The Finnish Virtual Art Gallery is not a game. It's a virtual art gallery showing off a bunch of Finnish artwork. The comical part about this is the developer was charging $5 for other people's art. Is that not, basically, a disgusting form of plagiarism? I think it is. But, for most gamers, all that matters is how good this game is. And it's not a game.
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
This has misleadingly been launched in the "Games" section of Steam instead of the "Software" section. This is a common mistake for developers who are new to Steam, or don't understand the difference between games and software which isn't a game. It seems this software published incorrectly as a game is simply lack of experience/knowledge of the correct process.
Here's a link for the process to publish non-game software on Steam:
[url=https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPublishing?issueid=925]Steam Developer Help With Software Publishing[/url]
It's unfortunate this process was not known about/followed, resulting in a software application being published in the wrong place.
Publishing things which aren't games on Steam in the Games section as games is misleading to gamers and somewhat harmful, because it pollutes the Steam marketplace and takes away visibility and market exposure for genuine game developers who do the right thing and make games for gamers.
There are no gameplay loops in this software, no "gameplay", no meaningful game like interaction. It's a software application and as such has no merits as a video game for gamers. Because of this, I cannot recommend this non-game software as a game to gamers.
This seems to have been made a VR exclusive to prevent any comparison with non-VR products, a comparison that this game would fail very badly at. Developers must learn that while VR is great, if the only thing that makes their application great is the VR, then the application isn't great at all.
So, should you download this software? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ products on Steam?
The software is currently free, but the developers were charging money for it. Nothing speaks more to a developers belief in themselves and their product than making their software available for everyone without remuneration, but this is also in some ways an acknowledgement that the software failed to achieve any commercial success (because it's really unethical to charge money for someone else's art). Because this is not a game, it's unrecommendable as one.
