No Review Games on Steam: Thrustme Too

     I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to see how games fail before 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 Thrustme Too:

Welcome to the Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler. Today I want to continue our no review series with Thrustme Too.  Thrustme Too was developed by Nikolaj (nickolai) Piet (pete) Pagh (pughee) of PetSkull Games and released on Steam November 6th 2025. Notably, this is not his first game on Steam. Rather, it's his fourth. And most encouragingly, he released a game afterwards called Stardust Escape and another one is coming up called Cosmic Stronghold. That leaves PetSkull Games at six released or soon to be released games on Steam.  I reached out to PetSkull Games and even got a few questions about Nikolaj's design process answered, too.  I'll be sprinkling in bit of the interview throughout this review.  If you'd prefer to read it directly, I'll have a link to the full interview in the show notes.  It's rather interesting to hear how he viewed the game and it's reception.

So, what is Thrustme too? It is a lander style game, where you pick up crates and astronauts, while killing combative alien life forms hunting down astronauts on planets to achieve those goals. If you've played any lander style game, you'll be right at home here. The game has pretty solid artwork, music, sound effects, and the steam page is pretty well done, overall.  Much like what I saw in Vagrant Knight, the capsule art is simple, yet evocative of what you expect in the game.  The capsule art is clear, showing both the lander and an astronaut seemingly leaping towards it.  It shows a few things that the player can expect to find and collect in the game.  A very solid and simple capsule.  Nikolaj included two trailers, with the first showing the interesting parts of exploring, collecting, fighting and messing up, pretty much all the action verbs of the game, with dramatic music playing over the entire thing.  And only after showing all of that does the PetSkull Games logo appear.  At the end.  Perfect trailer, no notes.  The second video shows a playthrough of one of the earlier levels in it's entirety to give the player an idea of what they are in for when they play the game.  At least at the start of the game.  Again, great execution.  All of this gives potential players a clear view of what they can expect when they buy and play Thrustme Too.

It's a pretty straightforward game, all things considered.  Your main action is to move around the world via the main thruster.  You can pivot around your center of mass to aim your thrust.  Like any decent lander style game, the movement feels great.  And when you end up with weapons in later levels, it feels suitably awkward to try to aim, shoot, and not bounce into a cave wall.  That may sound like a drawback, but I kind of find the entire lander gameplay exactly that, so it fits the feel of the rest of the gameplay to me.  Except in Thrustme Too, you bounce off of the walls instead of exploding and having to try again.  A nice change, especially considering the time constraints introduced in later levels.  And on that note, the difficulty ramps up nicely between levels, introducing more problems to deal with the deeper you get into the game.  At first, you're only picking up boxes, then adding astronaut rescue and then alien life forms that actively threaten the astronauts and so on.  Thrustme Too adds more and more plates for you to spin at once, making sure you mastered the previous ones before adding more.  It's a riff on the traditional Nintendo method: introducing the obstacle in a safe context, then use it without the safety nets, and then finally forcing a basic mastery of the obstacle or mechanic.  Patrick Curry has a decent post about this concept, along with a lot of others, on his blog.  I'll put it in the description.  Thrustme Too follows a lot of the design principles in that post.  And it kept me playing the game much longer than I would have if I was just put into the deep end and expected to swim immediately.  Very nice design.

The art assets, including the music, are simple, but cohesive.  The levels are clear where you can and cannot fly, yet not so simple that the game looks boring.  It has some nice effects of going in and out of the caves and, later water, that keep each level feelign unique.  And it's easy to see at a glance what is and is not a threat to your lander.  If it's not obvious at this point, I'm a sucker for the simple pixel art art style.  It's frankly what interested me in the first place.  THe music and sound effects in the game follow the same format:  Being complex enough to be interesting, but not demand so much from the player as to take them away from the game.  The only thing that I could really think of to add to this would be to add some ambient noise for the various areas, like a muting of all sounds on the surface and maybe an echoing effect in the caves or something like that.  Not a huge change in the audio-scape, but just a bit more polish to the sounds to make it just a hair more player reactive.

It's clear that Nikolaj loves retro games when he uses this restricted, simple style.  From my interview with Nikolaj, he made his first game in 1984 on the C64.  And that shows in his work.  It's not quite as simple as the C64, but it certainly evokes the constraints of older 2D games from the early computing era.  Kind of like how Shovel Knight feels retro without actually holding itself to the same constraints.  And since this isn't his "day" job, using a simple style and squeezing the most out of it really does maximize what you can do.  And from the interview, it sounds like some designs just take a few attempts and iterations to really get right, simple artwork or no.  I can completely understand that.  Some designs are still stuck in my head, years after I shelved them.  They're just waiting for a breakthrough to bring them back onto the main burner.  That's in line with a life-long game designer, though.

If I enjoyed Thrustme Too and have seemingly nothing but great things to say about it, why is it on this zero review games list? Well, that's a tough one. And in the full interest of transparency, my co-host, Tom, reached out to the developer with feedback before this review and he got a rather nice message from Nickolaj in response.  Hence, why I reached out as well.  In my interview with Nickolaj, his answer was marketing. It's always marketing, isn't it? To be fair, though, he is still actively patching and updating this game, despite not having any reviews at time of writing. That's something I have yet to see on one of these zero review games reviews. Most of the time the developer has moved on, and or abandoned game in general, leaving it in the lurch. So, this is a rather refreshing one to talk about, to say the least.  Perhaps it's the motivation behind releasing a game.  In most of the other games I've examined, they were either a project or something meant to be commercially successful.  In the case of Thrustme Too, it's a hobby.  That means you're going to be able to revisit it if something comes along that you wanted to change.  Not saying you will, or that that's unique to a hobby game, but not relying on it being your income or a project for a class certainly changes the metric.  That does mean you don't have to do the things you don't like, though.  And for most game designers, that means doing advertizing and marketing.  Let's talk about that.

Nikolaj mentions repeatedly in the interview that he's not particularly strong in marketing.  As are most game designers.  I get it.  It's hard, especially if you would rather dig into art, music, or code rather than talking with people.  But if you're making a game for commercial release, you will have to force yourself to do so.  And that means doing hard things, like diving into your social media of choice and finding the people playing games like you're making.  And everything that entails; Getting snide remarks and hostility for promoting your game, people saying that it would be better if you "just" change it to an entirely different game that already exists, and more.  All of this requires you to be willing to take that to get your game out there.  And that demands that you do more than just the occasional post about it every once and a while.  Dedicating time to promoting your game, researching who to reach out to that may be interested in it and more will go a long way towards getting more eyeballs on it, especially as you go towards release.  And as counter-intuitive as it sounds, putting more of that time in as you get closer to release will help, even if it means slowing down your progress on your game.  It's not sexy or fun, but it is what will differentiate your game from all the others coming out at the same time.  The stealth release only works if you have people paying attention to what you're making.  Even then, it's still a good idea to let them know you're getting ready to put out a new build.

You can certainly use other methods to both build an audience and fund your game, like through patreon or something similar, but at some point you're going to be a "creator" and not a game designer.  If that's your goal, go for it!  I personally enjoy watching others work on their game and see how they're progressing.  It's like having a buddy doing parallel productivity for me.  But it's not putting all your effort into your game.  You become at least a part-time entertainer.  And if you were comfortable with that, you likely would have already started your game design journey there.  Game Maker's Tool Kit comes to mind as an example.  He spent years doing game design analysis before dipping his toes into building games.  I'm willing to bet that most of us don't have that mindset, though.  So you're going to have to set aside more time doing outreach than you'll be comfortable with, or accepting that your game won't reach as many people.  Just making a game and they will come isn't really a thing.  You need to be the pro-active party getting it in front of people and making sure it's the best fit for them.  It's truly it's own discipline.  One more hat to put on your already overloaded head.  But that's the life of an independent developer.  If you know you absolutely cannot do that, use the help of others when you can.  Nobody said game design had to be done alone.  Nor should it be.  The gist of the game jam Ludum Dare is that it is to "give a game."  That implies to me that you aren't the only party in game design.  There at the very minimum is a receiver.  And if there's another person getting the game, why not more to help make it?  But I'm getting on my soapbox here.  I think you get what I'm going for.

Before I dive into another tangent on working with others making game design so much better instead of giving marketing wisdom or reviews, I'll call it here.  If you have any feedback on this episode or any others in this series, let me know either below or on various social media.  My handle is @jcsirron most places.  This has been the adventure mechanics and I'm Chandler.  I'll talk to you next time. 

No Review Games on Steam: Vagrant Knight

    I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to see how games fail before 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 Vagrant Knight:

 Welcome to the Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler.  On this Side Quest, I'm going to continue to examine games with no reviews.  And today's game is Vagrant Knight.  Vagrant Knight is a single player top down arena battler created by Gamester and released March 28th, 2023.  According to SteamDB, this appears to be the third and last game the developer released on Steam so far, but strangely, the developer doesn't seem to be linking their games together.  Their first game, Torden, is currently not available for sale at time of writing.  I suspect that they attempted to differentiate the games from the developer in an attempt to not make their library obvious.  Considering the previous game, HELLPIT, is at about 40% for their rating, that makes sense, albeit not a good look when you find out about it as a player, if I'm being honest.  I suspect that Gamester is not going to be releasing any more games.  They stopped updating their socials and all media presence shortly after the release of Vagrant Knight.  Not a great way to start a review, but that's what I found when I looked into the developer.

Let's talk about the game itself, though.  How does Vagrant Knight play?  In each turn in the arena, glibly called "Torture Rooms" in the game parlance, the player needs to wildly swing their sword and avoid the enemies that spawn while the timer at the top of the screen counts down.  When the timer stops, the enemies will stop spawning.  Then it's time to clean up the enemies you didn't kill.  Once you have completed that, you are shown three upgrade options to choose from, either a buff of some sort, a melee special attack or a spell.  After choosing the upgrade, you are sent back to the torture room until you complete a certain number of rounds in it, with new enemies added to the mix.  Not just reskins of past behavior, either.  You have enemies that will slowly chase you.  Others will jump at you at a regular interval.  Some will shoot in from off-screen at your position.  As you get deeper into the game, more are introduced, too.  After the rounds in the torture room are won, you move onto the next randomized torture room.  Play continues until you are bested.

Why did I want to talk about this game?  Well, I thought it had a decent store page and trailer.  And there is a lot to say about your game having a cohesive art style and a good trailer on Steam.  The game header capsule image is well executed, showing the player's avatar in an action pose, sword at the ready, surrounded by the enemies you will face seemingly coming out of the shadows.  It's not anything fancy or complicated, but it clearly shows the player what to expect in this action game, even if they don't know what, exactly, that action will be.  It caught my eye because it showed rather than telling in the capsule art.  It also knows the genre conventions and leans into them, even if it's rudimentary.  In the GDC talk, "Empathizing with Steam: How People Shop for Your Game," Chris Zukowski explains that you should be doing exactly that, much as the romance novel does to signpost to their readers the "flavors" in this particular novel.  On a completely unrelated note, I highly recommend looking at romance novels and trying to guess the major plot points just by looking at the cover.  My partner and I call it, "judging a book by it's cover," as a tongue in cheek nod to the old addage, "don't judge a book by it's cover."  And much like that silly activity, your game should signpost what the player is in for in the capsule art.  And Vagrant Knight does that.  Well.

It's not just the art that works well, either.  The trailer starts with the action, showing all the interesting stuff and monsters you'll face in forty four seconds.  No slow fade in and out of the developer's logo, no build up to the action by showing the arenas.  Just starting off with the action and quickly showing the upgrades you can get on any given run.  Short and to the point.  I liked that.  It follows the Derek Lieu idea of showing two or three things that are interesting and focusing entirely on that.  In the case of Vagrant Knight, it's the action on screen, variety of enemies and torture rooms, and the upgrades.  It makes you want to try the game with every second that the trailer runs.  Simple and well executed.  Now, does the game have more than those three things in it?  Not really.  That's not to distract from the game, per se, but it really made the trailer work so much better only having those three things to look at and nothing more.  I fully expect that Gamester would have absolutely tried putting everything in if there were more features in their game.  But they didn't have that issue in this particular instance.  Even though there's not much to this game, everything in their trailer and on their Steam page are focused on showing you the best parts of Vagrant Knight.  Gamester definitely knows how to make an appealing Steam page if nothing else.

That's great and all, but why is Vagrant Knight on the games with no reviews pile?  It's the game feel.  What the trailer and Steam page don't show is how the game feels.  The player moves around stiffly around the screen.  The "combat" feels exactly as I described it earlier:  You swing your sword wildly and with seemingly little feedback when you hit an enemy with your gesticulating sword.  Yes, I do mean that the sword is made for talking, not fighting.  It stays in place when you click around the combat radius of the player, doing a left to right swinging animation.  And it stays there until the animation is done.  It makes the game feel stilted, somehow.  And that's not a great feeling.  I fully expected the sword to dance around the player, doing damage when it came into contact with enemies with any momentum.  And maybe that's me wanting this game to be something it's not, but I feel like if Vagrant Knight had that, it would be getting a lot more eyeballs and recommends from people who played it.  Lean into a bit of Wuxia, or some other sword art, and make it feel like the player is dancing around the enemies in the arena, slashing them with a quick flick of the wrist.  Even if you don't end up killing them in a single blow, it would feel like you were doing more than just wearing out your mouse, clicking on enemies endlessly.

The magic system is somewhat basic, as well.  While you get the opportunity to select magic when you win, you aren't guaranteed to get a spell.  That's not bad, but when you aren't guaranteed to get one, starting with a basic one would be nice.  I initially didn't even know how to equip a spell.  After selecting a boon, the player is shown a pair of lists.  On your first pass, most, if not all, of the lists will show as locked.  In order to select a spell and special attack, you need to actively click the skill/spell you want.  It's not a big deal, but it's not obvious when you look at the Skills screen.  When you use the skills in game, it's lackluster.  Almost no effects, weak sound effects, the works.  The spells are locked in place, which looks odd when you are using something like inferno, which is a short range spell that should remain centered on the player for greater effect.  That's just the lack of juice.  I would say that's expected for a game in early access, but it's pretty clear this game has been abandoned.  Nothing is really popping out and screaming, "hell yeah!" when I play, despite what the trailer gave.  If there were fewer but more consequential spells, I think it would have made a better game.  In that, I mean that the spells and special attacks that remain feel more consequential and make the big boom that getting a new weapon in Vampire Survivors feels.  We didn't need a bunch of half done abilities for early access, we needed a few finished ones that give the player an idea of what we could expect when others are added.  Really awe the player with what you have cooking, if you know what I mean.

I'm getting into the weeds designing an entirely different game here, and I should certainly stop, but I think I'm getting my point across: The combat, at a base level, just isn't entertaining.  And that could have been easily exposed if the developer did a bit of a sanity check and had some playtesting feedback before releasing into Early Access on Steam.  I genuinely think that if it took base combat and made it interesting, it could have been a unique take on the Vampire Survivors genre.  That sort of power fantasy, coupled with the pomp and circumstance of Vampire Survivors could have been something.  But that's not what is sitting forgotten in Steam's Early Access now, sadly.

The rest of the parts of the game?  Well, they are serviceable and mostly consistent, and that's good enough.  The audio could do with another pass, since some of the sound effects are noticeably louder than the entire rest of the game.  And there are some features in the options that I would personally expect, like music and sound effect controls.  I would appreciate a credits screen, too, but that's mostly a personal thing.  The artwork is simple and consistent throughout, but none of it is particularly bad or good.  And as strange as it sounds, that's a good thing.  It's consistent.  All of it is at the same level and doesn't demand more attention from the player over other artwork.  I know this sounds like I'm bashing it for being bland, but with games in the zero review pile, consistent art is not a given.  Bland is frankly a massive step up from a lazy asset flip or AI dump.  And Vagrant Knight is nothing if not consistent.  No crashes, no noticeable bugs, nothing hilariously out of place.  It's a competent game as-is.  I'm curious where it was planned to go from here, but that's not going to happen at this point, so I won't ask further on that.

Does Vagrant Knight deserve to be in the no review pile?  No.  Not at all.  It's a competently done game with an unfortunately boring combat loop.  Everything I've seen in it is not great, but rather executed decently.  And that's saying a lot compared to it's peers.  I'm not saying that I'll get an itch to play it again, but I am saying that this game had an audience it could have connected with if the moment to moment gameplay was better.  And like the game itself, I would be interested to see where Gamester goes from here, but that's similarly not going to happen.  I truly think that the developer was tantilizingly close to something, but fell just short of getting there.  It's sad to see, especially since they beat the first hurdle on Steam of making it past one game released.  It does give me an idea for a small game, however.  And that's some silver lining at looking at this game.

I'm going to stop waxing poetically about Vagrant Knight.  I feel like I'll just be guilding the lily if I go further.  As always, if you have thoughts on this Side Quest, or anything else game related, reach out to me below this episode or on various social media.  My handle is jcsirron.  This has been another dive into no game reviews on Steam for the Adventure Mechanics Side Quests, I'll talk to you next time.

No Review Games on Steam: Justice For All

   I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to see how games fail before 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 Justice For All:

Welcome to The Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler.  In today's side quest, we'll be taking a look at another game with no reviews and see what went wrong.  On the chopping block today, we have Justice for All.  It was made in Unity and released in October of 2022 by Charles Wolfe.  This appears to be the only game he released under his name.  As you know, not having prior finished games or subsequent games in the pipeline isn't a good sign for him as a game developer.  From what I can find, this may have been a school project of some sort, and that would be in line with my time playing Justice For All.  I think it's optimistic to publish a school project on Steam, but it certainly is not unique, especially in the games with no reviews listings.  I enjoy the enthusiasm, but if you're doing a commercial release, you'll need to up your level of polish.  But before we answer that question, what is Justice For All?  It is a platform shooter, with a basic story line and a variety of weapons and enemies to take out.  Once you have taken out enough enemies, the level ends and you are onto the next one.  It's really a simple game, all things considered.

So, what's wrong with it?  To be blunt, a lot.  First of all, the artwork is actually just a series of an asset packs.  That's not a bad thing, per se, since it allowed the designer to consider other parts of the game, like level, enemy and weapon design.  But like using any tool as a shortcut, you need to give it your personal touch and not just flip assets to make your game.  Thankfully, the assets (mostly) work together.  There are a few glaring areas it doesn't, though.  The pixel art style in cutscenes completely clashes with the flash style of the gameplay.  If the designer wanted to use both, they could have put a tv filter or something over the pixel art to try blending it in, or saying the pixel art parts are television broadcasts or something.  There are some assets that, when put together, make it harder to identify what is and what is not actually a platform, leading to some situations where you will jump up thinking you're going to land on a platform, only for the platform to not actually exist.  This makes the game so much harder to play than it needs to.  And all that needed to make this happen was to darken the background tiles while keeping the actual platforms bright.  It's not a huge deal breaker in the short time I dedicated to this game, but I can easily see that putting the player down a death pit later in the game.  It may be worthwhile to compare the artwork in this game with how old games, like the Nintendo Entertainment System game Rolling Thunder, or it's arcade precursor.  I'm not just being an elderly millenial here, the fundamental gameplay between the two are essentially the same and the limitations of an 8-bit system makes level readability the main focus of the artwork.

The paired issue with discerning which parts of the level you can actually use and which are decor is how the player controls.  It's awful, frankly.  You stop immediately when you attack, eliminating any horizontal momentum you may have had beforehand.  And that will kill you.  The jumps are floaty, which isn't a bad thing, but it also makes the player feel like they don't weigh anything.  That makes it feel like you are trying to move a balloon around the world instead of a freedom fighter.  You have limited ammo, but I'll be damned if you know how much ammunition you actually have.  And your controls are hardcoded, with no option to change to something more intuitive to you.  All of that coupled together, it makes it incredibly difficult to feel like you know what's going on in the game.  You will seemingly run out of ammo, grenades and magical(?) things to inflict ranged damage at random and be forced to use a knife.  On one hand, it's nice having a melee weapon in case you run out, but on the other, it's infuriating not knowing how much ammunition you have in your possession.  All of this could have been mitigated by putting the ammo count on top of the weapons themselves in the UI.  Or putting the number above you after shooting, or any other way of bringing that information to the attention of the player.  It then forces you to use this toothpick of a knife to try to poke bullet spongy enemies who are in constant motion.  So you either run into them and cause yourself to get hurt, or you trail them swinging at the air behind them like an idiot.  It's not a great feeling.  This could have been improved by allowing the player to move while swinging, but I fear that it would have taken more work to get that to feel right.  Again, I'll point to Rolling Thunder as inspiration on how game feel could be much better, with the UI having life, bullets for each weapon, and controls that may be stiff, but they work with the level design and enemies implemented in the game.

And let's talk about the enemies.  They are basically red koopas from Mario.  They move back and forth, changing direction when they reach the end of their platform.  It doesn't matter if they are a lowly melee animal or a heavily equipped boss of the level, they will only ever move back and forth, stopping to attack when they encounter the player.  For a platform shooter, this is simply not enough.  There need to be more enemy behaviors, even if they aren't smarter than what's here.  Ambush enemies, flying enemies, or even a slow chasing enemy would be a welcome change in the behavior.  Give me another move besides getting behind an enemy and shooting them in the back.  And if enemies are going to be respawning, telegraph it!  Doors should open and dump a new enemy onto the platform.  Another should parachute from above.  Or just move them in from off-screen.  Make it more engaging than *poof* another enemy is right where you killed one.  That's lazy and bland gameplay.  There is one "boss" enemy on each level, which is effectively your ammo sponge that you must spend the majority of your ammunition on.  If you waste ammo on minions, you won't have enough to kill the boss.  Then, you're stuck with your knife to try killing them, with predictable results.  Who are these bosses?  Hell if I know.  I just know I need to kill them in order to progress.  You can just give them a name above their health bar.  That would motivate me, at least a little bit, to try killing them.  Give your bosses importance.  They should be something more than just a larger enemy pacing to and fro, soaking up all the shots and grenades you have with seemingly little effect.  This is the main part of the game, and should have been explored much more than what little is in the game right now.  All there is in this game is platform shooting.  Make it more interesting, please!

The story is similarly bare-bones.  There are a few friendlies you can speak to, but you'll end up spending a silly amount of time trying to figure out how to communicate, since the window to talk to them is so very small.  They move around, much like the enemies.  And you must, must be within that tiny window to start the conversation.  Chasing friendlies is not a fun experience.  Widen the window to talk to them or stop them from moving.  You can't have both.  And it's not like they are giving much to the story.  The first level has a farmer acting as the worst tutorial I've ever seen.  "They're over there.  Practice a bit before moving on."  Great advice, farmer.  I couldn't ask for more.  No story, no explanation of controls, just "practice a bit."  This is a waste of the friendly on level one.  If this game is being pitched as story-rich, the developer should have given more than an after thought on how to use conversations in Justice for All.  Story should be the driving force, or at least interesting context on why I keep going from level to level killing bosses.  It's not even up to that latter, lower level, in this game, unfortunately.  Motivation doesn't need to be much, but I should care why I'm killing seemingly random armed people and wildlife.  Why is the wildlife on the side of the elites, anyway?  I didn't think boars were smart enough to choose sides in another species' conflict.  They're right there with the bees, fighting one human for another human, though.  That's actually stranger to say out loud.  Anyway, that's why you need to give your story at least some time in the oven.  This one isn't even out of the metaphorical biscuit tube.

The last part of this game that I can comment on is the music and sound effects.  They are... competent.  What else should I expect from another asset pack, though.  The tracks are a credit to their authors, being in line with the game, but not too interesting as to take attention away from the gameplay.  The sound effects feel worse, but that's because they don't have the impact I usually expect from shots and explosions.  They feel flat, somehow.  Like they were meant for either a lighter game or one with a more diverse soundscape where a louder shot or explosion would drown out other important information.  Needless to say, I think the designer should have spent more time juicing up their audioscape to make it feel like the player is in an oppressive world, like how Gears of War or This War of Mine do with their scapes.  Heck, even look at what Minecraft does in caves.  If you're making a fight against oppression, make it feel like it.  Not a Kenney assets bubbly platformer, with weak explosions and anemic shots.

The question now must be asked:  Is this game rightfully in the no review club?  Sadly, I think so.  The developer could have had something more if they added more enemy types, focused more on the effects and how they worked together, or leaned more heavily into story, like the game Deadbolt did.  Any one of those could have elevated this game, but sadly aren't present in this game.  If Charles Wolfe wanted to see other, better implementations of this design, I would try playing some older "cinematic" platformers, like Another World, Blackthorne, the Rolling Thunder series and others.  There's a lot to learn here, but most of it goes back to the idea of emphasizing the interesting bits of the game.  That means working on the movement and making it feel good.  Getting more varied enemies and a better reason to fight them.  Making each shot sound impactful and not the first sound effect that could conceivably fit the bill.  Justice for All needs all these things to be more than what it is.  I hope that Charles Wolfe continues to work on games and learns from this game, but statistically he probably is done publishing on Steam.

That's about all that I'm going to say about this game, though.  If you have something you'd like to add, leave it in the comments below, or reach out to me on various social media as @JCSirron.  I'd love to hear what you think of this game, this series, or anything game design related.  This has been another Adventure Mechanics Side Quest.  I'll talk to you next time. 

No Review Games on Steam: Chubby Cats

 

  I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to see how games fail before 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 Chubby Cats:

Welcome to The Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler.  Today, we'll be continuing examining games with zero Steam reviews.  And on today's menu, it's Chubby Cats.  Chubby Cats is a cat satisfaction puzzle game with time as a constraint.  Chubby Cats was released on June 19th, 2025 by Just L Studio.  It's their third game they've released on Steam, with another one slated for release sometime in 2026.  Just L Studio is a one person show, with their itch.io page showing the same games released on Steam.  From what I can tell, many of their games are targeted at the Chinese audience.  It sounds strange to bring up, but it is relevant, I promise.

So, how does Chubby Cat play?  Well, it's pretty straightforward, honestly.  You put islands down on the grid that contain ingredients locked up in trees.  You then use a cat 'chef' to liberate the ingredients from the trees and use them to either directly satisfy a waiting cat's hunger, or use those ingredients to make more complex foods that the waiting cats desire.  You continue liberating ingredients and satisfying cats until the level's time runs out.  There's no real tutorial in this game, but I was able to figure out and describe this game in a handful of sentences.  The cat desires start out with ingredients and then become more and more complex foods as you complete levels.  Progression to more and more complex puzzles is just about right to get an understanding of before the game asks you to go faster.  The artwork is simple and friendly, with all the cats and ingredients being relatively easy to identify at a glance.  The music is a perfect complement to the puzzles, being relaxing to promote you to get into the flow of feeding these cats.  And although they do have an AI disclosure on the Steam page, it is limited to, and I'm quoting here, "In the game trailer, we use music from StockTune, which provides royalty-free music in the public domain. The music can be freely used, shared, and adapted without payment or attribution."  That sounds like the boilerplate from a stock music site to me.  It's not great, but unless you're looking for AI-free music explicitly, you're going to run into this sort of disclosure.

Why does this not have any reviews, then?  Well, it does have nine, but every single one was from someone who received the game for free and are written in Chinese and are positive.  These do technically show up in the reviews list, but from my understanding, they do not impact the review numbers, since they were reviews from someone who got the game for free.  On one hand, that makes sense:  Free copies given out could easily take a game from no reviews past the 10 review threshold for initial visibility.  On the other hand, it's so statistically unlikely to ever reach past the ten review threshold for most studios first game that the conventional wisdom is to have your first game be a learning experience.  And woe be upon you if you don't expand your fanbase enough with that first release as to get out of the no review hole.  That's to say, Steam is the platform, it's up to you to bring your audience and their attention to your game on that platform.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, just a reflection of the reality of releasing on Steam nowadays.  And from what I can find from Just L Studio, they put the game out there and did some marketing, but it obviously wasn't enough.

There is one oddity from Chubby Cats that I want to point out.  The reviews are all in Chinese.  That in and of itself isn't noteworthy, as it is one of the largest markets on Steam, but it brings up a cultural difference that we in the West don't see when we look at Steam: Censorship.  In China, most of the ways to get a hold of the developers through Steam are blocked.  They can only use the review system to get their attention.  If you don't know, one of the reasons Slay The Spire 2 was review bombed was due to the Chinese audience giving no recommendations and then using the review system to give the feedback that normally goes through the Steam community hub.  I found this rather fascinating, so I dug into the censorship and cultural norms of Chinese gamers.  And from what I could find, they don't typically leave positive reviews on games.  They'll leave negative reviews to give feedback to the developer and then almost never update the recommendation.  That makes Chubby Cat more interesting, especially when put into this context.  The main audience for Just L Studio appears to be Chinese, a group of gamers that does not typically leave positive reviews.  And because of that, Chubby Cat may be far more successful than expected.  They may have multiples more sales that a comparably reviewed Western game.  So, instead of being a sub-ten review game, it actually ends up further up the totem pole and into lesser known puzzle games with dozens of reviews.  I struggle to see it being larger than that, however.  The concurrent player count never broke the 5 player count.  I suspect that it isn't that popular and is still in the no reviews category because of that.  If there was a quiet audience, you would expect more than one player on at any given time, not months of no players.  I would also expect to see at least one bad review that wasn't gifted a copy.

What could be done to get more eyeballs on this game, then?  There's a lot of "wisdom" out there that may or may not be helpful in getting your game in front of your potential audience:  Enter into as many festivals as possible to stand out, get a streamer to pick it up and play it for a while, post dev blogs on how you made your game.  All of those are ways to get it in front of as many eyes as possible.  And the advice can work, if you're persistent enough.  I personally follow about a dozen developers who plug their game at least twice a week on their social media.  Whatever path you choose to get your game out there, you need to be doing it almost as soon as you have started working on it.  Barring putting an idea and not a completed game into a festival, of course.  There is a video by Isto, Inc. that takes the conventional wisdom that "experts" like Chris Zukowski use, called the marketing funnel, and flips it on it's head:  In the video, which I'll link in the description, they argue that you should be defining success before you even settle on an idea.  They then take that definition of success, as defined as a sales target upon release, and walk it back all the way to the ideation stage of game design.  Although each step back introduces more uncertainty, it also lowers the definition of success.  And using something like this walkback method can help inform what success will look like for each step of the game design journey.  Why do I bring up this particular methodology when I started with being persistent?  Simple:  This can help you define what progress will look like when you reach certain milestones in your game design.  And it forces you to consider what you will need to achieve in each step to be considered "on track" for your game's release.  And persistence on pushing your game will help you bring your audience to your game when it comes time to release.

That's not to say I entirely agree with all of the "wisdom" in the Isto, Inc. video; I don't.  At the prototyping phase, they define success as getting your playtesters "needing" to play your game, and not just saying it's fun.  That's an almost useless metric driven by vibes as much as others.  And that may end up taking you and your game beyond where you envisioned and offloading the fun parts of game design and decision making onto feedback you're getting from your playtesters.  That's not only fraught with issues, it means you won't be making the game you want to in the first place and almost designing by committee.  And if you've ever been on a design committee, you'll know what I mean and why that's a bad thing.  All the edges will be filed off and you'll end up with another bland as plain oatmeal game.  You'll have a much harder time selling a strange attractor if you've gotten rid of all the interesting bits.  I'm not saying that the video advocates for it, but that's one of the logical conclusions of that thought process I need to call out.  It seems to work for Isto, Inc., though, so what do I know.

What seems to separate the studios that live from the one release and then dead is persistence.  And both Just L Studio and Isto, Inc. have released multiple games.  And if there's one thing being so enthusiastic about games and game design has taught me, it's that getting a game to done is the first and most important step.  I can't count how many games I've played that never made it past prototype and out to the larger audience they so desperately deserved.  No matter how you choose to market your game, be persistent and keep plugging it like the devs I follow.  You will find a way that works for you if you keep on putting it out there.

Well, that's about all that I have for this examination.  If you have any comments, suggestions for other games with no reviews, or anything else, leave a comment below.  I always enjoy talking about games and want to hear your thoughts on them, too.  If you prefer to use social media, you can find me under @jcsirron.  This has been another side quest on games with no reviews on steam for the adventure mechanics.  I'll talk to you next time.

No Review Games on Steam: Vertical Descent

  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 Vertical Descent:

  Welcome to the Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler, and this is another Side Quest. Today we're going to continue our No Review Games Examination with Vertical Descent.  Vertical Descent was made in Unity and released in March of 2025 by RuHix.  They appear to be a Canadian developer and Vertical Descent appears to be their only game released, on Steam or otherwise. I can't really find any other information for them on the internet at all. So their presence is minimal at best. Cannot find a valid website, itch.io page, Twitter handle, BlueSky handle or anything like that. So all the information that I can get on RuHix is from this one game.

Vertical Descent is a first person puzzle game consisting of roughly ten puzzles spread across seven floors in a mini tower.  Each puzzle usually contains a letter or some context for clues.  Once you figure out all the puzzles, you'll exit the lobby of the tower.  Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it?  Well, it's complicated.  Let's talk about the build I played.

The current build on steam is broken, there's no sugar coating this.  The lighting, one of the most important things shown on the Steam page, isn't included in the latest build.  And depending on how you set up the game, there may or may not be more or less broken textures throughout the level.  When I compared playthroughs with my co-host Devon, I ended up having a lot more broken textures than they did.  Your mileage may vary, but the broken textures will never be zero.  And since you don't start on the top level of this Vertical Descent game, you can actually just open the screen door on the elevator and fall out of the game.  And once you've broken containment, you can do wacky things like walking off the map, channeling your inner Jesus and walk across water, or even just say fuck it and run to the end trigger.  The possibilites are limited, but none of those are intended.  And this is all before we actually engage with the intended puzzles in the game, too.  Both Devon and I were able to "beat" the game in under a minute.  Before we used the elevator.  Not a great first playthrough.

Because of how broken this game is, Vertical dissents smells like this developers first commercial game.  Judging by how little footprint they have online, I'm pretty sure that's the case. That's not to say this game is completely unredeemable, but rather this game needs to be reworked with the player in mind.  And that's why I find it so fascinating.  This game has potential.  It's just so marred by heads-down developer-itis.  Like they needed to step back, get some external perspectives on their game and regroup.  I'll hold off on further thoughts on this as we get to them, though.

Let's assume that you want to play the game as intended and you're able to make your way to the roof, the seventh floor.  You'll see your objective pop up on screen then.  This makes me suspect that there's a build of this game that starts here, but I digress.  There's a clue on the mattress that relies on meta knowledge (i.e. your U.S. layout keyboard) to give you the code that you'll need to enter into the keypad in the elevator.  That's the level of puzzle the designer put into the game.  Now, I'm not saying it's bad to use meta knowledge, per se, but relying solely on meta knowledge will frustrate players that don't have the same keyboard you do.  And that shows in the Steam community hub for this game, too.  When you enter in the correct code, it will unlock a button for the next floor in the elevator.  The game continues on to each lower floor where the player must solve a variety of puzzles, many tied together, to reach the tower lobby.  I'm not going to go through each puzzle, but I will say that if this game is getting reworked, more clues will need to be sprinkled throughout the environment for each puzzle.  Some solutions straight up felt like they were trolling me.  I'm sure that wasn't the developer's intent.  It was the lack of parallel clues for the puzzles to figure out what to do.  For example, the fourth floor has four candles that need to be lit in order to go to the next floor.  There are no clues for that puzzle anywhere.  And I searched for the clues on how to solve it.  I ended up brute forcing it, assuming that the developer wanted me to run from room to room.  You know what?  That was the solution.  If I wasn't intrigued by the absolute state of this game, I would have gotten frustrated and walked away from the game at this point.  You start on the fourth floor.  Take that in.

Vertical Descent is easily broken and the puzzles can be somewhat obtuse.  Why is it interesting, then?  Well, despite not having lighting, I feel like the story has promise.  It mostly avoids jump scares and has at least one touching moment where you see the deceased person the letter writer tried to bring back.  Trying to bring back the dead by any means necessary is a solid plot point to base a game off of.  And RuHix touched lightly upon the grief of loss.  The puzzles that weren't obtuse were interesting as well.  That's a pretty solid base to build from.  Like most horror games, the game lives or dies on a story execution.  There are hardly any mechanics in the game, so it only leaves ambiance and story-telling to make the game engaging.  And I feel like this game can be changed to make it work.  It's not going to be easy, or quick, but if the dev wanted to build upon this, maybe make a sequel or something, they wouldn't be starting from zero.  And there's a lot to be said about that.  As it stands right now, though, this game deserves to be in the no reviews pile.

Let's no leave it there and say we're revamping this game, though.  Where would we start?  Step one would be to VASTLY increase the internet presence of RuHix as a studio.  It appears that their website has lapsed, and that's unfortunate, but not insurmountable.  Getting a new domain isn't that hard.  I don't expect them to pay the almost six grand that a domain squatter is currently trying to extort.  The dev will also have to get more into a social media they can handle.  That means sitting on handles where the dev is comfortable having them, like Bluesky, Twitter, Twitch, whatever.  Put out a few dev logs, or something to indicate you're alive as a studio.  If you're not leaving a trail, you're making it so much harder for people interested in your game to learn about you, either as a studio or as a developer.  You need those bread crumbs.  Being an indie dev, that's the one way we can get an edge on the AAA space:  We're small, reachable, and approachable.  Use that advantage.  Don't make hard for your customers to reach out to you if they are interested in what you made.  Put yourself out there in some capacity!  If you make a fanbase, they will be able to latch on to your presence online and, hopefully, evangelize you and your studio.  Don't waste that opportunity.

Next, do some market research and play some similarly short horror and puzzle games that are well received.  It doesn't have to be on Steam, either.  If there is a popular horror game in the same vein on itch, try it out.  Take notes on what works for you and what doesn't.  Write down the memorable moments, scares and set pieces.  Really dig into the artistry on display.  Get inspiration for level layouts, puzzles or scary moments that would fit into Vertical Descent.  Examine puzzle games and see how they layout hints, clues and puzzles.  Mock up the puzzles from Vertical Descent to match that style and see if it makes the puzzles easier to engage with.  Just because you're an indie developer doesn't mean you shouldn't try out what your peers are making.  I know some devs prefer to avoid similar games while making theirs, but from what's on display in the current build, external inspiration is needed.  And it's inspiration, not copying.  Take the inspiration and make it yours if you plan on putting it into your game.  Your game will turn out better if you have a base that you enjoy to work from.  I promise you that.

That's all fine and good, but that doesn't rehab this game.  How do we do that?  First, and foremost, it needs to have the expected player path described.  That includes the potential scares, the visual set pieces, and where they can look for clues, and most importantly, the story being told in this environment.  Each floor should ideally have a visual set piece that feels at home in world.  Not having a morgue on the second floor of an office building or a random pair of school rooms on the fourth floor sort of thing.  Make the whole building cohesive.  Once that's figured out, we need to make the characters: The letter writer needs to have clues of his or her presence described and fleshed out.  The player is following them, metaphorically.  We should know more about them than we currently do.  The elevator, yes, the elevator, needs to be better fleshed out and made to fit in the world.  That means making it more like an elevator and not a box that takes you to a series of screen doors.  The dead lady needs to be given more context with the letter writer.  And what came back instead of her needs to be hinted at, too.  Only once we have all of that defined can we then look at remaking the map.  And yes, this map needs to be remade.  There are far too many dead spaces with nothing in them and unintentional red herrings spread throughout.  Each floor should have a clear theme and goal instead of using the elevator to move the player to each floor.  Make this feel tower feel lived in!  It's the home of the letter writer, the dead lady, and presumably, the player.  It shouldn't feel like a broken-ass Unity asset.  Give each character space to tell their story.  Hell, if it's appropriate, use them directly and give them a voice, too.  You can make text boxes for speech and not necessarily need a voice actor to do that part, either.  If there's time, voice acting would be a beautiful addition, though.  It may be out of scope for this remake, and that's fine.  Using grunts and other human sounds will work just fine with what I'm envisioning.

If you're putting up a hundred dollars on a steam page, you need to be sure you're going to at least make that hundred dollars back.  Maybe even make enough to reclaim the studio domain, who knows.  And that means the game needs to be polished.  I find myself saying that a lot each time I make one of the games with no reviews:  You need to polish your game.  And it keeps being relevant because it's the last step in production.  Each and every part of the game should be taken to a base level of polish, and it should be consistent throughout.  No random blood spots that will throw off players from a puzzle.  Each blood spot should have a distinct purpose, to say nothing of everything else put into the game.  Ambiance is good, but the goals and motivations should be clear at all times, especially in a horror game.  You don't have mechanics to lean on, you need to make your environment clear.  Always, always, always.  You want to make sure, even when unsettled or scared, the player will be able to make it to the next area of your game.  Nothing pulls the player out of the world faster than strange or rough edges not intentionally put there.  Except maybe having to do the same "scary chase" scene again.  That's a different topic, though.  It needs to feel like every part of the game is ready for someone to skulk, hide, or get chased down.  And when it's there, the playtesting cycle can finally begin.

Once that's all been executed, playtest.  And I'm not talking about using the dev or their friends or family, either.  People unassociated with the game at all need to play it blind and comment on it.  That's why all of these puzzles feel obtuse.  It never got cross-checked with other people.  All games need to be playtested before release.  It's abundantly clear that Vertical Descent was not.  Not in any real sense, anyway.  Even a short smoke playtest would have revealed not starting on the roof and the shading not appearing as expected.  Before bringing in outside playtesters, the game needs to be as far along as possible.  If needed, break up the testing to puzzle testers and blind playtesters.  You can lean on the puzzle playtesters to get the vast majority of the puzzles into a good state, swapping out the puzzles they are testing each time and adjusting those in isolation.  If possible, don't even put the puzzle into the world.  Make a dedicated build that only shows the intended puzzle without the ambiance.  If it's possible in the best situation, it should work in world.  Save your blind playtesters for when you have everything nailed down to your satisfaction.  Sure, there will be minor issues around, there always are, but you should not be putting a build with obvious issues in front of those willing to test your game.  It's not going to get you the same level of feedback as if you were giving them a nearly complete game.  Blind playtesters are a valuable resource, so squandering them on broken builds is a waste of everyone's time.  They will give you the end-to-end overview you need to push your game up to the next level.  Use them as such.

And once you get your first playthrough feedback, you have more work to do.  Ideally, you'll get a screen recording of them playing and you'll see where the rough spots were and what the player was thinking when they were working out your puzzles.  You need to iterate on each puzzle and make it so your playtesters don't get stuck for longer than you intend.  Some red herrings are fine, and good ways to introduce story bits, puzzle clues, or scares, but they shouldn't be so convincing that you see players fixating on those areas.  And remember, it's always lock before key.  Introduce the locking puzzle before giving clues on how to solve it.  You will see players appreciate that design flow and it will pay off as you go through the feedback process.  Go through this process as many times as you're able to, and hopefully the game that comes out the other end lives up to the horror genre you love so much.

When I started playing Vertical Descent, I was not expecting it to blow up into such a fascinating game to examine.  It absolutely deserves to be in no review town, but it does not need to stay there.  If RuHix plans on taking another chance on this game and is willing to overhaul it, I believe it would be able to stand proudly in the short form horror game genre.  And I'm not really a horror game player, either.  Something in this beautiful and campy mess inspired and intrigued me enough to spend far too much time looking at ways to make it what the developer RuHix originally intended it to be.  And that means something, especially in the environment the video game industry is in right now.

I'll leave my rant here.  As always, if you have any questions or comments on this episode, leave a comment below or reach out to me on various social media.  My handle is @jcsirron.  If you have a game with zero reviews that you want me to review, let me know!  I've been inspired by this series and want to keep making these sort of episodes.  This has been another Adventure Mechanics Side Quest and I'm Chandler.  I'll talk to you next time.

No Review Games on Steam: Cryptic Escape

 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 Cryptic Escape:

 Welcome to the Adventure Mechanics, I'm Chandler. It's that time again for another side quest. Today, we're going to continue our no review games examination with a title called Cryptic Escape.  Cryptic Escape was released in June of 2024 by LionEY Games.  According to their itch.io page, their first game was released in 2022. They have seven other games on their itch page as well. After releasing Cryptic Escape, they released another game in 2025.  So, they still appear to be an active developer at least at time of recording. 

What is cryptic escape I hear you ask?  Cryptic Escape is a top down real time dungeon crawler without combat. It sounds like a conflicting premise, but it works surprisingly well. In cryptic escape, you will run around each dungeon level collecting coins and opening chests. The denizens of the dungeon will chase you an attempt to stop you from collecting coins. As you tell deeper into each dungeon, you will run into stronger and faster enemies. You will also run into traps and switches that block off areas of the dungeon. You can use these to your advantage, but if you're not careful you may run over a spike trap and and your run there. You can also use potions to become invisible, run faster, that sort of thing. The game claims to be a rogue like, but I don't necessarily get the feeling that it has a fully baked progression in the game itself. That being said, you can save some progression by purchasing upgrades to your abilities in the shop after each run, making future runs easier.

It sounds like a great premise, doesn't it? Well, it is. But the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The camera movement feels off somehow. It moves the way I expect it to, but it seems to move way to aggressively to get the player into the back third of the screen.  In a more polished game, it would ease the player into that 1/3 so they can see ahead, but not so fast as to cause potential motion sickness. In cryptic escape, there's no lurping or easing, the camera just speeds there. It's a novel experience, but that camera needs to be fixed.  And bad feeling isn't something that's obvious when you look at the trailer for this game, either.  The sound effects are serviceable, but they feel amateurish. The same applies to the music, as well. After one level you will want to turn off the music because it's just that repetitive. 

On my first playthrough, I was able to get awarded achievements for getting through the fifth level of the dungeon just by playing the tutorial. That's a pretty big oversight, and it looks really bad when that's your first experience of a game. Paradoxically, after my first run, I was able to get the welcome achievement. It feels like the achievement system they included is actually worse than not having any achievements at all. And you have a very short window to impress your players, I want to make sure you're achievements fire off as expected. 

That being said, what is good or interesting about this game? The premise is very good in terms of idea. The randomized dungeons feel well constructed and although they are procedurally generated, there's still enough wiggle room to get by enemies without having to cut down long hallways.  The variety of enemies are introduced on a level by level basis, easing the player into harder and harder situations. This is a good game design. And although the artwork is basic, it serves its purpose well in context. Especially if the developer is trying to call back to rogue and it's offshoots.  It just feels like a game jam level of effort and polish, though. 

Let's talk about a couple elephants in the room for this game. First and foremost, despite not having AI anywhere else in their game as far as I can tell, the capsule art for this game is AI generated. And I can almost guarantee that many gamers that would be interested in this game didn't give it a chance because of that. I know it's a shocker, but AI generative art is not popular with players. And if your first contact with them, the capsule art, is AI generated, you are going to turn off a lot of players. And I think that's exactly what happened here. I feel like LionEY games understood that players don't want generative AI since they didn't include that in their subsequent game.

The second metaphorical elephant is the zero review moniker. I didn't do my due diligence and actually check if there were any reviews for this game. Turns out there's 11 of them. So technically that disqualifies cryptic escape from being a zero review game. Looking at the reviews, however, I suspect that all of them were comped. And comped reviews don't show up in your review queue. And looking at the reviews left, it appears that most of them are one to two sentences saying the game is good.  To me, this looks like the developer trying to get over the 10 review threshold to have his game show up. That's not a bad thing, per se, but as shown by it appearing in my zero review list, I don't think the way the designer did it worked.  So, a little bit of a lesson for everyone, I guess.

So, with all that being said, how can cryptic escape be made better? The first low-hanging fruit I would pursue would be to rework the music and sound effects to better reflect what they're trying to make. And by that I mean crunchier sound effects, more variety of music, that sort of thing. If the point of the game is to be in the dungeon, make it feel good to be in there.  That's the centerpiece of your game, after all. Make it sound like that's where you put most of your effort. 

There are some small visual effects on screen when you get too close to an enemy. I think this is a good first step in making the dungeons feel better. As another piece of low hanging fruit, the designer could add torches and dark spots to make it feel darker and less like a game jam. A greater variety of props in the dungeon, and maybe dedicated rooms to add a hand curated touch, would go a long way to making each dungeon level feel unique. And like the audio portion, you want to make sure that the player feels like this is where you spent most of your effort. The level of effort that's in here now is fine for a short game. But I get the feeling that this game wanted to be more than what is actually there. And because of that it feels hollow. As more monsters populate the dungeon levels, it's somewhat alleviated, but it's never completely gone.

Now, I haven't been very deep in the dungeons, but there are opportunities to introduce more variety in layouts. It's important to make sure each run of the dungeon feels unique. And it doesn't right now.  Other rogue lite games, such as Spelunky, there are ideas such as moods for a level. I feel like cryptic escape would benefit greatly if there were some sub varieties of dungeons, especially in the earlier levels. The ultimate goal of this is to make sure that your players don't see the seams of your game so quickly.  As it stands, I could see the seams of the first dungeon very quickly. And I hadn't even put an hour into this game before seeing those seams. Especially in run-based games, you want to make sure that although you're doing the same thing each time, it doesn't feel repetitive. 

In the end, I feel like this game unfortunately is where it should be in terms of reviews. It's not as bad as some of the other zero review games I've played, but like pixel knight, the extra level of polish needed to get it out of low review territory just isn't there. And I feel like that's a shame. The premise is interesting. The moment to moment action can be compelling. But it doesn't have the longevity needed to actually make a full game out of it as it stands right now. If there was another polishing pass and the AI capsule art were removed, I feel like this game would stand up on a similar level as Pixel Dungeon.  And that's what comes to mind as a comparable game for cryptic escape. It feels like this game reached the point in development where content mountain comes into view and the developer said, "nah, I think it's good where it is."  That's a shame, because I feel like if they put in that extra effort, did some market comparisons, and polished their game up to their competitors' standards, this game would have found a larger audience than it did.  Without that work, it's doomed to the sub-one thousand review pool with so many other games.

Well, that's about all that I have for Cryptic Escape. As always, if you are the designer or developer of this game, reach out to me. I would love to talk about your game design process and how you made Cryptic Escape. And if you aren't and have comments and or questions, leave them in the comments below or reach out to me on various social media.  My handle is @jcsirron. This has been the Adventure Mechanics side quest and I will talk to you next time. 

No Review Games on Steam: Pixel Knight

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 Pixel Knight: 

Welcome to another Adventure Mechanics Side Quest. I'm Chandler. Today we're going to continue the zero review games series on Steam with Pixel Knight.  Pixel Knight was released in 2023 under Eross Video Games.  It's not their first game, either on Steam or on Itch. They have since released the beginning of another game on Itch a month after releasing Pixel Knight in 2023. So, we aren't talking about developers first game here.  Although the developer may be inexperienced, they have released several games before Pixel Knight. It does appear they have gone dormant after their last game in 2023, with no notable updates or new releases since then, however.

But let's talk about the game in question.  Pixel Knight is a platforming beat 'em up. In it, you will face platforming challenges on top of fighting various flavors of goomba style monsters. The artwork is very good, although it is missing a lot of transition frames, such as jumping and getting hit. I'm not particulalry surprised, since I was able to find the asset pack used for the skeleton enemy on Itch.io.  As such, I'm not going to comment further on the art, since it's likely composed almost entirely from asset packs.  The choice of packs do work well together, which is is a point to the designer.  I will, however, note that even when you purchase assets, unless the license forbids modification, change them to fit your game, like making jump animations for the main player. I talked about assets more in a previous side quest if you're interested in more of my thoughts on asset packs.

The musical choices in the game are surprisingly upbeat and definitely make the vibe of the game more engaging. I suspect that the music follows art, in that it's likely a "best fit" instead of music composed for the game directly.  Like art, that means I'll only be critiquing on how it fits the game.  Some of the pairings, such as the level select screen, don't really match the rest of the theming.  If the designer chose music more holistically and went for a specific style, then the audio scape may have been a bit better. 

There are a lot of additional mechanics in this game that you can engage with, or you can ignore. There is a dash, for example that I never touched while I was testing this game. It shows in the steam trailer, but I never ended up feeling like I had to use it. Overall, this game is a decent representation of an action platformer, but there are a lot of things missing and that is holding the game back.

Let's talk about movement. In an action platformer, you typically have a ramp up to max speed ramp down situation. It makes the game feel like it has weight. This game is all or nothing in terms of speed. And that doesn't feel great. Jumping has no pre or post jump animations, and this makes it feel stilted while jumping. There's no animation of the player in air, either up or down, which only adds to the stilted feel of the movement. I didn't notice jumping itself feeling particularly bad, per se, but it didn't feel great, either.  And may the jump gods have mercy on your soul if you want to attack in mid-air.  That WILL kill all horizontal momentum and send you to the briny depths. I know it sounds like I am harping on this game's movement, and I am, but it is competing with the likes of Shovel Knight, Hollow Knight, Abathor, to say nothing of pure platformers like any entry in the Super Mario series. And missing the most fundamental mechanic of the game is going to turn off players at the very start. If the developers spent more time working on how movement felt, I feel like this game would have reached a larger audience alone. Level design needs to be changed as well. 

For some reason, the designer has a fetish for blind jumps and jumps just at the edge of the players capability. I know that creates tension, but from level 1 to when I stopped playing, every jump felt like it was going to be my end. And, don't get me started on how the blind jumps we're not telegraphed very well. It even shows one in the steam trailer for this game. If you watch the video and that blind jump doesn't bother you, great, you might enjoy this game. But I don't know very many people that enjoy blind jumps. They weren't fun in platformers in the '90s and they're not fun now.

The one note jumps make all the levels feel absolutely basic. There is just enough detail in the background to not call it a test level. It's not much beyond that, though. If the designer wanted to continue working on this game, he needs to go back and think of the challenges that each level is going to have. The leaps of faith and blind jumps each level gets tiresome very quickly and there's not much beyond running from the left to the right with some borderline unfair jumping challenges in between. If certain levels were dedicated to more interesting challenges, or interactions with the enemies, then I feel like this game would have a lot more to it. I'll save most of my thoughts on the enemies for later, though.

The second part of the game is the combat. It is basic, but it has just enough feedback to the player that it is functional. It's not great, much like the movement was, but it is good enough. The player can strike from head to toe with one click and take out the vast majority of enemies quickly. Most of the enemies will flash when hit and emit a sound along with usually a pain state. This is the very minimum I expect from a game that involves combat. It does not do anything beyond this, though. Yes, there is a dash, but as I said earlier you don't really need it. There is also magic, but again, you don't really need it. There are a lot of stats in this game that you won't ever really care about. There's a lot of mechanics that you won't ever use. Do you get where I'm going with this? The designer put more mechanics in before they fully fleshed out any of the mechanics.  They're all functional, but none of them feel great.  Even fighting enemies feels bad in the trailer on the same page. It seems like the designer was trying to make it feel like a slower game than it is, especially when you can speed click enemies to death.  If I can speed click an enemy to death, why would I want to use dashing or magic? The main solution I can think of is to make the enemies more interesting. But that isn't in the game. 

As I said in the beginning, enemies will move left to right on a platform. Once they either hit the edge or the end of their patrol route they will turn around and go to their other edge.  This isn't bad for a starting enemy, but as far as I've gotten into the game, every enemy has this behavior. There are no static enemies that provide a combat challenge. There are no real flying enemies, aside from one that is placed slightly above your attack range. On that note, there are no range enemies for that matter. If they are found later in the game, like in the infinite dungeon, they are introduced too late to be relevant.  Combat ends up being one note and flat.  If there were more variance, it would make the game more engaging.  But as it stands, enemies don't add much to the game.

When you visit town, you will experience the trouble with UI.  You can open up inventory, magic, or whatever with a single button press.  That's not the issue.  The issue is when you want to do anything on the windows.  I was able to brute force myself into figuring out how to stash things, sell loot, and purchase potions.  I never could figure out how to upgrade equipment, however.  Sure, you can put your greaves in the upgrade window with components, but how do you actually do the upgrade?  The menu doesn't say, nor does it show anything helpful in the controls.  This game seems to revel in being obnoxiously obtuse.  For instance, you can not only open up the inventory, but you can open up the pets, magic, and trade windows all at once, too!  Not the type of thing you want to see in your UI.  At all.  Having more control explanation, possibly being optional to turn off in each menu, would go a long way towards making them more user friendly and understandable.

Does this game deserve to be put on the no-review list?  Maybe.  There is an interesting idea here, but it's either not fleshed out enough or not implemented well.  Pixel Knight feels like a game that was made by one person that did not get any notable feedback from playtesters before being released.  If it did get playtest time, it certainly wasn't blind playtesting.  And it made the game so much worse for that.  Yes, the game has a low price and yes, it's a relatively short play, but if the developer wanted it to actually find an audience, there needs to be a lot more work done, mechanically, artistically, layout-wise.  Considering I'm reviewing it years after the fact, I doubt it will ever reach an audience beyond the morbidly curious.  I certainly understand why it has no reviews after examining it, though.

I don't want to bash on this game any more than needed to understand why it's on the no review list, though, so I'll stop here.  If you are the developer and want to talk about Pixel Knight, please reach out!  I would love to hear what you went through designing this game and what process you had.  If you're just a listener and have thoughts on this game or this series, reach out below or on various social media.  My handle is @jcsirron.  This has been another Adventure Mechanics Side Quest.  I'll talk to you next time.