The Rare Nine Reviews

There is rarely nine of them.

Life-changing experience

fun enough for its price

The Rare Nine is a laughably badly made abandoned Early Access 2D retro pixel side scrolling arcade brawler with lightweight adventure game elements. Gameplay, if you can get the game to work, involves running around madly mashing buttons to try fight hordes of badly done 2D retro pixel zombies... this is just garbage. The game was abandoned roughly 4 months after launch and hasn't been updated in 5 years, it's dead. The game will never be completed. This should have been pretty apparent when the game launched because the developer dodged Valve's requirement for developers under Early Access to provide an ETA... and wouldn't you know it, they followed through by dodging their obligation to finish the game, instead opting to take gamers money and run for the hills. The absolute state of amateur "indie" developers right here, folks. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals. 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. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs. Amusingly, there's a long list of credits for this abandoned game, but of course the developer didn't bother to credit Yoyogames, who did 99% of the work on the game through GMS. 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 4 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, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Unethically, the developer sold keys to this abandoned Early Access game into cheap, nasty game bundles, where they knew it would be advertised and sold as a complete PC game. This seems to have been done in an attempt to mislead gamers into buying a knowingly faulty, defective and incomplete product. When a developer does this for a game they have zero practical intention of completing, this is essentially a scam, an intention to get paid for a broken/unfinished product. This appears to have been done as an exit strategy, as the developer took the money and ran. No refunds have been given, the developer kept all the money they took from gamers. The Rare Nine is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend.

Still in dev, like "coding arrow keys movement is an odyssey for us, but we will figure this out maybe in the 2069".

looks like a cool game, but i wouldnt know cuz the game speed is tied to the frame rate (that being 150fps for me). how long has this been a terrible practice? 20 years? yeah? ok

All right, so I just bought the game for not even a dollar because curiousity got me and I saw a lot of people complaining about it. When I bought it, it was less than a dollar and the price has dropped to $4, and I find that acceptable. Positives; Music; The music is pretty dang good and it's a good fit for the game. Theme; A group of nine survivors fighting their way down to the bottom of a skyscraper through hordes of zombies, I like the theme here because what awaits us at the bottom? I am curious to what the 'sins' thing is. I know that the survivors are going to have to go through a metaphorical 'Hell', but I wonder if there's something more sinister at play. Action: The action is fast paced and I certainly enjoy a good beat'em up that is fast. The zombies are often defeated with one hit which helps clear things up. Graphics; While they are primitive, they are decent to look at and there's a lot of attention to detail. Negatives; EDIT; All right, I wrote these down after about twenty minutes of playing. I did get used to the controls and how fast everything was. It takes about an hour of playing for you to get it down. Also, play as Jonah Jameson. Way too much going on the screen/Everything going too fast: I understand the game is supposed to be fast paced and maybe I'll get used to it, but my first impression is that there is waaaaaaaay too much going on. I'm trying to throw bottles at the zombies and before I know it, there's like three flashes and I get hit with three hordes. I know my level was on Hard but the zombies move at about 40 mph and I can't seem to get a break to flip the switches I'm supposed to. I was too busy trying to make sure my health didn't drop like a stone (It's hard to describe. It's like one second I'm not taking damage despite how close the zombies are and the next, my health ticks down by a quarter and I don't have as many zombies around). Control Scheme; The control scheme on the controler and keyboard is a bit confusing and I wish I could edit it. I also feel the sprites are too big for what's going on, the player being surrounded by a huge mass of zombies. Take a game I hold dear to my heart; Risk of Rain. The sprites were incredibly small, but at the same time, it helped you keep track of the sheer number of enemies and projectiles coming at you. Another good example of this is Dead Pixels, where you had more real estate on the screen to keep track of enemies as they try to overwhelm you. In this game, everyone moves at the speed of light and it's hard to keep track of it all. Mother Russia Bleeds is also a good example of having a beat'em up with large numbers of enemies, but the game includes things to help you manage crowds like your punches being able to pierce the crowd and being able to stun enemies so you can have a breather. I keep having a problem where I'm holding down the movement keys yet my character comes to a stop after I hit the ability buttons. I know it's a minor thing, but I keep expecting to move after I throw a punch which leaves me confused on why I'm standing still or facing the wrong way after throwing a punch. Overall; For a game that got released back on Halloween of last year and had it's first major update in January, I really can't judge it at the moment since it's in a 0.2 state. I think it accomplishes what it set out to do, but there's a lot of flaws this early in the game. Is it worth the $4 for early access of this game? I would say yes. There's a lot of potential here to be good, but a lot of work needs to be done.

the game is kinda fun lol hard but fun lol the pixel art and the music is is quite nice the game is simple pick a character and do the game objective either survive or destroy something lol i recommend it this game dev is funny

The game offers an enjoyable experience, blending challenge with fun. The pixel art and music are quite appealing. It features straightforward gameplay where you select a character and aim to either survive or eliminate targets. I highly recommend it; the game developer has a great sense of humor! The Rare Nine is an ultrafast and explosive beat 'em up, where players must navigate through darkness and battle hordes of undead within a towering skyscraper. Additionally, you can immerse yourself in fantastic chiptune music. Players can receive random objectives from the "Wheel of Fortune" and collect rare "Artifacts" that drop from enemies or various objects in the levels.

Total 💩. This game is an absolute mess that has apparently already been abandoned by its crummy developer. Says full controller support but my Xbox 360 pad has yet to work with this POS. Played with the keyboard and was aghast at just how horrible this game is. Don’t expect this to ever leave Early Access and do not waste your time and money on this turd Dear developer - Stop polluting Steam and video games in general with your crap. 🤮