"Julia: A Science Journey" is a complete disaster from every single direction you see it from... it just keeps getting worse. Let's break it down. But first, what is this?
It's touted as an "educational" game that pushes mental health and political agendas (an amazing double-whammy of things that must never be done, and that's just the start). This is more of an e-book than a game (ugh) that follows a schoolgirl (why are amateur developers so obsessed with schoolgirls) during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the developer pushes his own unqualified ideas at gamers in an attempt to educate gamers on Steam. Not to put too fine a point on it, but at no point ever should video games be trying to educate you on matters of virology or mental health.
Worse... this isn't even the game!! It's just a demo/prologue/advertisement but the developer couldn't be bothered making the rest of it. This is just here to pollute Steam. An advertisement for political indoctrination.
Now lets talk about the purpose of this garbage, which, of course, is totally unrelated to gaming (and gaming is why we are here).
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.
Following on from the developer pretending to be a mental healthcare professional, whether we may or may not agree with the cause, it's my firm belief that politics of any kind has no place in gaming. It does no service to gamers at all for political or social agenda to be shoved down our throats, no matter which side is doing the shoving. We're here to have fun, not get indoctrinated.
Because the primary purposes of this product are totally unrelated to gaming, this really just makes gaming worse, and does nothing to further the developers political crusade. This is one of those things that gives amateur developers such a bad name.
For gameplay purposes, because the user interface for this game is mostly just 2D static text/images... it might as well be a web page. It's functionally no different from a browser game. And we all know, Steam isn't here to compete with Chrome and Firefox. If the game can be done in a web browser, it's just not rich or compelling enough to appeal to serious gamers on PC.
There's an overwhelming amount of mediocre Visual Novel/E-book style cutscenes in this game. The developers failed one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of game design.. "Show, don't tell." So you'll spend a huge amount of time not playing the game, but clicking through endless lines of poorly written VN text cutscenes because the developers couldn't work out how to relate their narrative through the game mechanics, and decided instead it would be better to compete with reading a book for your time.
We're here to play games, not read through hours of garbage intersituals. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle.
The game features really lacklustre 2D visuals (does the developer not know 3D graphics became mainstream in the mid-1990s?). Gamers don't spend thousands of dollars on gaming rigs and the latest 3D graphics cards to play 2D games. Even mobile phones and game consoles can do 3D graphics now. There's no excuse.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
Even as a free product, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 5 users[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time with this.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it?
Nope. This isn't worth downloading. I didn't pay money, but I still feel ripped off.
