"Sir Fallen" is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro pixel platformers infesting Steam and making the average quality of video games slightly lower just by existing. This is an extremely run of the mill platformer with a bit of a "frustrating difficulty" gimmick going on... but nothing really interesting to distinguish it from any of the other thousands of amateur platformers mostly being ignored by gamers who have better things to do.

This features really godawful, lazy pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks bad because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded despite the bad graphics, not because of them.

This is only free in a rudimentary ("rudimentary" means limited to the basic principle only, undeveloped or basic form of the term "freedom", but if you look beyond the rudimentary, you can see it's not "free") sense... the developer has their hand out for $10 USD worth of "donations" for this as you're expected to buy some extra, somewhat empty DLC from Steam, just to give money to the developer, so he can have your money... digital panhandling. Like the homeless guys who splash dirty water on your windscreen at the traffic lights. No thanks.

Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 14 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.

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. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off.

Developer Response!

The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the Developer Usage Rules for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:

Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.

The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are The Main Character. You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind. They did so to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet The Main Character.

The developer admits to being inexperienced and lacking knowledge as a game developer (we could already tell from the quality of this product). If I went to a restaurant, got sick from eating bad food, and got told "The chef is new and has never cooked food before", would that make it okay? No, it wouldn't. The developer supplied a very valid reason why this should never have been put up on Steam in the first place.

The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.

Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

Edit: It looks like the developer is engaging in review manipulation by coercing or using alt accounts or associates to write fake reviews for the game, in breach of Valve terms and conditions, resulting in some stalking and harassment. I will not be intimidated or silenced.

amazing game super hard super fun

fun