While Mom's Away

[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b] This game contains no meaningful single player content. There's no viably populated servers/active player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote] This appears to be sincerely, if badly made... a FPS arena shooter with minimalist low poly graphics and a joke premise about using various household items such as a toaster as the weaponry. It was an unfortunate failure on Steam Direct for pretty obvious reasons. So, "While Mom's Away" is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time! [i]The vast majority of PvP focused games on Steam are failures.[/i] Most fail because developers assume just because the game project code completes a successful build, the game will instantly and magically "go viral" just for existing. There's nothing in this to appeal to gamers that hundreds of other PvP games are already doing better. The market for PvP games is crowded and the player base is limited. This game never reached "critical mass", didn't "go viral", and didn't offer anything to differentiate itself enough. Even with no upfront cost, it failed to appeal to gamers for several reasons. 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. In terms of visuals, this features fairly low quality low poly 3D graphics which will deter a lot of gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and while some developers struggle with creating high quality visuals, failing to do so is a disservice to gamers. It's very difficult to recommend bad looking games. Let's talk about price and the value this represents for us 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, the "free" price tag didn't help. This peaked at a handful of players and then immediately cratered. With a peak count of less than 50 gamers (out of over 130 million gamers and over 40 million daily logons), it�s safe to say the PC gaming community has collectively decided to ignore this, probably because of the reasons supplied in this review. 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.