Yin Yang Space

Yin Yang Space is, well, a game that needs some explanation. And when a game needs to be explained like this, that's probably the first sign that it's not really worth your time. This is rather loosely a game, the developer describes it as a "sandbox". The idea is that you're given a simple 3D low poly scene, and you can manipulate the scene by stretching floors and walls and things, place a few low poly objects and arrange it how you like, using an unfortunately obtuse, unintuitive and rather unpleasant to use interface. Then, when you're happy, you can do a simple botmatch on the environment. I know, I know, at this stage you'll be saying, "What's the point?", and frankly that's a disappointing question to ask, because it's obvious there isn't one. We can take some amusment from the fact the developer seriously expected to be paid money for this. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. We can say with great certainty that this game is not an asset flip. This is because the assets are of such poor quality that no self respecting asset creator or artist would publish them under any circumstances. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game features lazy minimalist/untextured low-polygon "retro" assets and visuals, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. The lack of textures is a method that lazy devs often use to disguise their lack of talent/interest in doing the graphics properly and trying to disguise it under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, and that's just another reason to avoid it. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. The game features no proper level design or game/story flow/plot, and while some game formats can be ameniable to this, they must be truly exceptional, where this is not. The developers of this game made the deliberate, arguably lazy choice to avoid doing the most important component of game development, content creation, and instead made this an empty "sandbox" game with no goals or point to playing. The developer hopes gamers can just make their own fun without them having to do any work for it. And sure... a sandbox could be fun, if it had a bunch of things to do like a bucket and space to make sandcastles... but this game doesn't give you much. It's just a box of sand. There's a good chance the game won't be appealing because of this laziness/lack of effort from the developer. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Yin Yang Space is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]