ZONEX isn't a game, it's an art exhibition that's been dumped on Steam, presumably because the local art galleries took out a restraining order on the "artists" who had no other choice but to pay Valve $100 to dump this on Steam. It's supposed to be a "VR Tech Demo", but all it is is a small low poly untextured 3D environment with a number of rooms and some annoying music you can't turn off. Each room you enter shows off a bunch of low poly polygons etc floating around... that's all there is to this. They want money for this, and it's not even a game!
For those unfamiliar with what actually makes something a game, a "game loop" describes the interaction and feedback a gamer has when playing a game. Tetris, for example, has a game loop where a random block appears, the gamer interacts with the block to position it, and then the game decides if that finishes a row or not, increases the players score if any rows were completed, then gives the gamer another block to position. Counter-Strike has a game loop where a player seeks another player, tests their skill against that player by shooting them or being shot, the computer rewards the player if they win, and then if the player survives, they repeat that loop. There's no loop here, no true interactive feedback. It simply is not a game, it cannot be "played".
From a technical perspective, the tech demo doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options menu or settings for this tech demo at all. Pressing the "esc" key mercifully exits the application, which is a great feature that dramatically improves your circumstance.
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 tech demo will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The tech demo 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 tech demo. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, and that's just another reason to avoid it.
Bewilderingly, the tech demo doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn off the annoying sound/background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop it using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why the developers chose not to include this basic feature.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the tech demo unusable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
This was designed primarily for VR (but it will work without a headset, not that anyone would want to try). The VR focus of the tech demo is a major crutch here, because without VR, this compares poorly to professionally developed games. Developers must learn that while VR is great, if the only thing that makes the tech demo great is the VR, then the tech demo isn't great at all.
These technical defects push this tech demo below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this tech demo is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the tech demo all-time peak player count was only ONE user. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the tech demo. OUCH. The only user 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 tech demo is to be expected.
So, should you buy this tech demo? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
ZONEX is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the tech demo, 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 tech demo 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]
