I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to try for accountability on actually releasing a game. In that pursuit, I'm reviewing Steam games with no reviews to get an idea of why they failed. Here is the transcript for Space Worm:
Welcome to the Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler. Today I wanted to try out something a little different from what I'm normally doing for these Side Quests. I've been looking at a number of games on Steam that don't have any reviews, and I was curious why they didn't. Instead of just doing this for my own edification and keeping it all to myself, I've decided to turn it into something we can all learn from. And to start it off I found a small game that feels like Alien Invaders and Snake, with a dash of Vampire Survivors. So let's talk about it.
The game is Space Worm. Space Worm was developed and created by Brazilian programmer Filipe Izalon. He has a rather amusing website that is based off of what appears to be a Linux command line. Although Space Worm is his only published game on Steam, he has produced a number of other games as shown on his GitHub page. And a quick look at that page shows that he's still developing games and tools. Most of his commits have been in the last year or so on a variety of different projects. That's a promising sign. It means that he's not so disheartened by poor performance of Space Worm on Steam that he gave up on the discipline entirely. Although it does appear that he's been focusing more on tools rather than games as of late.
So what is Space Worm? It's actually a series of games made in PICO-8, one of which is similar to Snake mixed with Vampire Survivors, and the other which is similar to an old arcade game where you're just storing stuff for points. There's also technically a third game included, but it appears to be a cutscene only as far as I can tell. Let's start with our exploration of what the main game is, Space Worm.
In Space Worm you are unsurprisingly a worm that navigates the cosmos, eating stars and planets. There are other galactic-sized enemies with unknown motivations trying to stop you. You have the ability to shoot, upgrade, and use different special abilities in your pursuit of eating that cosmos. It plays very much like Snake. You go around collecting stars and planets to upgrade your snake, and when you collect enough to level up you get a choice of three different icons, very much like Vampire Survivors. None of these icons are explained in-game, although they are on the Steam page. The game ends when you run out of life by getting overwhelmed by your opponents. What is great about this game? I actually love that this game is a marriage of Snake and Vampire Survivors. That's not something I was expecting to see, especially with a PICO-8 game. The presentation is easy to get into and hard to master, much like Snake. That's a pretty powerful motivator to keep playing the game. Unfortunately, it's not exactly perfect.
To start off with the obvious, the Snake play area is finite. The theming of the game isn't, at least not really. If you go too far in one direction, you'll hit a wall with little or no feedback to where you are. And although the sizzle reel in Steam shows that there is a white bar when you hit the edge, I didn't see that when I was playing the game. This can and will get you killed. The second is what I mentioned in the description of the game. The upgrades have no description or glossary in-game to reference. This may have been okay with the arcades, where you could put all of that information on the cabinet itself, but not so much when you don't have access to a cabinet. Modifying the edge behavior and adding a glossary in the pause menu would go a long way to making this game feel a lot better. It also does not have any noticeable music of any sort. I think that is another place that it could possibly improve.
The second game we have is called Consequence. It is a simple abduction and destruction game. It has appealing graphics and a tight little gameplay loop. With the additional graphics it has, it actually feels more like a game than the headliner, Space Worm. The only thing that's really missing from it is a soundtrack and a little bit of wonkiness with the controls I'll go into later. I'm somewhat surprised that Consequence wasn't the headlining game, to be honest. That's not to say it's a perfect game. It doesn't have diagonal movement, which you'll surely feel when trying to avoid enemy projectiles. There's also no sound effect for abducting people, which I think is a major missed opportunity to make the game feel better. And one of the most cardinal sins I feel there is in a game there isn't a way to go to the top menu without having to mash your keyboard. This applies to all games in the collection.
And the last game, if you can call it that, is called Another Side. This seems to be the story trying to tie the two games together. Although I don't really get what is trying to be conveyed in the cutscene, I do appreciate that they put the effort in to at least have a cutscene. There's no hint that this is a non-interactive cutscene, at least from a player perspective though.
So why do I think this game doesn't have any reviews? The answer is rather simple. Polish. This game lacks a lot of polish. It does have a decent minute-to-minute game loop for each game that you can play, but it doesn't surface what's expected of the player. And for its price point, it's competing with things like its inspiration, Vampire Survivors. And that means the polish level needs to be close, if not on par, with its inspiration. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it needs to be the exact same quality level, just that it needs to have the same level of effort put into it, especially if you're taking inspiration from a game with such a high level of polish. I actually think that if this game had more juice, it would be more competitive. That means adding more sound effects and music, making it so you can navigate the menus in an obvious way, and quit the game without having to use Alt-F4, and exposing how mechanics work more transparently to the player. I think it would have found a wider audience if the level of polish was that high. It has a solid core in both games, but they just aren't quite tied together even with the extra story, at least not yet. And if we're spitballing here, I would actually take the level up system in Space Worms and apply it to Consequence as well. That would make both games feel like they're minigames inspired by Vampire Survivors. And that would tie both of them together mechanically, not just thematically. I think this needs to be iterated over a couple more times with playtesters, at a minimum. It's apparent that the game didn't really see much playtesting before it was released. Otherwise the issues I brought up would have been at the very least surfaced to the developer, if not addressed.
So, closing thoughts. Does this game deserve to have been buried without a review? As it stands right now, maybe. The reality is Steam has tens of thousands of games competing for your eyeballs. And this isn't one that's forward enough to demand your attention. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that it will be overshadowed by everything else that is. And that's what we see with it. It's been out for just under a year and a half, at least at time of writing, with no user reviews to speak of. I think there's a good game in here, but it needs much more development time. And by that, I mean it needs to be polished. It needs a lot more polish. And if you happen to be the developer and are listening to this, I'd love to interview you and get your story on the game.
That's about all I had for this game, Space Worm. As always, if you have any comments or questions, reach out to me on either various social media as @jcsirron, or leave me a comment below. This has been The Adventure Mechanics, and I'll talk to you next time.
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