A Step From Insanity

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"A Step From Insanity" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not. This godawful pixelcrap disaster is donationware (the developer wants your money for his hamfisted misrepresentation of mental health issues) and tries to jab a "meta" into the whole thing by injecting Pony Island-esque "crazyness" into the whole garbage platforming experience. As a platformer, it's crap, as "art", it's why art galleries have to take out restraining orders. Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming. Trying to address serious issues such as mental and emotional health through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. The "developer" here is not a professional in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this is not only utterly ineffective, it can be harmful. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to address mental health issues. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get attention/fame by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here. This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. The developer has their hand out for a $2 USD "donation" for this as you're expected to give them money for soundtrack DLC (that's already in the game) from Steam to "support" the "developer"... digital panhandling. Like the homeless guys who splash dirty water on your windscreen at the traffic lights. No thanks. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 4 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Given that this free title won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library? Definitely not. This isn't worth it. I'm paraphrasing another reviewer here, but this should be a paid product... they'd have to pay people to download it.