I love free things. This is especially true for games on steam that pay tribute to one of my favorite genres. You Have To Win The Game is a free game and rightly so. Its not bad but it is quite bland. It offers a fun little bite-sized adventure but not much else. Sit down, take about an hour to play through it, then move on and forget about it.
You Have To Win The Game is pretty straight-forward Metroid clone. You run around from one screen to the next seeking new abilities and switches needed to access more areas. Sadly, there is no map feature and I often found myself running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find out where I could proceed next. Thankfully, after a half-hour or so the layout becomes quite familiar and its begins to get easier to memorize how to get around. Once you obtain a new ability you'll already have been by several areas where it can be utilized.
The visuals and sound effects are about as retro as they come. The backgrounds are pure-black with just a couple specks of light while the foregrounds are often purple with occasionally with a bit of green or white thrown in. There really isn't much to see. The sound design is just as bland. All you hear is your characters beeps every time you jump. At least the "boss" enemies that come before the power-ups give you some rhythmic beeps for variety. Did I mention the soundtrack? Oh wait, there is none.
What this game lacks in aesthetics it makes up for in level design. This game offers a increasing challenging hurdles but it never feels like its asking for too much. Learning to navigate the map as you acquire access to new areas is quite rewarding. The game offers several unique obstacles never repeating the same idea twice. The learning curve may be fairly steep but it seems to be a pretty smooth.
I enjoyed playing this game despite its short-comings. The fun gameplay manages to trump the out-dated aesthetics. I will say however that my experience was nearly ruined in by the ending. It would appear that as you played you where supposed to find a magic word that you are prompted to enter at the end of the game. So when I finished without this password it simply reset the game. It was a very unsatisfying conclusion after all the work but what should I expect at this point. This is a free download, take it or leave it.