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. 

Digging into user reviews

 Welcome to The Adventure Mechanics, it's me, Chandler.  I've noticed that a lot of eager game devs want to "know the secret" of marketing your game.  How do I know?  Well, the best performing side quest on game development we've had was on how to start your market research.  And since that's a point of interest, I'm going to talk about it again, but with a smaller context this time around.  Today, I want to focus in on user reviews and what you can learn from them, and more importantly, how to use them to make your game better.

Now, why would you want to dig into other games' user reviews?  It's not your game, nor is it a carbon copy of  you're making now, at least ideally.  Well, the answer is rather simple.  You can examine what bothers players in other games in your genre/niche/whatever and use that to inform your game's development path.  That one piece of UI that just drives players nuts in that other game?  You can make your UI more sleek.  It's a way to learn from those that came before you on what you can do better without having to make the same mistakes.  You can then make all new mistakes and learn and teach others not to make them.  Hopefully your mistakes end up more lucrative, at the very least.

In my first marketing side quest, I said you should go through the existing market and come up with a list of comparable games that you can use to estimate how much you could potentially get from making your game.  Assuming you've gone and done that footwork, you'll have a ready list of user reviews to pull from.  This is where the real fun begins.  You're going to have to read through their reviews and start noting what is popular, what isn't, and what the players wish they could do in the other games.  This isn't a "sexy" part of market research, but it's entirely necessary.  If you are making a game similar in vibes, mechanics, or whatever, and that mechanic you plan on adding in is a hated feature of the games you're researching, maybe it isn't a mechanic that is necessary.  Or maybe it's something you'll need to adjust and re-imagine to either answer or side step the complaints of the players.  Either way, you'll be saving yourself some headache by being aware of that as an issue before spending time making it in the first place.

Let's do a specific example.  Let's say Cartogratour played most like Carto from the previous market research we did in the last Side Quest.  Let's dive into the Carto from a high level.  At time of writing, it's overwhelmingly positive with over six thousand reviews.  That's promising, especially if Cartogratour plays similarly.  That's a good first pass.  That means there's potential in the design.  But, what is the typical reason for the positive reviews?  Barring going through all six thousand reviews, we'll go off the reviews shown as most helpful in the last thirty days.  Looking at those, it's apparent that the key phrases used in Carto reviews are: cozy, comfy, short, puzzle, little, simple mechanics, great visuals.  Great, these are all descriptors that I also want to apply to Cartogratour, so the audience I'm aiming for not only exists, but also will enjoy these if I execute them well in my game.

Now, let's look at the most helpful negative reviews from the last thirty days.  These are where the sticking points people have with Carto.  The descriptors that show up in these I'm actually going to split into two: positive and negative.  It seems odd, but there's value in seeing what people who won't recommend Carto still enjoyed from the game, even if it's just something that they put out to make their review more "even handed."  On the negative side, we have the following: simple puzzles, childish story, only one solution to puzzles, poor interface, repetitive music and sound effects, unskippable cut scenes, boring story.  It seems like the main problem people had were lack of challenge for puzzles, agency on ways to solve puzzles, bouncing off the story for a variety of reasons and UI issues.  None of these are game breakers, specifically.  It means that I need to make sure that whatever puzzles I put into the game are clear and signposted in a variety of ways.  I also need to make sure that any issues with my user interfaces are ironed out and tested by a lot of people before I call it "good enough."  In terms of story telling, giving the player an option to skip it if they're not interested in it is going to be mandatory if I want to keep the focus on the puzzles.  Now, there is an argument to be made that forcing the story to the front is worthwhile, but doing that will cause the same complaints to be made about my game if I choose to make it that way.  I'll save that for when we go over the overall takeaways, though.

On to the positives in these reviews: creative puzzle mechanics, cute artwork, well polished, original concept and artwork.  It seems even those who didn't like the game itself liked the artwork, polish and novelty of the puzzle mechanic.  Applying this to Cartogratour, it means that I need to come up with an art style that evokes the sense of wonder from exploration.  In terms of novelty of the puzzle mechanic, I'll need to have new play testers come in and try the game out, possibly people that are interested in puzzle/mapping games specifically.  *I* think my game has a novel puzzle loop, but I'm also the developer.  That means I'm too close to it to be objective and I need to get some more people involved in the feedback cycle to vibe check me.  And, of course, polish, polish, polish.  The never-ending bugaboo of any game developer.  The more you polish your game, the more people will be interested in continuing it.  The reality of having your game polished possibly beyond what you think is necessary will never really go away.

So, what are the takeaways from diving into the reviews of Carto?  Even this cursory look at the "most helpful" reviews from the last thirty days reveals that the strengths of Carto are it's novel puzzle mechanic and cute aesthetic.  The main perceived weaknesses are boring and limiting puzzle design and story coupled with poor user interfaces.  Is this fair?  To be sure, I need to play the game.  And as a developer working on something similar, I already have done so.  I don't necessarily agree with the criticisms made of Carto, but I can certainly see where the frustrations are coming from.  I won't go into my full thoughts of the game, but I bring it up because this is also an important step, whether you enjoy the game or not.  At the very least, you need to have a familiarity and opinion of other games in your game's genre.  Whether you play the game before looking at reviews or after is up to you.  Playing before reviews gives you the most raw opinion of it, whereas playing afterwards will cue you into the perceived weaknesses in the game you're examining.  Both approaches have value and it'll be up to you to decide what information you want more.  I would limit the games you play for research to one or two titles that closest represent the game you're making, however.  Getting too many games just means you're adding to your "to play" backlog and not actually focusing your efforts on your game research.  So, be mindful of that.

The last part I want to focus in on is internalizing the feedback from other games.  Earlier, I mentioned that one of the pieces of feedback for Carto was the unskippable cut scenes and rather basic story.  If one of my design pillars is a heavy influence from storytelling elements, I may still want to include unskippable story beats.  And that may be the right choice to make, too.  But that is something you'll have to weigh before putting it into your game.  There is going to be a group of players that will just bounce off your game because of this choice.  They just want more engaging puzzles, in the case of Carto.  Your choice to bring the story to the fore will lose them.  And as long as you're aware of that and accept it, do it.  Not every game should be made for everyone.  This is just one example, but you will eventually need to make hard choices like these to make sure you're building for the audience you want.  And more specifically, not building your game by committee and losing sight of who you are making it for in the first place.  If the feedback you get from diving into similar games actively conflicts with your vision of your game, don't just discard it, prioritize it.  If it's not high on the priority list, then consider accepting it as the tradeoff for your idea.

Anyway, I feel like this is a good point to call this side quest.  If you're ambitious, don't limit your review diving to the last 30 days, look at the entire backlog of reviews.  Just keep in mind that if the game is actively changing, you're going to have to discard older data that is no longer relevant.  As always, if you have any questions or comments, reach out to me on various social media as jcsirron or leave a comment on this side quest.  This has been an Adventure Mechanics side quest and I'm Chandler.  I'll talk to you next time.