Ranking 200 Random Steam Buy-to-Play Games [Part III: #96–85]
We’ll be looking at the games in the borderline category. These games have a lot of positives, yet due to various issues aren’t of sufficient quality, lack sufficient content, or have other issues of concern.
#96 Antaria Online
Developer/Publisher: Antaria, LLC
Release Date: October 4th, 2017
Price: Removed from store but was previously $1.99
Reviews: 66% positive — Mixed.
Tags: Multiplayer, Massively Multiplayer, RPG, MMORPG, Casual, Cute, PvE.
Supported Platforms: Windows, Linux.
This title was initially ranked much higher on the list. It’s a fairly standard, cutesy grinder MMORPG that really doesn’t offer much variety in character creation and progression, builds, environments, or anything else to make it stand out. It worked and had a mostly complete lore and main story line.
The developer of the game closed the Discord, posted one message to Steam stating the game is closing, and abandoned the community. For that reason, this game is being ranked lower. The developer previously worked on Fantasy Online, a much beloved MMORPG that also closed down under less than ideal circumstances. This lack of involvement with the community is abhorrent for a community-centric game.
Grade:
#95 Surviving West
Developer/Publisher: Nemo Studios
Release Date: September 24th, 2021
Price: $5.99
Reviews: 21 of 32 reviews are positive [66%]
Tags: Multiplayer, PvP, Hentai, FPS.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
I followed this developer’s first project on Steam somewhat closely. It was called Corma and had numerous issues, not much content, and the final state I saw the game in was completely broken. The developer went back to the drawing board and brought Surviving West (or just “West”) to Steam early access. This game is a huge improvement over Corma, but it’s still far from being what I would call a good game.
Unsure whether this is a purposeful design choice or a feature that hasn’t been implemented yet, but the game starts with you in the world with no real direction, tutorial, or anything. It’s about as basic as a survival game can get, but adds quite a bit of frustration due to not explaining much of the game to the player. The world has a unified, coherent aesthetic that has a cartoon-ish feel to it. Animations and character models aren’t that great.
This is a potentially decent world and a few systems that one could use as a starting template for building an open world game. In it’s current state, it just lacks much of a game.
Grade: C — Huge improvement over developer’s last release but it’s lack of direction, poor animations, lack of character customization and some characters with so much muscle definition that it looks silly , and other issues keep this game from being a recommend.
#94 Project Tank
Developer/Publisher: Diving in Studio
Release Date: March 1st, 2018
Price: $1.99
Reviews: No reviews.
Tags: Multiplayer, PvP, Massively Multiplayer, RPG, MMORPG, Military.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
I love games that try to do something different in an established genre. In this case, it’s an MMORPG where you play as a tank. The maps are fairly basic, but the art style is coherent. The quests are extremely basic fetch and kill tasks.
There’s the novelty of being a tank here but not much else. The game has a long road ahead if it wants to be a competitive MMORPG.
Grade: C — Repetitive content, lack of content, and boring gameplay. Developer answers questions and engages with the player community. The grade was bumped from a Not Recommend to Borderline on the basis of my interactions with the developer.
#93 Racingmaybe
Developer/Publisher: JHoffis
Release Date: July 10th, 2020
Price: $4.99
Reviews: 8 of 10 reviews are positive [80%]
Tags: Multiplayer, PvP, Racing.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
Racingmaybe is an ambitious drag racing project that involves just that: drag racing. You can use your winnings from races to upgrade your car. There’s a niche market somewhere out there that would love a drag racing simulation, but the gameplay itself falls shoot for me.
Best of luck to this developer! Even though I didn’t give a recommendation, I do believe this title has the potential improve and become one of the many hidden gems on Steam.
Grade: C — The developer appears o have put a lot of time and effort into this project and continues to do so at the time of writing this. The gameplay becomes repetitive quite quickly. If you are a fan of drag racing video games, definitely pick this one up.
#92 The Black Death
Developer/Publisher: Syrin Studios, Small Impact Games / Syrin Studio
Release Date: April 19, 2016
Price: Removed purchasing options. My key was under $2.
Reviews: 1308 of 2153 reviews are positive [79%]
Tags: Multiplayer, Massively Multiplayer, MMORPG, PvE, PvP, RPG, Survival.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
The concept of this game is great: MMORPG in a universe where the plague has caused many locals to die. It’s spreading too! Based on screenshots and video, this game looks absolutely stunning.
This game is full of bugs and plays like your typical “sandbox” MMORPG, where there’s no lore, the NPCs are lifeless, and more. Updates have slowed to an extremely slow crawl, too. There’s hardly any store content or quests. The beautiful world feels like it’s lifeless, much like the NPCs.
Grade: C — Unfinished, very buggy, and likely abandoned. There’s a concept and a starting framework for a brilliant game.
#91 Block King
Developer/Publisher: Chris_Antoni
Release Date: February 3rd, 2017
Price: $0.99
Reviews: 24 reviews are positive [96%]
Tags: Multiplayer, PvP, FPS.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
Chris Antoni was a prolific XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) developer. Many of his Xbox 360 gems are now on Steam. Unfortunately, Block King is not a gem.
Block King is a game where you try to shoot the floor underneath enemies to make them fall. Last one on the map wins. Lots of odd color choices and low quality graphics make this almost unplayable.
Grade: C — It just wasn’t fun. It’s a concept that’s been executed before, and executed without so many issues.
#87–90 Four Nacks Soft Titles
Developer/Publisher: Nacks Soft
Release Date: September 27th, 2019
Price: $0.49
Reviews: 1695 of 2153 reviews are positive [79%]
Tags: Multiplayer, PvP, Hentai, FPS.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
Same basic game but reskinned many times. I wasn’t able to find this on any of the asset kit selling sites. I’m making this assumption this game consists mostly of unique items.
This is a 2D scrolling brawler where you can move in and out of the background. It’s fairly standard but it plays fine. No control issues, game-crashing bugs, etc. Each game is fun, but not all that creative and very short (4 levels/each typically).
Here’s the rankings for these games
(90) Abiko the Miko
(89) Space Crisis
(88) Accel Magician Mimi
(87) Swordian Hero
Grade: C — I considered failing this series of games for its poor community support and for using the same engine 12 times with so little actual differences between each separate game.
#86 Farm Life: Natures Adventure
Developer/Publisher: BlockheadGames
Release Date: August 8th, 2016
Price: $0.99
Reviews:11 of 22 reviews are positive [50%]
Tags: Multiplayer, Farming, RPG, Sandbox, Life Sim.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
Looking for a serious, non-cutesy farming simulator? Try Farming Simulator, Ranch Simulator, or one of those titles. This one won’t be for you. It’s also lower quality than Sun Villa or Stardew Valley, but it’s price is appropriate for what you get if you are looking for a short-term, casual game. It’s very simple, has clunky controls, poor hit detection, and many of the townsfolk repeat the same lines. It appears to be a bit buggy too, with getting stuck and not being able to get home to save being a more common than it should be occurrence.
It’s a serviceable game if you can get it to run and manage to avoid the bugs. There are animals, crops, marriages, horse races, and more. It’s just not great. For $0.99, you get what you pay for and it’s not Stardew Valley or Sun Villa.
Grade: C — A serviceable but buggy, very simple farming RPG / simulator. There are much better options on the market.
#85 — Kingdom In Chaos
Developer/Publisher: Perish Arts
Release Date: January 25th, 2021
Price: $4.99
Reviews: 23 of 40 reviews are positive [58%]
Tags: Multiplayer, PvP, Open World, Massively Multiplayer, RPG, MMORPG, 3D.
Supported Platforms: Windows.
An open world MMORPG with Orcs as a playable race! This should be an easy recommend for me, but it’s not. This game was slotted toward the bottom of the list, given my first 3 attempts trying to play the game were unsuccessful due to the servers being down. Not only that, but the developer did not answer any questions of mine relating to whether this game is still in active development. A month later, I saw that it had a recent update and it worked!
This title is very early in development and appears to have a team of insufficient size to maintain a large, open world game, or it’s actually a solo developer project. It’s off to a reasonable start, but most of the questlines are uninspired fetch quests or kill tasks. Combat is fairly standard MMORPG tab-target fair, with less strategy involved than higher tier games.
It’s a decent technical demo and a horrible complete game. Investing in this requires trusting the developer, which I didn’t see anything other than the November 24th update to verify it’s still being worked on.
Grade: C — It’s early in development, so I’m being easy on the title. If this were a finished product, it would likely be in the 120–130 range. Developer seems to ignore the community for the most part. There’s a serviceable core.
Civil War: Battle of Petersburg [$0.99]American Patriots Boston Tea Party [$0.99]Project Gorgon [$39.99]Centipede: Recharged [$9.99]Alien Attack in Space [$4.99]Teddy Floppy Ear — The Race [$0.49]Imagination ($4.99)Angeldust [$2.99]Spookity Hollow [$7.99]Blood & Bacon [$0.99]Bean Battles [$0.99]
