RectRacer Reviews

RectRacer is yet another of literally thousands of low quality retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This one seems to have been made more as an academic exercise or a hobby project than as a serious product for gamers... which begs the question, why then is this on Steam? Gameplay is very basic stuff, you push a low poly cube around a low poly textureless environment, get to the exit as quick as you can, so you can get a (local only) high score! See if you can beat your own time! Endless replayabilty! Ugh. The shallow game design is matched perfectly with a craptacular, lazy and unprofessional technical implementation. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The game features lazy minimalist/untextured low-polygon "retro" assets and visuals, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. The lack of textures is a method that lazy devs often use to disguise their lack of talent/interest in doing the graphics properly and trying to disguise it under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, and that's just another reason to avoid it. The game only displays in a bizarre 3:4 aspect ratio (pillarboxed if you use the fullscreen option, but there's no point). It's unclear why such an unconventional aspect ratio is used, certainly, it makes a poor looking game look even worse on a widescreen display. My theory is that the developer found an old CRT from 1994 in a dumpster, didn't know how to use a monitor so turned it on its side and that's how they use their computer. The controls and game handling are notably very clunky and unsmooth here. It's janky and unsatisfying to play... and any experienced gamer will tell you, the handling, responsiveness and general gameplay feel of the control scheme must be well polished for this kind of game to succeed. Unfortunately, this is something the developer seems to have phoned in, with little to no apparent gameplay testing. They dropped the ball on this one. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. RectRacer is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.