[quote][b]Note: Dead multiplayer game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no players, no populated servers. This multiplayer-only game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
This is an extremely bland, generic and pointless 2D top down twin stick shooter with only one draw card... other players can help you shoot waves of pixel blobs. The problem is... there's no players. There's no players because, well, this is a painfully generic pixelcrap 2D top down twin stick shooter. It's a dead genre, and this is a badly made entry into it.
This is not a sincerely made product, it was made for a game jam, which is a problem. It was done in a constrained period of time; professional game development takes years of effort from teams of talented and qualified people. A "game" slapped together in a weekend by an amateur simply isn't going to have any value for gamers, and that plays out clearly with this shovelware.
Also, products created in game jams were never intended for gamers, they exist only to stroke the ego of amateur developers who can't get a real job in the industry. When developers, especially untalented ones, put themselves before gamers, garbage like this is the inevitable result.
It's improper for shovelware like this to be published through Steam Direct, because it's harmful. This half-baked, rushed, non-professional product, not designed for gamers, is taking up space on the Steam store that should be given over to genuine, talented developers who do the right thing and make genuine products for gamers. This makes it harder for gamers like you and me to find these genuinely made products. All so the developer can shove his game jam garbage on Steam Direct and pat himself on the back.
So, The Pyramid Of Bones is a dead multiplayer game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
The chief cause of failure is the developer thinking that their game will "go viral" without actually creating any reason for it do so.
Competition amongst multiplayer 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.
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.
On pricing, this is "free" enough, 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 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?
Nope. This isn't worth downloading. There's no financial cost up-front, but you'd still be spending your time and a little hard drive space on a product that's far from the best. There's thousands of better alternatives on Steam.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The developer breached Valve guidelines with a confession... this is an insincerely, unprofessionally made game-jam junkware made solely so the developer can pat himself on the back. Such garbage should never be published in a place where it takes away marketing presence from genuine developers who make games for gamers (as opposed to games made by a sole developer for his benefit only).
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. I have amended my review to include warnings about the insincere nature of this game-jam demo. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
