Review 1
Purchased!
It has some interesting ideas, but the game is so extremely janky that it
renders it borderline unplayable. If it gets cleaned up it could be better, but
for now it's just not that good.
FULL REVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ8A-3zmZls
Review 2
Purchased!
Lost Gray is a construction kit copy + paste game. The "developer" used the
craptastic Pixel Game Maker MV construction kit (you can buy it on Steam if you
want, just like this game, it's massively overpriced garbage), copying + pasting
and arranging premade assets, using premade level design tools so they could
pretend they're an actual game developer. On the upside the developer credited
some (but not all) of the real developers they stole assets from in this asset
flip.
It's yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting
Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. That's
largely all Pixel Game Maker MV can do, but it's terrible at this job.
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like Pixel Game Maker MV
should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", ByteMirage
has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the
basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around
with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real,
professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use
these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place.
This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
This is an extremely bad platformer designed with the hope it would be confused
for a genuinely made professional product and bought on Steam, so the
"developer" could try scrape back some of the $100 they paid for Pixel Game
Maker MV and the other $100 they spent dumping this on Steam through Steam
Direct. $200 spent on the sole purpose of making gaming worse for everyone.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game,
it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as
standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute
for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or
talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a
result.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they
developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been
specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this
isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
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.
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 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000
completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality
game is to be expected.
Lost Gray is relatively cheap at $1 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.
Profile Features Limited! [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]
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.
Developer Response! [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]The
developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the Developer Usage
Rules [https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews] for Steam "partners",
or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A
developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original
statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community
discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer
opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt
to silence your customers.
What's happened here is another clear-cut case of "Main Character Syndrome" as
the developer breaches Valve guidelines for no other apparent reason but to
confess their crimes against gamers. And of course the first step of this "I'm
the main character" journey starts with the developer assuming everyone speaks
Portuguese, so they lacked the simple courtesy of trying to respond in the
language of the primary region they're selling their game in. But that's ok, I'm
as good at using Google Translate as most "developers" in the shovelware section
of Steam are.
The developer claims this is their first time trying to make a game. If I went
to a restaurant, got sick from eating bad food, and got told "The chef is new
and has never cooked food before", would that make it okay? No, it wouldn't. The
developer supplied a very valid reason why this should never have been put up
for sale on Steam in the first place.
The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the
game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like
boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out
and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of
competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened
here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.
So the developer admits they have no idea what they are doing, used pixel "art"
because they couldn't do better, used a construction kit instead of actually
developing a game, and decided to dump this on Steam anyway. I'm not trying to
gatekeep Steam, Valve certainly makes sure the gates are never closed even for
the worst products imaginable. I'm just reviewing each game as it comes along,
but it's difficult to argue anything other than the key point I made in my
review... construction kits are for children so they can make demos and toys to
pass around with friends and should never be used as a substitute for
professional game development.
Why is it good for gamers for garbage like this to be dumped on the Steam store?
It's not! This is yet another one of those products that exists for one single
reason: To inflate the ego of the "developer", so they can call themselves a
game dev without actually having ever done that job. They put their desire to
call themselves a game dev before any consideration about what gamers want in
games. They never considered gamers at all when publishing this! And the result?
Pollution... harmful rubbish that makes the place worse.
This pointless ego inflating makes gaming worse for everyone, it gives indie
devs a bad name, and it makes it harder for genuine amateur developers, real
developers, who do the right thing and develop real games without using kits and
pixel "art", to find their audience.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of
the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend
this game to anyone.