Strid

Strid was an attempt at making a PvP only 2D retro pixel platformer/shooter. The game featured ugly 2D pixel "art" instead of professionally developed contemporary PC graphics. The game is broken and does not launch, providing some error about shaders being removed then displaying a menu that can't be navigated (probably related to that unfixed bug). The game hasn't been updated in around a year. The game was intended to host up to 64 players in large, military themed platformer arenas. It failed. SteamDB shows the game peaked at only 15 concurrent players, not even enough to fill one map, a pitiful number, and now the game has practically no players. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! First up the game visuals are terrible, the overall quality here is woeful, and of course it's broken and doesn't launch properly. PvP gamers have literally thousands of games to choose from, hundreds of AAA games that are either free or cost next to nothing. Games have to actually offer something if they want to compete for players time. The developers made the fatal, lazy mistake of believing that PvP, other players, would be an acceptable substitute for doing the difficult job of adding single player level design, storytelling, NPCs and other rich aspects of designed game content to the game. As a result of this choice by the developers, the game has little to no actual interactive game content. It's a little considered fact that the vast majority of PvP only, multiplayer only games [b]fail[/b]. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable subsititue for doing the job of game developers and building a game filled with content. PvP only games must have a [b]huge[/b] player base for them to "go viral" and succeed. But with no single player experience to add lasting value to a game, the developers instead chose to bet against all odds that their game would "go viral" without any actual reason for players to want to play the game. Predictably, they lost this bet. Because this is broken and also dead, it's obviously impossible to recommend, even for free.