Short version: Please take a moment to rate & review positively if you liked this or even if you just support the genre, bc it really matters to indie devs. Don’t let the whiners & selfish chumps dictate the game’s average, and make it harder for point & click adventure games to be made.
Full version:
People give a low rating and flat out admit they didn’t play it; stuck on a puzzle so it must be a glitch; “omg my precious sensibilities were triggered” by content in a game that says repeatedly up front it’s full of dark psychological humor, so low rating; and the eternal entitled classic- “I loved it but then the greedy dev wanted to be compensated for their work, how dare they?!” (from the same oafs who get addicted to increase-your-town/army’s-number-in-endless-linear-progression business model “games” that are “free,” and end up getting suckered into pointless IAPs).
And despite these petty, selfish people's petty, selfish whining, the developer bends over backward to be incredibly nice to them. Do devs of your so-called free games with a million players ever write genuine responses to reviews? Has anybody from a company churning out the endless parade of clones ever offered to personally assist a completely unreasonable person with getting a refund?? Of course not; since they simply buy their ratings & reviews in bulk from one of the many websites providing that service. They don’t care about legit grievances, much less the ridiculous ones; indeed, most don’t even bother with a standard form reply. They release products that required only the bare minimum of creative or cognitive effort to make & even less than to play; mass production exploiting an unregulated market. They take no risk, design everything from proven profitable bases, and keep the servers running as long as the money flows.
Compare that to this ONE person, doing all the work of creating an actual interactive story that’s entirely original. No assured profits, just the opposite. Even a really good game in this genre can fail to recoup costs, let alone provide any income whatsoever to the developer. Indie devs take a huge risk out of real passion for the project. No bought ratings here. All that, and to show such concern for players even when they’re jerks… remarkable.
The worst part is that even after all the dev could possibly do for these horrible people, they haven’t updated their ratings. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise– the entitled, 100% self-centered, thoughtless reviewers won’t suddenly become decent people, most probably never even saw the dev’s efforts.
So why the rant, if it doesn’t matter? Because not everyone is a jerk, most of us are just lazy. What I ask of anyone who read this or skipped to the end is this: If you liked this very generous amount of free preview, or the full game which is now available, take a minute to write a real quick positive review. It doesn’t have to be a novel like this one. Just a sentence to support the developer who put so much effort into keeping classic point and click adventures alive. Or at the very least, tap the 5* rating, no review required. And if you have some little grievance, don’t give a lower rating until you’ve tried contacting the dev first. Reviews aren’t the place to seek tech support. This dev genuinely wants to help no matter how big a doofus you are. Let them try before taking a dump on the game’s reputation.
Finally, if you think the full game’s cost is too high, please post a review directing us all to your equal or better game that you offer for less. No game? That’s ok, just tell us where you work, so we can all show up expecting the business's product or service to be free.