I love the idea, but the "game" needs a little more polish before I can recommend it.

This app can run in both standard and VR. Since I don't have a VR headset, I ran the game in standard mode on my Steam Deck, which isn't the intended experience, but I can still point out some issues.

First of all, the controls are lacking. It's developed from an educational standpoint, sure, but there needs to be some gaming experience applied in order to make the inputs familiar. Holding the button for right-click in order to rotate the view seems cumbersome; why not have this automatically bound to mouse movement, and have right-click be a toggle between the camera rotation and the cursor? As it is, moving a mouse (in my case, using a trackpad for mouse movement) does nothing unless you click or hold a button.

I understand that the devs of this program were trying to cut back on performance hits... but several free-standing "statues" were actually just flat images mapped in a 3D way that makes me think of the trees in Super Mario 64. This is 2024, not 1996. Please take time to make the statues more 3D! If you guys are worried about performance, perhaps add quality toggles (like adjustments for anti-aliasing, resolution, sampling, etc.) to have the options of higher or lower overall quality.

Finally, it seems largely unfinished, as there is nothing upstairs. I assume it will be added to in the future? Some feedback on this would be nice.

Again, the idea is great, but the software is greatly lacking. Until improvements are made, I'm not recommending this, for now.

UPDATE October 13th, 2024: Since posting this review, the developer has responded, promising improvements and explaining the technical challenges of a single person making this "game" feel more complete and polished. As I can't change the recommendation of this to "Informative" or similar, I will leave it as "Not Recommended" for now until more improvements are made... However, the fact that the dev was quick to respond is promising of the software's future!

UPDATE November 27th, 2024: I can tell that the developer believes in this software, as the amount of exhibits have doubled in size, and some statues which were completely flat are now fully 3D. I would like to think that the lost works would get a pseudo-3D effect (flat on one side, 3D on the other), but I'm not sure if the dev will go for this idea.

The controls are still clunky, but can be compensated for via macros. Therefore, I am changing my recommendation. Thanks to Hooked Wit for responding to my feedback! 👍🏻