Zeitghast

"Zeitghast" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not. This is an interesting entry here in Steam Direct because, surprisingly, it doesn't come across as a hamfisted amateur attempt to abuse Steam Direct for the sake of calling oneself a "game developer" by virtue of giving Steam $100 to publish garbage. Nor is it an asset flip. Nor is it infested with a nasty cash shop... the worst you could say about this is it looks a bit like a student project, but I think it's a bit more mature than one of those, too. Of course, while it's insanely rare, genuine intentions alone aren't enough to create a modern, contemporary gaming experience to rival Expedition 33 or Black Myth Wukong. Steam is a big deal, and the competition for your time as a gamer is stiff. Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render this unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for. On the topic of visuals, the weak looking 2D retro assets seem like they'd be more at home in a browser game or a mobile app. 3D graphics accelerators hit the mainstream of PC gaming in the mid 1990's with cards like the ATI Rage and Voodoo3D, there's no excuse for such poor 2D graphics in 2025. That alone is enough to disqualify this for recommendation. At least it's not pixelcrap? Now on to pricing and value for gamers. Most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's usually some kind of monetisation, from nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, to any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game. Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on. 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 5 concurrent players[/b]... 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? 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. If you really like platformers, Steam already has games like Hollow Knight and Silksong for your gaming needs.