[quote][b]Note: Dead PvP game[/b]
This game contains no meaningful single player content. There are no available servers and no player population. This game cannot be played as intended.[/quote]
This looks like a really lazy Unreal asset kitbash, it's a formula we see a lot, grab a bunch of Unreal assets, drop them on a FPS game blueprint, and "go viral" somehow. It always fails, and this is a great example of it happening.
So, "Wizard Combat" is a dead PvP game. Why did it fail? It's video game autopsy time!
[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.
First and foremost, there's no meaningful single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the Game. They lost that bet.
Without a huge community of players or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies.
Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game.
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.
The game graphics look better than you might expect, but that's just because it looks like some or all of them are "borrowed" from asset stores or wherever. Gamers can tell... and it comes across as insincere.
There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too.
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 only 14 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
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.
