothing but copy premade game templates and game tutorials, fill out a few things/stamp out basic levels using the construction kit templates, slap on an asset flipped set of sprites/assets, and dump them on Steam and into cheap nasty shovelware game bundles as cash grabs. Trying to get paid for someone else's game templates, assets... at best, this is shovelware, at worst, it's a scam/cash grab. SPACEJUMP is yet another of literally hundreds of lazy amateur 2D retro top-down bullet hell shoot'em ups infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... this is just a Galaga ripoff stolen from a basic GameMaker Studio template. A minimum viable product cash grab from a Russian asset flipper. HandMade Games/jUNKIE have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. One example of HandMade Games/jUNKIE doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/535260]Save Home[/url], which is really the "[url=https://forum.unity.com/threads/released-ultimate-survival-the-complete-survival-template.442016/]Ultimate Survival[/url]" asset, written by the actual developers, Winterbyte. Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it 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 can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs. A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", jUNKIE has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers. 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 all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? SPACEJUMP has the almost comically optimistic (if it wasn't so sad) price of around $9 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. For comparison, the $9 asking price for this game could get you games like "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel", "This War of Mine" or "Battlefield V". No pixelcrap is worth $9. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/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]