Plunger Simulator is an insincerely made joke game intended to draw attention from controversy or in the hopes of going viral because it's "so bad it's good" (but it isn't good at all), there's nothing here to offer to serious gamers. As the title suggests, this is a very simplistic simulator involving using a plunger to unclog blocked water closets. That's really all there is to it, three controls, one to plunge, one to remove the plunger, and the third to flush. That's all there is to this, but it was never intended to be a serious game for gamers.
We must question what value it has for gamers when the store is polluted with these insincerely made games. The outcome is the same harm that asset flips cause, more garbage that gamers have to wade through in the hopes of finding sincerely made indie gems.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the game, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
Plunger Simulator has the farcical price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Warhammer: Vermintide 2", "Torchlight" or "Sleeping Dogs". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
Note: Because this is more of a "joke" game, As usual, with most awful/joke games, all the comedians come out of the woodwork. The reviews for this game are joke reviews, such as "this game cured my cancer, saved my marriage, changed my life" etc. Because most of the reviews are as insincere as the game itself is, and if you removed the fake/joke reviews the game would have a markedly different review score, the positive review score for this game should be disregarded.
Profile Features Limited!
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.
