Astral Disorder

"Astral Disorder" is one of literally thousands of student projects infesting Steam. It's from SAU Game Studio in Arkansas. While student projects tend to be better quality than most "amateur" made games, we must still question what value such projects have for gamers. As with all student projects, this isn't really a fully fleshed out game, it's just the result of an academic exercise, and as such it has much more limited value as a game than a professionally developed game would have. Educational institutions should not be using Steam as a dumping ground for homework assignments (especially if the students didn't even pass the course). Sure, it helps their marketing and helps the students feel good about themselves, but this is another case of a business putting themselves before the needs of gamers. The students made a simple first person puzzle adventure game with a handful of little puzzles... like always with student projects, this is a tech demo more than a full game for gamers, there's not really enough content here to make you want to download it. Worse, again, like all student projects, this is riddled with bugs, lacks polish, and none of the broken aspects of the …

Feels like a bad Roblox game. Sound design is bad. Graphics are just plastic-looking. Gameplay is summarised in: go to room, find code, go to next room, find code, etc. Monster looks goofy and there's not even a cut scene of any kind when the monster gets you, you just get a "you've been caught" retry or quit screen. Not scary at all. Only positive is that it's free, but even then it's not even worth trying out because it's not even in the "so bad it's good" category. 0/10

I think it's important to take into account the fact that this is a project made by a class of students (as shown in the credits). [b]Astral Disorder[/b] is a short survival-horror game lasting around 20 to 30 minutes, where you play as the last survivor of an abandoned space station, with a monster lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce on you at every turn… It’s a small-scale project made in Unity, with modest ambitions, and it’s free. The game doesn’t bring anything new to the table: the gameplay revolves around collecting three items scattered around the map to access an evacuation shuttle, all while being chased by an unstoppable monster. Your only option is to run if you want to survive. The challenge isn’t especially tough, but the clunky movement doesn’t help much. Let’s just say it’s fine if you’re out of ideas and have 30 minutes to spare — but you have to look at it the way a parent does when their child gives them a portrait of themselves for Christmas: it’s ugly and a bit laughable, but considering it was made with good intentions, you make the effort to smile.

its not just that its so dark you cant see anything and theres no brightness setting, its also that even when you can see everything is just untextured shapes. there is no way of knowing whats interactive and whats not in the first place, so add to that it is dark and theres an unstoppable enemy constantly on your ass that seems to be both psychic and a moron and the game experience is essentially running at top speed like a bathtub on ice with rocket skates humping everything and mashing f cause maybe its the thing you need to do. the level design and visual signposting is so confusing and unintuitive. you enter a massive room, like MASSIVE. and are told to access a control room to get boots. but the objective says to access a different room? and the control room is immediately to your right on entering the massive room? why is the room so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ big if im just walking five steps to my immediate right? get what i mean? then im in another massive room, and i cant see ♥♥♥♥, and it tells me to activate five macguffins or whatever, and absolutely nothing is illuminated or highlighted or signposted, nothing. so the design is what? run around looking at stuff until one shows the in…

A trash waste of time , bugged & stupid, even the achievements.

This is a great example of how games don't have to be complex and have amazing graphics to be fun. I had a great time and a few laughs. "Partial controller support" is generous... Also the crouch being hold and sprint as toggle makes it impossible to navigate certain tight spots, getting "caught" trying to crouch through a vent that I'm just running past is not fun. Crouch toggle, sprint hold OR just make that an option in the menu?