The Legend of Thabor - Rise of the Mages

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Bug: Im Spiel auf die Steuerung zugreifen führt zum Absturz des Spiels Ansonsten sehr gelungen.

"The Legend of Thabor - Rise of the Mages" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not. This is a poorly made and painfully generic pixelcrap platformer with a fantasy theme and the somewhat bogus claim that it's a Metroidvania (it's not, it's a mostly linear brawler slog of little to no value). There's some insanely boring, cludgy fan-fiction backstory, but that's not well explained, and because it starts out so bad, that's really a good thing. The cringe doesn't really end there, this platformer is a fan-fiction about some internet non-ebrity streamer's "Dungeons and Dragons" campaign. I can understand some people simp for e-girls online, that's cring enough, but simping for some dudes D&D campaign is a whole new level of cringe that may well be in breach of the Geneva Conventions. Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming. The game is really simple and unambitious in terms of implementation, more of a tech demo or one of those cases where an amateur developer spends $100 to publish something on Steam Direct to see if it's possible. Yes, obviously it's possible. A proof of concept, tech demo, or something that's less than a little blip on the radar isn't offering anything truly valuable to gamers. This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them. I'm not sure if this is an asset flip, but it's one of those cases where the assets just look much better than the rest of the quality of the game... a glaring inconsistency. There's no evidence, but as always, the biggest problem with asset flips besides the plagiarism is the deplorably low quality of the other aspects of the game, and even if the game assets are genuinely created for the game, the quality of the rest of the game is indistinguishable from that of asset flips. If this is an asset flip, wow. Going down the unethical route of dumping asset flips on Steam and only plagiarising pixelcrap is like going on a massive crime spree and stealing nothing but a box of home-brand toothpicks. Insultingly, the developer insists that you should play this with a console peasant children's toy gamepad instead of KB+M. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're designing games for. It's the responsibility of the developer to ensure the game runs well on the platform they're selling it on, with the primary peripherals that PC gamers use. Now on to pricing and value for 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. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 4 concurrent players... 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? Pass on this one. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.