Color Phase

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Good lord! I estimate ZERO play-testing was done in half these levels!

"Color Phase" is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from Arizona State University in the Americas. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. This semester the students banged out a low quality 3D platformer with a grapple swing mechanism and puzzle platforming orientated around the characters colours. This game is fairly dated at 5 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now. The visuals are poor even for a student project, with low poly, low quality assets with low res, low quality textures on them. It's looks rough and near-minimalist (perhaps not intentionally). As a student project we shouldn't be surprised that this demo tier product has sloppy controls, handling, zero polish and zero optimisation. It doesn't run well and it doesn't play well. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. It would be unethical for students to try charge money for their homework assignments, so you don't have to pay any money for this. But you'd still have to spend your time downloading this, and "time is money", as they say. There's the other problem, too... as a student project, this wasn't made for gamers. There's no requirement for them to polish and balance the game properly, all they need is something to show the faculty so they can get their grade and move on. Let's once more ask... why is that good for gamers? It's obviously not delivering a solid product. Yet here it is, on the store page, and here you are, reading my review for a student demo that's going to waste your time. While genuine amateur developers who made real products get ignored because they have to compete with this stuff. In some ways, this deluge of student projects on Steam is harmful to everyone. In terms of public reception, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it. Given that this free student project won't count toward your game collection or add any achievements, and because it's not really a full game and more of a homework assignment, it's not a worthwhile download.