The Worst Steam Games Ever Released

Sometimes a third entry in a video game series is when the franchise hits a sweet spot. In those cases, the developers have likely figured out what worked and what didn't in previous games and they can put what they've learned into the best game possible. Sometimes you'll get A Link to the Past or The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, but sometimes you'll wind up with a stinker like FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction, a poorly-constructed racing game that IGN's Luke Reilly called "all seven shades of awful."

So what happened? Well, the short version is that FlatOut 3 wasn't developed by Bugbear, the same studio that made the first two installments. Instead, development of FlatOut 3 was handled by Team6, the studio that churned out games with titles like Scooter War3z, a name that cannot even be said aloud.

Regardless of Team6's back catalogue, it seems that players were completely unprepared for the steep drop in quality. Steam user reviews complain of poor graphics, buggy racing physics, and even maps that are missing the track in some spots. One user describes this as "a map where you have to jump across a black hole and never make it." Oh, and just to be clear: despite the presence of black holes in the road, FlatOut 3 isn't a science-fiction game; it's just a terrible one.

Gasp is a spacewalking simulator that allows players to step into the boots of a space explorer. Sounds cool, right? The developers advertise an immersive experience that requires players to make wise choices and conserve their oxygen as they head to the source of a mysterious signal on the lunar surface. All of this would be a neat idea for a game, if any of it worked the way it was supposed to.

Sadly, according to user reviews, not only is it possible to continue playing once you've run out of oxygen (so much for the big, bad perma-death touted by the game), but you literally can't pick up or interact with the gadget broadcasting the mysterious signal in any way. Some reviewers complained that even though the game was free, they still felt as though they'd been ripped off in some way. 

A review from Ashley Rivas at Principally Uncertain elaborated upon these gripes, while also explaining that it was difficult to even get far enough into the game to experience the myriad of problems for herself, as "the game was literally breaking every second that [she was] playing it." It appears as though this game would be better off being set adrift in space.

Under Zero is to survival games what Gasp is to space exploration games. That is, it's a broken, buggy, ugly mess. Developers Dagestan Technology describe the game as "a charming adventure 3D game telling a story about heavy fate of a woman [sic]," and also oddly claim in the game's trailer that it is based on a true story. Well, it certainly is believable that, once upon a time, a lady walked around in the woods for no apparent reason. Still, it's not much to hinge a game on. Also, that lady probably wasn't impervious to harm.

No exaggeration, there doesn't appear to be any story or point once the game starts up. If there is, it's obscured by the numerous bugs that make Under Zero nearly impossible to play. These include walls and trees than you can simply walk through, taking you outside of the map entirely. This would seem like a solid strategy to prevent bodily harm, but that honestly isn't much of a problem either, as most of the wolves that occasionally attack your character can't kill you either. Let them snack on you and then take a barefoot walk through the snow; it's no big deal.

In other words, this is a survival game that doesn't really bother putting any tangible obstacles between the player and survival. Unless you count the excruciatingly loud music that can't be adjusted, which may defeat the player before their character.

Ampersand is meant to be a combat racing game in the vein of F-Zero. Sadly, there are several issues standing between this game and greatness. The vehicle design is at least neat, resembling something out of a Star Wars movie, but they look pretty rough in motion. Even worse, the controls aren't actually explained to you. You have to search through the Steam comments and reviews to figure out how to even start playing the thing, as some frustrated Ampersand owners have taken it upon themselves to lay the controls out for other folks unfortunate enough to have purchased it.

Not that knowing the controls would make Ampersand any easier to play. One user review points out that, once your vehicle picks up any decent amount of speed, it's nearly impossible to negotiate a turn in the track. You know, the main thing you need to be able to do in a racing game? Adding onto this frustration is the annoying music, which frequently drops out entirely, seemingly for no reason and occasionally accompanied by a random "continue" screen that also appears whenever it feels like.

All in all, Ampersand is only worth checking out for the neat designs. However, even then, one could be better off just revisiting one of the many (better) F-Zero games, if that throwback futuristic feel is what you're after.

From the folks who made Airport Simulator 2014 comes this city-planning abomination. There isn't anything wrong with architecture sims, but Sim City this is not. Skyscraper Simulator is an exercise in pure tedium. "It is a remarkably simplistic and shallow game that has under a half hour worth of content," said one review of the game. "Skyscraper Simulator has nothing of interest for anyone, and even novices who haven't played any type of simulator game before will be bored with this in short notice." Basically, even if you're passionate about games of this type, it's been done infinitely better in other titles.

User reviews on Steam have noted that the game is less of an active simulator and more of a "sit and watch" kind of game. Rather than diving into the kind of micromanagement that sim players get into, a lot this game involves clicking to start a job and then waiting several hours for it to finish. You can sell your skyscraper for the exact amount it takes to build the next skyscraper (rinse and repeat), making this less of a game and more of an occasionally interactive screensaver. There seems to be no real goal beyond hiring workers to build skyscrapers and then letting them do their thing. At least it's not in real time, but it may as well be.

The worst thing about Game Tycoon 1.5 might actually be how close the name is to Greenheart Games' Game Dev Tycoon. In fact, some of the user reviews complain of buying this title thinking it was a sequel to Game Dev Tycoon, which likely resulted in a bigger surprise for them than anything else this game has to offer.

The cherry on top of this weak sundae is that the game isn't even fun to look at or hear. As mentioned in a review by TV and Film Guy, "The graphics and sound are not noteworthy in any respect, they seem as though a minimal amount of effort went into creating them (or a maximal amount of effort over a decade ago)." In fact, characters will occasionally talk at the exact same time, with an NPC speaking over the character giving you the tutorial for playing the game, and with no way to pause either of them. In addition to this, error messages will constantly pop up, regardless of whether or not you're doing precisely what the game told you to do. 

These difficulties render the tutorial portions of the game, in the words of one reviewer, "far from user friendly." At least that makes for an interesting challenge, albeit one that was definitely unintentional on the part of the game's designers. There's something sadly poetic about the idea of a barely functioning game that is literally about trying to make a good game.