Zenith Realms

I really like the look and tone of the game, pretty pretty

"Zenith Realms" is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences in Germany. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. The student homework assignment from May last year was to make a console game then publish it on PC instead of consoles. It's a simple top down adventure puzzle game... you know the kind, go stand on the pressure plate to make the bridge pop up, bla blah. Like a lot of student projects, and this is the key problem, this feels unfinished, is clunky, and has game breaking bugs. You might not be able to complete this short experience if you try. The lack of polish is typical... the students got their grade and walked away, leaving this unmaintained wreck here as a problem for gamers to put up with. 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. Despite not being in Early Access, it's obvious this is an incomplete product. Developers have an obligation to deliver complete, not partially done products to gamers, that shouldn't be controversial. Whatever the excuses may be, it does no service to gamers for incomplete products polluting Steam like this. It makes it harder for gamers to find complete games, and it makes it harder for ethical developers who do the right thing to find their audience. The graphics in this game are passable, but could be better. And while it's vital for any game to have impressive visuals (gaming is a visual medium, after all), there's more to a game than just the graphics. To be worth a gamers time, the game must match top tier visuals with top tier gameplay, and that's not happening here. Insultingly, the developer insists that you should play this with a console peasant children's toy gamepad instead of KB+M. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're designing games for. It's the responsibility of the developer to ensure the game runs well on the platform they're selling it on, with the primary peripherals that PC gamers use. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB shows this peaked at [b]only 10 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. This isn't a complete game for gamers, and since it offers no profile benefits like a game collector badge, so I can't recommend adding it to your library.