"Stinky and Loof in Wonderland" is at face value a ripoff of the old 1990's Flash game, Sokoban, but there's a little more to it. As the sales blurb says, there's hundreds of levels, although more of a mediocre thing doesn't make it better. The game goes beyond Sokoban to include action/avoidance/timing elements and a bunch of other gimmicks like disappearing floor tiles. There's also a level editor.
I suppose if you had to play Sokoban, this is one of the better ripoffs on Steam. However, I can't recommend any avid PC gamer takes their very expensive gaming rig and uses it to play what's effectively a glorified Flash game derivative.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
The game assets are fairly mediocre/low quality, in some places they appear mismatched... Ultimately the quality of these assets, and thus the overall visual quality is lower than average, and low quality always makes for a less than optimal gaming experience. Remember, we're looking for the best of the best of 110,000+ games on Steam.
Bewilderingly, the game doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn off the annoying sound/background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop it using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why the developers chose not to include this basic feature.
The input 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.
In fact, there's no options menu at all for the game, giving this an instant fail. Developers have a responsibility to ensure users are empowered to configure the game to run well on any gaming rig they use. Failing to do this is a disservice to everyone.
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 5 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 110,000 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 110,000+ games on Steam?
"Stinky and Loof in Wonderland" has the total ripoff price of around $10 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Alien: Isolation", "Pillars of Eternity II" or "Hearts of Iron IV". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[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]
[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]
The developer starts out swinging, completely falsely and arrogantly accusing my review of containing misinformation when there is none; No menu is apparent. Maybe this is a bug, maybe the developer is just lying, but arguing with a customer over a terrible and failed game instead of actually testing software before publishing it seems like the exact kind of thing this developer would do... because they're doing it right now.
And why do developers do this? Because, as the SteamDB figures clearly show, this game is an abject failure from an incapable and incompetent developer.
Here's another example... the developer doesn't know how to/doesn't understand the concept of customizing controls, so his solution? Plug in a console peasant childrens toy controller and use Steam to override the controls. What a joke! All because this so called "developer" can't work out how to do his job properly. And his solution is to breach Valve guidelines for developers to shove BS angrily at reviews simply for relating the truth.
The developers appalling, insulting response sheds so much more light onto why this product is of such poor quality, but it excuses none of it. Ten bucks for this garbage. No wonder nobody ever played it (see the SteamDB figures above for proof).
Instead of falsely accusing accurate reviews, the developer might want to consider learning how to make games properly and they wouldn't be as much of a failure.
However it does seem like this developer may have engaged in review manipulation, eager to point to what are very possibly fake/paid reviews, which, if they are, would be in violation of US Federal Law.
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.
