POW Vista is a shockingly fun and unique skateboarding RPG, while The Glade is a beautiful and functional survival game. Grudge has a charming, nostalgic core but is too janky to fully recommend. A surprisingly successful dive into Steam's forgotten games.
Within the vast digital library of Steam, countless forgotten titles await discovery. Among them are games like POW Vista, Grudge, and The Glade, each offering a unique glimpse into abandoned open-world projects. POW Vista presents a bizarre yet captivating premise, blending skateboarding culture with the mechanics of a classic MMORPG. Grudge offers a more traditional fantasy MMO experience, complete with different races, classes, and factions. Meanwhile, The Glade is a survival game that distinguishes itself through a beautiful, stylized art style.
These games showcase a wide spectrum of quality and polish. POW Vista is a surprisingly addictive experience, successfully merging its disparate elements into a cohesive whole. Its gameplay loop, inspired by titles like RuneScape, involves skilling up in activities from woodcutting to combat, all with a skateboarding twist. In contrast, Grudge feels like a relic of a bygone era. While it possesses a certain nostalgic charm and a solid foundational structure for an MMO, it is plagued by significant technical jankiness, including a frustrating camera and non-functional features that hinder the experience.
The Glade stands out as a highly functional and visually appealing survival game. It features a deep and cohesive crafting system, challenging players to gather resources, build tools, and manage their basic needs on a stylized island. Despite being abandoned by its developers, it provides a solid experience. Ultimately, exploring these forgotten games reveals that even without developer support, hidden gems with genuinely fun and innovative ideas can be found, sitting right alongside ambitious but deeply flawed projects.
