vApe Escape

Fun monke adventure

10/10

"vApe Escape" is a weird and rather poorly made point and click adventure where you control an ape who must escape being turned into a vape dispenser machine for wealthy hipsters. It's a vaguely surreal, and yet still completely unengaging plot, combined with equally poor, obsolete point and click gameplay, and a poor quality techical execution. At least this is a sincerely and genuinely made game instead of some asset flip or mobile app or whatever. Visually, this features mediocre hand drawn style "Baby's First Wacom Tablet" art instead of contemporary graphics. This obviously looks better than pixelcrap, but that's a really low bar to barely stumble over. 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 worse than a professionally made game would look, and that's a major deterrent. This game is fairly dated at 6 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. This was made with the godawful "GameMaker Studio" construction kit/toolset, which is popular amongst amateur developers because it handholds you through making really crap 2D games that you can publish for $100 on Steam Direct. This lets you pat yourself on the back for pretending to be a real game developer, which explains why GameMaker Studio is responsible for so much ignored garbage on Steam. GameMaker Studio has never really been used to make a truly successful game, but that doesn't stop people from trying and failing. It's a particularly bad game engine that can only be used for making low quality 2D products. Like this. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as the old saying goes. Another reason this particular game wasn't successful. 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 [b]only 7 concurrent players[/b]... 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? I think you should give this one a miss. Although it's free, your time and storage are valuable resources, and the market is filled with superior options.

Vape Ape, Gain Brain. A really bizarre interactive comic book adventure. Hand drawn visuals are elevated with some nice effects giving the effect of being able to see behind the panels. Really sells the whole notion of being inside a comic book. Gameplay is loosely point and click. Sometimes drag and drop. Apparently it should take twenty minutes but I played it for over two hours. Not quite sure how but I was definitely stumped from time to time. Managed to achieve the alternate ending, but had to follow a walkthrough for the "good" ending. Mad story, decent artwork well presented, music which is actually decent and rarely irritating, achievements, FREE. Oh and it has a feature whereby it collects your individual story into a PDF which you can then print out and relive forever I guess. Not exactly sure how much mileage you might get on this feature just now, but it is a pretty cool concept that I would like to see utilised again. All good stuff then and a nice sample of what this developer might be about. Will try another of their titles, sometime...

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vApe Escape, bilim kurgu komedi ortamında bir işaretle ve tıkla macerasıdır. Oyuncu, evrenin zengin hipster'ları için elektronik sigara dağıtım makinesi olma gibi üzücü bir kaderden kaçmak zorunda olan masum bir maymunun kontrolünü ele alır.

Missable