"Sky Conquest" is maybe a student project or something? It's free, and the quality is better than what your average amateur game developer is capable of. Of course, and despite the okay-ish looking graphics, this isn't a complete game, it severely lacks polish, to the point it's janky and un-fun at the one job it has, which is to be a cute kind of platformer for kids. Oh well. At least it's not an RPG Maker asset flip, so we should be thankful for small mercies.
What do you do in the game? There's a slew of different activities in this platformer (some implemented, some just advertised but abandoned) which, if the quality here was any good, would have made this a winner. Alas, testing and polish are also needed for a game to be successful. This wasn't.
The developers abandoned this 1 year and 8 months ago. It will never be completed. This unfinished game is just polluting Steam and making it harder for gamers to find genuinely, completely made games.
The lack of customizable controls is a significant drawback. This decision makes the game potentially unplayable for gamers with physical disabilities, left-handed players, or those using non-QWERTY keyboard layouts like AZERTY.
This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
On the important subject of visuals, this features fairly low quality stylised/cartoony low poly 3D graphics. It comes across as the kind of thing you see on mobile phones and Nintendo games, which will deter a lot of PC gamers, understandably. Gaming is a visual medium, and to be considered one of the best games on Steam, the graphics have to be some of the best on Steam. That's not happening here.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
Most "free" games on Steam aren't really free. There's usually some kind of monetisation, from nasty mobile app cash shops, or content locked behind DLC, or donations being requested, to any other number of shady pricing schemes that could mislead gamers, but in this case I'm glad to say this really does appear to be a fully free game.
Nothing demonstrates a developers belief in themselves and their work than giving it away without any remuneration. This is a service to themselves, and the gaming industry, and should be applauded. Of course, just because something is free, doesn't necessarily mean it's valuable, or something you might want to spend your time on.
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.
Since free games don't contribute to your game collector badge and other profile stuff, is this a worthwhile addition to your Steam library?
This is a hard pass. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.
