Tafl Champions: Ancient Chess

[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b] This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote] [quote][b]Warning: Third Party Account[/b] This game requires you to create a third party "Playfab.com" account... there's no valid reason for this in a PC game when SteamWorks is available. This is often done to harvest private data and profile you, with potential sale and transmission of your private data to third parties. The developers will probably argue that you can trust them, but if they were trustworthy they wouldn't demand you create a third party account. This represents a considerable risk to gamers due to the privacy and security implications of developers that wish to bypass Steam and harvest user data. Remember, sometimes if the product is free, YOU are the product.[/quote] [quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtransaction]Warning: In-Game Cash Shop[/url][/b] This game is infested with a toxic mobile app style cash shop. You will be prompted to and expected to give money/credit card details to the developers through this cash shop to buy in-game goods so you can play the game.[/quote] This mobile app presents an old Norse chess-like boardgame, but of course there are no players. Nobody likes garbage mobile apps, especially not on Steam. So, "Tafl Champions: Ancient Chess" is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! [i]Almost every PvP exclusive game on Steam fails.[/i] Only a tiny proportion of them "go viral". This game failed for many of the same reasons those others fail. The chief of which is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so. Competition amongst PvP centric games is extreme, and there's only a finite player base to appeal to. This game failed to reach any kind of critical mass and died as a result. Let's go into some of the reasons this particular game failed to appeal to gamers, despite the zero up front cost. First and foremost, there's no meaningful single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the Game. They lost that bet. Without a huge community of players or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game. This is a mobile app... it doesn't matter if this was ported to PC before or after the app store release, or even if this didn't even make it to the app stores. This is built for the absolutely lowest of all gaming platforms and must be judged as such... it's not going to give you a cutting edge PC gaming experience. That alone is enough to disqualify this from any recommendation. We don't spend thousands building gaming rigs so that we can pretend they're iPhones and play iPhone games and mobile apps. The graphics are lacklustre because this was designed for mobile phones, not gaming PCs. Whenever a product is designed to run tolerably on 5 year old iPhones, it's obviously not going to come close to the minimum quality standards that PC gaming enthusiasts except on their cutting edge gaming rigs. One more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. PC gamers don't spend thousands on their gaming rigs so they can pretend they're iPhones. That alone is enough to disqualify this for recommendation. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. This game is infested with mobile app store like microtransactions. This is a consumer hostile model that we don't need to see on PC. It's deceptively priced to gouge gamers, and that's a reason in itself to avoid this. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 4 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. All other issues aside (any of which would disqualify this from being worth your time), this is a game that relies on other players for it to be viable, and because there's not enough players, it's not viable. I can't recommend anyone downloads this, it's basically dead.