[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There are no formal online matchmaking servers - the only multiplayer on offer is local co-op or Steam Remote Play Together. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
This is a rather poorly made and objectively failed 3D rendered 2D top down shooter with a "tacticool" room clearing them as you bust into a house/office and PvP other players, or co-op with them. There are no other players, because the quality of the game is quite bad, with janky controls, small maps, poor graphics, and no meaningful single player content.
It's a dead PvP game, and it's time for us to have a post-mortem to see some of the reasons this failed.
[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.
There is no real single player content here. The developer thought other players could replace actual storytelling and level design. That was a bad bet to make, and yeah, the developer lost. Hard. Without a player base or meaningful solo content (storytelling, narrative, you know, what makes games like GTA famous), the game has nothing to offer. Other players are not a substitute for doing the job of a developer and creating meaningful game content.
This is a multiplayer game that lacks any actual online play because the developer didn't include netcode or matchmaking. Steam has "Remote Play Together," but that isn't a real fix for the fact that PC gamers aren't sitting around a desk together to play games on one monitor. Whether the developer was too lazy or just lacked the skill to add online features, a multiplayer game without online support is a failure.
The graphics aren't great, low poly environments with poor quality assets. That's understandably a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. You deserve better than compromises.
This game is fairly dated at 8 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Now onto pricing and value.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $3 USD for this.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
Even as a free game, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 4 players[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time playing this.
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.
