Searching for the term "platformer" on Steam gives you over 17,000 results... there's thousands and thousands of garbage tier platformers infesting Steam. "sun-rise.exe" fits right into that category of retro 2D shovelware glutting the Steam store. Only a tiny number of those are any good, and this isn't one of them.
This is a badly made Unity platformer that's trying to push the limits of pretentiousness by being more "art" than game... the precision platforming gameplay takes a back seat to the narrative and hideously, comically bad "art".
The platforming genre is pretty much obsolete... just a tiny number of professionally developed platformers exist on PC and offer any real value or interest to gamers (Silksong, etc). This is nowhere near being as good as Hollow Knight or Silksong. Even without a price tag, it's easy to see why gamers ignored this in favor of modern, professionally developed 3D games. This is offering nothing new or interesting, so it's easy to see why this failed.
Trying to address serious issues such as mental and emotional health through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good.
The "developer" here is not a professional in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this is not only utterly ineffective, it can be harmful.
It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to address mental health issues. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers.
People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get attention/fame by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here.
It's difficult to call this a game, it feels more like a digital art exhibit trying to pass itself off as a game. What negligible gameplay there is serves only as a flimsy excuse to pass this off as a game when gameplay wasn't the developers intention... and that's a problem. We're here for games.
It's true that games can be art, of course... art is where the pinnacle of creativity, craftsmanship and expertise come together to form something greater than the sum of its parts. This product does a poor job of all of those three. The Mona Lisa would not be hanging in the Louvre if she was drawn as a stick figure in crayon on a napkin.
The graphics here are particularly awful, Some of the worst art school dropout garbage I've seen... worse, it's so noisy that you can't easily see what's going on with your platforming. It's a train wreck., so bad that it actually stands out as one of the worst looking games on Steam. Quite an accomplishment.
It's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise.
Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), 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, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at [b]only 6 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Since free games don't contribute to your game collector badge and other profile stuff, is this a worthwhile addition to your Steam library?
Nope, even if you don't have to pay any money up front, this isn't something I can suggest PC gamers spend their time on... there's thousands of better games on Steam.
