I just picked up the highly hyped Blue Prince. On the other hand reviews have also called it a very niche game. I like puzzle games to a certain extent and roguelikes, but these are subjective experiences.

Anyways, I was hoping to get the gist of it and get into a groove and decide if I like it within the refund period.

The game mechanics are explained through notes in the game at it took me 80 minutes to reach a point where an important mechanic is explained.

This could have been done much earlier, I wonder why the developer delayed the explanation when it's just useful information

Other games also front load the prologue with long tutorials and cutscenes. So by the time you get into the meat of the game the refund window is out.

The other elephant in the room is if steam refunds are meant as a demo for everything or just to check technical issues like FPS and network connection issues

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The other elephant in the room is if steam refunds are meant as a demo for everything or just to check technical issues like FPS and network connection issues

I'm pretty sure that the refund window isn't primarily intended to create an ad-hoc demo of games, but to let you return a game that doesn't function correctly on your system.

Game developers who do want to create a demo can (though I'll admit that it's a less-common route than one might expect).

https://store.steampowered.com/demos/

I usually read review content, maybe watch a YouTube video of someone playing the game if I want to see gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KePY3IfxqOQ

[–] TyrianMollusk@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

I've seen many devs cite the refund window as why they don't need to bother maintaining a demo. They're wrong about not needing a proper demo, but people definitely do treat the refund window as a demo phase, not merely a technical test.