The Homecoming Exhibition

The Homecoming Exhibition is not a game. Games contain meaningful gamelike interaction and game loops, which are absent in this software. This non-game is a simple 3d "art" exhibition, which answers the question... what happens to all those Starbucks baristas and McDonalds fry cooks when the local art galleries take out restraining orders? That's right.. the answer is "Steam Direct". They pay $100 USD and dump their rejected high school art class dropout trash onto Steam, in the hopes someone will get confused and think it's a game and accidentally see the aforementioned trash. 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. It makes it harder for gamers to find genuinely made games. It gives indie devs a bad name. 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. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality software this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. So, should you download this software? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ products on Steam? The Homecoming Exhibition has no upfront cost, but just because something doesn't have a price tag doesn't mean it's valuable. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes it's still not enough. I cannot recommend things which are not games to gamers on Steam.