Tag: 2D

KARTOFELKA

Kartofelka is another game that I have no idea how it got into my steam library.
It’s not free and never has been free.
The lowest it’s ever been being £0.39 and still not enough to make me consider buying the game.
Yet, I still have this game in my library, so at one point I asked myself, “what would be the harm in playing it?”

This game appeared in my library on the 14th of August 2019. I do not know what I was thinking when (more than likely in a shady £15 for 150 games bundle) purchasing this, nor do I wish to know what mindset I was in.

Now to make a very obvious statement.
This game is not a masterpiece, nor is it even something you’d want to compare to a masterpiece to improve how the masterpiece looks.
This game is another one of those games that I choose as an example to show people shovelware games, or low-effort games making the indie scene look like it only holds rubbish.

It’s another game to add to your library in the sense that it increases the game count that you have +1.
It’s another game to add to your library as it has achievements. How many achievements you ask? Why… 4999 of course! Four thousand, nine hundred and-fucking-ninety nine. Not 5000 for some bloody reason.

This game is the same as what happens when people think they can just stream on Twitch and get 100 followers a day. Thinking they’ll start making enough money to support themselves within a month of just fanny-ing around on their webcam whilst streaming Fortnite.
The developer of this game threw a platforming game together and created the game to give you 5k achievements. People who are on Steam who value achievements over anything else bought this game at £0.79 just for those.
The developer abandoned the game around 20 days after posting it on Steam and reaping the rewards.

Okay, so, not such a big deal, right?

This was far from the truth, what had actually happened was that there was a huge problem coming from the target audience of the game. Those who bought it primarily for the achievement spam.
The achievements didn’t even work!
Through my personal experience playing the game, these reports were correct (and I was playing this a year after this issue unravelled), when I loaded up the game and the main menu popped up, the achievements started flowing in. However, when I started playing the game, the spam stopped. I thought that maybe it went silent because I was now playing the game, and it went onto a “Do No Disturb” mode.
After about 30 minutes, I checked to see if I’d got all 5k “cheevos”, but I had not. They were broken, as people said.

So, the only two posts by the time I’d bought this game (Aug 2019) were, “HOW TO GET ACHIEVEMENTS” and “Achievements Stuck”.
Considering that the last time that the game was updated was 20 days after the game was released, and that these discussions were made after that, it is reasonable to believe that the developer never addressed this issue.

In fact, in the post that the developer made on how to get achievements, they stated that they cannot fix the game due to having lost the original files for the game and only have the copy that was released.
The fact that they couldn’t fix it was a little weird to me, as they created the game, and being experienced in computer game development myself, wondered why they couldn’t.
Or why they didn’t bother.

One person in the comments of this discussion made a very valid point, however.
“If the achievements aren’t working as intended, and the way to get them is to not play the game and idle the main screen for 3 hours, then take the achievements off.”
This, of course, never happened.
It was the main selling point for this game.
And it’s continued to have sales, and discounts to encourage people to buy this broken game for it’s broken achievements.

Despite it being broken, and the developer acknowledging this, they refused to take the false promise of 5k achievements off the game as it was still bringing in money. Game-stats.com estimating that it’s brought in a net revenue that exceeds the cost of putting a game on Steam.

So, that was the tea about the game.
Is there a lot to say about the game itself, besides the broken achievements?

  • Painful music that loops for every level. It sounds okay at first, maybe a bit elevator music-esque. About halfway through the loop, it sounds as if their cat decided to wreck the entire music production, jumping on everything and clawing at it.
    I’m in no way music professional, but I had to mute the game as it was setting me off sensory-wise.
  • The best jumping mechanics (sarcasm). If you are right beside what you want to jump onto, it won’t do it. It’s almost like there’s an invisible ledge preventing you from obtaining your goals, like a glass ceiling.
    Instead, it accurately represents what fat folk, like me, need to do to even get over a small fence, get a running start. Basically, you need to go backwards to go forwards+up. Oh, and jump is shift, so forget about opening Steam Overlay the default way.
  • The best glitches. There are moving platforms in this game. It makes the case for the best bugs. Basically, when you miss jumping onto the moving platforms (and you will) you will get stuck inside the platform. Not only that, but when you are on top of the platform, your sprite will float mid-air at the peak of the moving platform’s vector.

None of these are game breaking, but are incredibly frustrating from not only a player’s standpoint, but a game maker’s as well.
Just a warning, though, don’t press the Esc key. If there’s a pause, Esc is not the pause key. You will lose all your progress and have to start again. But hey, more fun for you, you get to play it twice!

Price: £0.79
Time To Complete: 1 Hour (3 Hours Idle on Main Screen if you actually want the achievements)
Achievements: 4999
Cards: No, thank goodness.
Worth The Money: It’s not even worth being free.

Zest Rating
2 Out Of 10. Infuriatingly Bland
An “OK” looking platformer, thrown together to make a quick buck out of people seeking to artificially fill out their Steam Achievement hoarding problem. Sloppy coding, hitboxes, and horrible music aren’t the least of your worries when the 5 Thousand Achievements don’t work either.

Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.  Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
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Bang Bang Fruit 2

DISCLAIMER: While this in my perspective is a “repost” of sorts, this review was never published on my previous place of writing. This is due to the owner of the website refraining from supporting any Russian developers because of the Russia/Ukraine war. I, myself, am making the executive decision to post this despite the war, as not “all publicity is good publicity”. 
The next couple of reviews will be shovelware from (more than likely) Russian developers. These reviews are not positive, and I do not expect the negative things I say to prompt people to support these developers. Likewise, I'm aware that Russian game developers are not who are waging war on Ukraine, and countless people don't want this conflict.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering what I’m doing, reviewing a game like this. The answer is simple.
The game is simple.
I’ve played the game.
I can make a review, so I will.

Bang Bang Fruit 2 is the sequel in a line of physics based, 2D, puzzle games, where the aim of the game is to shoot a fruit (strawberry) through the level and have it land on top of the cake.
A basic premise, which as usual, is horribly implemented with very little effort.

Quantity over quality is how developers like these operate who create games like this.

This game is an extension of the sequel, which has the same concept.
I’d even go as far to say that they’re probably just the same game, but I don’t think these developers would sink that low. (fingers-crossed they’re not like the devs of Abscond)
However, they do jump on the all popular train of churning out easy-made games, quick throw-togethers to follow popular online memes, and hentai. Now, there’s nothing especially wrong with hentai, but when you’re able to throw out one a month, I start to wonder about the content.

Ah, battleship where if the opponent loses then they strip? Or maybe for each hit, a layer disappears.
And the game previously?

*Shudder*
One of those tile slider games…

Okay, so the developer of Bang Bang Fruit 2 mass produce things, but it’s not plagiarism, despite being blatant shovelware. Still not completely good, but at least the game is legitimate.

The game itself is a sound concept as far as simple puzzle games go, if it were not for the failing of multiple things.
Firstly, the game in itself is not the most challenging. With about 30 levels in the game, the levels are altered in different ways to produce new experiences, new obstacles and new ways of trying to think out the puzzle.
All of these things, however, can be completely voided by the fact that I can just shoot for trial and error, over and over again, with no downside. You aren’t concerned with the puzzles after a while, but it probably takes the same amount of time to shoot the fruit at the cake with this random chance.
Things are altered, but not in such a way that continues to make it interesting.
Colours are changed, backgrounds are different and that’s about it, asides from the new obstacles. The new obstacles being few and far between and not really engaging in raising the difficulty at all.
I’ve actually found, myself, that on a few of the maps that encourage you to use the new mechanisms added, you can actually just fire the fruit regularly and pass the level.

Any difficulty experienced in the game is down to the horrible level design and weird physics.

So, how are the physics odd?
They are not entirely. The fruit uses generic (non-bouncy)ball physics for the most part, acting like a lead sphere most of the time. Fruit does not bounce, but I’m sure at the velocity that it would achieve after being shot out of a cannon would give it enough energy to not act as flat as Amber Heard’s acting.

Once you have wrapped your head round that part of the physics, the cake itself is an entirely different demon. It has its own peculiar sense of gravity that is made so that when your fruit hits the cake, the fruit stays on the cake. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to be.
One of the biggest problems I had with the game was getting the god-damn fruit to stay on the god-damn cake.
It sounds like a cakewalk, it was not, even with the odd gravity applied to the cake. Every so often, the unusual gravity was not enough, and I had to watch the fruit slowly roll off the cake. Why did it not stop? No one knows!
But on the other hand, at times the stopping mechanism for the cake was just too good! A shot that may have been a bit risky, but would’ve completely paid off, is your worst enemy. Your fruit landing on the corner of the cake, going in the direction where if it hits the cake it would roll to the centre… Cake-Gravity says no. In fact, the cake gravity is made in the way that regardless of what direction you hit the cake from, the fruit is programmed to only roll in the one direction. Which, in the risky case, is right off the cake.

Another point to stay away from this game is the lack of save function. Any progress you make, up to any level, of any stage is not saved.
If you exit this game, even after completing 90% of this game, despite there being solid level structure with definite ends and beginnings, you’ll have to play the entire thing again from scratch.
This is an absolute pain in the arse, specifically to those people who bought this game to reap the achievements from them.
Why are the achievements relevant? They always are, but in this context, the previous game was one of those which gave you all the achievements as soon as you opened the game. Essentially purchasing a bundle of achievements and a completed game for money, without having to put in any skill or labour into earning anything.
I don’t agree with the people that support this, who actively go out and purchase games like these, just to make their perfect game / completed game count higher. There’s no merit to it besides making yourself look like a huge “sadd-o”.

Example of said person I found making a “review” for either this game or another game. With 459,245 hours playing, which equates to 52 years. This person I doubt is even in their mid-30’s. 1332 Perfect Games with a 98% completion rate. Nah.

Continuing to lead players on in the false promise of steam trading cards, targetting another gullible audience (not all steam trading card hunters are gullible) which will scoop up any game with cards or the promise of cards.
Cards for this game initially were promised via the tag system that devs can use after publishing the game, and at one point had even a dialogue that hinted/alluded to cards.
These were eventually taken away, but the irritation by older buyers of the game is still seen in old reviews and discussions complaining about the blatant false advertising.

Developers had later informed those asking about cards that it was no longer possible due to the actions that Steam has taken to reduce the amount of money made by fake developers by introducing a “confidence metric”.

Instead of starting to drop Trading Cards the moment they arrive on Steam, we’re going to move to a system where games don’t start to drop cards until the game has reached a confidence metric that makes it clear it’s actually being bought and played by genuine users. Once a game reaches that metric, cards will drop to all users, including all the users who’ve played the game prior to that point. So going forward, even if you play a game before it has Trading Cards, you’ll receive cards for your playtime when the developer adds cards and reaches the confidence metric.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1954971077935370845

This is a great metric, while it does nothing to stop fake developers and Steam’s quality control continues to be at an all-time low, it’s guaranteed that fake developers are making less money than what they would.

Otherwise, a few last points for this game:

  • The music is abysmal. It’s the same thing over and over again for the whole 20 – 30 minutes you spend playing the game.
  • There is only one sound (which I heard) that is when you fire the fruit from the cannon, no contact noises and no noise for when the fruit hits the cake.
  • The level designs are really lazy, consisting of copy-paste elements of the same standard shapes, over and over again.
  • What’s even more lazy is that the only thing you need to do is time your left-click right. There is no finesse to the game or requirement for any brain strain. No changing the pitch of the cannon, no adjusting the strength of the blast, no factors that you can alter at all.
  • The game description on the store page is “Just make a cake.” The cake is already made! You’re just putting the strawberry on top! Also, shouldn’t it be a cherry? Cherries don’t go on cakes, but the phrase is “the cherry on top”, or “the cherry on the cake”, why is it a strawberry?

Price: £0.79
Time To Complete: 38 Minutes – One Full Sitting
Achievements: 36
Cards: No.
Worth The Money: It’s not even worth the time I spent writing this.

Zest Rating
2 Out Of 10. As Sweet As Out-Of-Season Fruit.
A cheap, nothing-more-than-template game, which adds to the clogged and oversaturated market which is Steam. Bright colours, but generally tacky. Works as a game, but that’s about it. A full 38 minutes in one sitting of your life that you’ll never get back, and you ask yourself, “Were the achievements really worth it?”

Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.  Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
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[LEGACY] Dark Dragonkin

Dark Dragonkin is one of the first games that I have had the pleasure of redeeming from Lurkit. Being one of only 4 games that I was eligible to redeem, I poured all my hope into the one and only Lurkit games available to me that didn’t look like a mobile game port.

This description does, however, come with my personal acknowledgement that, as a brand, Lurkit is better than Keymailer in terms of interactivity and user engagement. However, on the other hand, for smaller channels like myself, in comparison to bigger streamers, have such a limited choice on Lurkit due to access to games being behind an “Avg Viewer” wall.
On Keymailer I can walk up to any brand, developer, or publisher and slap a request on their game, believing that I compared to anyone else, will have a “good chance” of redeeming a game. Although this is the case, a lot of the time I will be “left on read” by the places I request from.
Lurkit on the other hand, pretty much has a 100% chance of being accepted if I meet the criteria, if I can actually find anything I want to review in the small pool I’m limited to. Although I appreciate Lurkit’s approach to allowing developers to choose their audience, I find that, given my smaller size, I am severely disadvantaged and limited.

Dark Dragonkin is a weird little game, top down, JRPG-like game that’s more about solving room puzzles endlessly than any actual RPG features. You go room by room, level by level, using 4 different characters with 4 different abilities. You have the Tank character (who is assumably female, love that) who can kick boulders out of the way and smash things, and the ability to use her shield to block attacks. Not only that, but you have the ninja guy who is great for backstabbing people and can jump over large gaps. Next is the druid-type who has the ability to turn into a fairy and fly through cracks in the walls, also having the ability to heal your team. And lastly, you have the mage who shoots fireballs which can light torches and kill enemies as well.

As said before, there is not really much of a story to this game, there is a little starting story to give your characters reason to exist and reason to be doing what they’re doing, but that’s about it.
From the start, what you do is go level by level, learning the mechanics of each individual and continue on through each dungeon.
I did play this game for roughly 50 minutes, so I almost met my hour quota. It’s not unbearable.
It’s a basic game with an interesting premise which I’ve seen similar things done before by Elmarion: the Lost Temple (but that was in 1st person, and you simultaneously controlled 4 characters with the numbers 1-4), and it’s not completely lost on me, it’s just a bit boring.
It’s a puzzle game and there’s not much else to it. There’s no fear aspect, tension, excitement, or anything of that nature, it’s completely about solving puzzles in an RPG-like fantasy environment.

Pros:

  • The game works, and has no audio or visual bugs.
  • The game provides a unique and intriguing mechanic to managing 4 people at one time. Making solving puzzles more appealing due to having to control more than one element within the puzzle-dungeon.
  • All the mechanics of each character are explained to the player, on how to use them and when is best to use them. Not much room is left for mistakes made via the game being stingy with its hints.
  • Despite the game being simple, a few puzzles did stump me a few times, but that was partially down to me having trouble keeping track of who can do what.

Cons:

  • While the mechanic is interesting, there’s not much else that really draws the player to stay for a while. The games’ music is repetitive and monotonous, and the control of four players is limited to singular, slow movement. I’m aware that this is a puzzle game, and I can appreciate that, but it’s RPG styled, surely that warrants a bit of excitement?
  • The game is a little weird with the walking and placement of things. It would’ve been better if the movement was gridded, or on rails. Walking forward moves the character forward 1 square at a time, leaning towards a more move-based puzzle game. This is due to the difficulty of aiming things correctly, the rock being kicked 2 pixels too far, the fairy getting KO’ed because I couldn’t fit her in the hole… I could go on.
  • Looping back to uninteresting, the game is nothing to look at visually. The characters are nice enough and are unique looking, but looking at the game itself as a whole, it does nothing to maintain my interest visually either. There’s a lot of empty space, both in the map and the black void outside the map.

Price: £11.39
Time To Complete: N/A (The only entry is me LMAO)
Achievements: 14
Cards: No
Worth The Money: IMO, not really. It does have 80ish levels, but there is no way I could withstand the game for that long to get my money’s worth.

In conclusion, this game is something that I’d like to see more of, just with more “umphf” or however you spell it. It is an interesting concept to have a puzzle game like this use 4 different characters that you can control separately. But as much as they spent a lot of time on making an insane number of levels, I think more should’ve gone into making it a fun-er experience.

Zesty Rating
4 Out Of 10. There’s a hint of flavour, but it’s gone before I can enjoy it.
A genuinely appealing concept for a game, let down by boring level design and no real excitement, tension, or fun really. It is a puzzle game, but due to the RPG skin, it’s misleading to those who think they’re here for an “adventure”. 80+ levels of the same song on loop, barren hallways and the call of the black void behind the dungeon map.

Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.  Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again. Not only that, but being more Lurkit-focused in my new era of streaming.

NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
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[LEGACY] Amazon Rush

Amazon Rush is an endless runner game, created at the peak of runner-game-hype, along with games like Subway Surfer and the like. Judging by the game itself, it’s honestly hard to tell whether it was an honest attempt at recreating the magic, or a blatant attempt at grabbing from the pockets of people who wanted to try something new.

This review will be more of an argument with what the developers describe the game as, so I will be listing the pros and cons first.

Pros:

  • A decent game in itself when it decides to work.
  • The game is competent enough to have AN objective.
  • The game provides a singular challenge for a singular cosmetic.
  • The game is not so lazy that it doesn’t have power ups.
  • Nice start screen and game over screen.

Cons:

  • The main character is bland and forgettable. There is nothing unique or interesting about it.
  • The RNG for which blocks spawn is absolutely atrocious. Blocks can spawn inside each other and make the game freeze because it doesn’t know what’s happening, or they can spawn too far unreachable for you to make it with power ups.
  • The moving background is only one picture long, so it’s the same image looping over and over again. A second image would’ve been good enough to just give it a bit more sustenance.
  • Not unique in any way.
  • Jumping mechanics have you float and then suddenly drop, making it almost impossible to predict where you’re going to land.
  • Dull with no rewarding aspects.

“Enjoy the Unique World of adventure and challenges”.
This game is not unique, the only thing that’s even close to being unique is how bad it is, but since the greenlight is non-existent it’s “unique-ness at failing to be a decent running game” is almost snuffed out.
The main character is forgettable. The background is so plain, bland and lazy that you swear you’ve seen it somewhere before. The power ups are indeed somewhat unique, but they’re always just out-of-reach so that if you go for them, there is no way to survive.
The “Aboriginal” costume is actually the most unique thing about this, not for the promise of costumes as other games have done it better, but just for its design, which was obviously the “challenges”, the dev was talking about.

“…with lots of thrill and fun.”
Fuck off.
Thrill and fun are different and are achieved in different ways. This game is in no way thrilling, and it also is in no way fun. The difference between this, is that this game has the potential to be fun and captivating like most runners want to be as runner games are all about replayability. If the only thing you have to offer as a reward is 75,000 coins away and there’s nothing in between and nothing after that, players just don’t latch on.

“This running game is beautifully designed…”
There’s no problem with this statement apart from the statement itself. The background design is tolerable, the character design is better than expected along with the costume, and the info screens are a nice touch with the bloody… arrows? Spears? I can’t tell what they are, but they do fit the Amazon theme.
However, just all-out claiming that this is beautifully designed is a lot of bullshit, and we can all see that.

“…awesome sound effects.”
Yeah, sure. You picked the right ones. All sound effects were appropriate. Congratulations.

Price: £0.79 (believe it or not, its base price used to be £2)
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 124
Cards: No
Worth The Money: No. The game is broken, it can literally crash your Steam Client.

Do not buy this game.
If you wish to buy this game, buy it when it’s on sale. 50% or above sale, and even at that it’s still not worth what you’re paying for it. At this point, it’s more beneficial for you if you buy it off a dodgy website, get hacked, have to freeze your account then claim it back again just to get the game.

Zesty Rating
1 Out Of 10. You’re being the victim of that weird trick people can do where they eat a banana, but then put the skin back the way it was to make you think there’s still a banana there. There’s not.
Describes itself as unique and beautiful, maybe that’s what it’s mother’s told it. Awful Runner game, no reward aspects, only endless running and no gain. RNG breaks the game and Steam Client. Don’t buy this one.

Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.  Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
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[LEGACY] Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead

Surprisingly, this game was not one of those given to me by Keymailer, nor was it one that was sitting around in my Steam account for a thousand years.
Through having a Steam Curator and actually making reviews, myself, on games for longer than I’d known the person I’d previously made review articles for their site, I’ve received games before. This does not mean it’s been at all successful, or I’ve been popular to be given games to. Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is the second game I’ve ever been given via the Steam Curator Connect, and was given to me on the 29th of November last year.
(The other one called, Zibbs – Alien Survival, was given to me on 22nd October 2020, and I still haven’t reviewed it yet for reasons, but will actually be doing eventually.)

I’d initially asked my previous reviewing partner if they’d like to review this game (as I essentially shared their reviewing website, they had an equal share of my Steam curator). They probably took one look at it, saying “uhh no, you have it.”. I more than likely promptly laughed afterwards expecting that response and said “Fuck it, it’s a game. It’s not really much of a waste of time.” Accepted, downloaded it and played it about 2 months after receiving it, punctual, I know.

Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is an adventure platformer game where you, an unnamed, un-aged little girl is travelling across the zombie apocalypse ridden city in an effort to find her mother because “waaah where’s my mummy?”
Despite being a child, the main character makes the slightly more logical decision of travelling across the city to find her mother instead of breaking down into floods of tears. Or even screaming and crying for her mummy like any other child would, getting eaten in the process.

She travels through a sort of semi-industrial in-construction downtown area, the introduction area showing you that you can drop boxes on zombies, jump over things and control elevators.
Most of the rest of the game is JUST this, which is not inherently bad. There are a bunch of different environments, such as an actual construction site and a sewer level (because god forbid any zombie game avoid having sewer levels). The game does not get more complex in terms of what you need to do to progress. It does, ultimately, use the same factors to make the game progressively more difficult by stacking them on top of each other or making the puzzle a tad more maze-like, making you think about each situation a bit more.

As said before, there’s not much more to this game, and the only thing that drove me to almost complete it was the fact that it was seemingly easily done. Down to its simplicity, it was and is (up to a particular point where it seems it’s physically impossible by the game’s standards to pass it.) easy enough to finish. The graphics themselves were cute enough in a very amateur way, and the puzzles and things were simple enough but also challenging enough to keep me in it. A few times I did debate throwing up my hands and declaring the game broken, but that was all down to a few things that are actually easily fixed.

Pros:

  • The game has no game breaking bugs or flaws with audio.
  • It’s a simple side-scrolling platformer that’s easy enough to understand, but still provides an element of challenge for the player with it’s limited functions.
  • While the entire game is just platforming, between stages there are mini-games where it turns from a 2D platformer into a few different types of games, switching the flow and maintaining interest.
  • Depending on how much of an “out-of-the-box” thinker you are, it is possible to complete some puzzles a few different ways, which in my opinion makes it that tad bit better.
  • The goal of the protagonist is easy to follow, and what little story the game has is sensible and doesn’t take itself too far with being ridiculous. There are a few things that seem a bit out of the ordinary, but nothing too huge.
  • One of the few games I’m actually okay with the protagonist being unable to swim.

Cons:

  • The major thing with this game that almost had me quit the game was issues with graphics vs hitboxes. A lot of the time, my character would fail to jump at a gap and fall into the fire below. This was due to the hitbox of the ledge being shorter than that of the actual image. My character, while still being on the ledge, visibly was not on the code version of the ledge and would fall through the graphic. This wasn’t a major issue all the way through the game, but led to a few moments that almost stopped the playthrough.
  • There’s only one type of zombie. It’s a bit of a reach of a complaint, but there is no visual variety between any game’s zombies per level. All had the same ruined appearance, no sludge for the sewer zombies and no high vis jackets for the construction zombies. The variation between backdrops was great, but lacked at the forefront of the game.
  • The mini-games were necessary. If there had not been the mini-games, then I would’ve stopped playing the game a lot sooner. Other than the shift change between side-scrolling platforming, there is no other pull to this game apart from the fact I “knew” I could beat it and I enjoy platformers.
  • Another graphical bug that I only experienced a few times with the boxes. When you’re pushing a box, it can sometimes get stuck, on nothing whatsoever. It was prominent in one particular puzzle where you had to move a box to a puddle that was electrified by stray wires, jump on the box and jump over the puddle. That was my first initial thought, but the box stopped randomly, and I could not push it any further. Me thinking in “game logic” I determined that “you may not use the box in this area and must figure out another way around this puzzle”. After attempting another couple of ways, I tried the same way again and the box magically moved further this time, to my disgruntlement.

Price: £7.19
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 4
Cards: None
Worth The Money: No, only buy at a large discount. 65% or higher.

Overall, this game is actually kind of cute and semi-competent. A little simplistic, and it’s only redeeming features are the mini-game breaks between scenes and the way that it reuses the same mechanics in actually interesting ways to create new puzzles. It can sometimes feel a bit repetitive and broken, but I honestly never expected it to be as good as it was, to only have those flaws. It’s still not worth the price presented as, while the mini-games are great for what they are, the platformer doesn’t have a lot of content to warrant the price.

Zesty Rating
4.5 Out Of 10
Cute and simple platformer with other elements mixed through. Competent enough to hold its own, but not enough to hold it together. A little buggy, a little overpriced, and the only thing keeping me interested is the mini-games. How does this little girl know how to drive a car and a boat?

Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. 
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.

I'm still hoping that the dev of this game is doing alright, they're one of the few that took a positive influence from the review. Once again, if you're still around, I look forward to what you have planned for the future. 

…

Boobie Shaker? [How Do I Verbally Facepalm?]
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Abscond –  XiNFiNiTY Games + Asset Flipping

Another one of these games that I do not remember purchasing. However, Steam remembers it as September the 30th of 2019, and I will take its word for it.
But, this is also another one of these games I will tell you to steer clear of, and this time it’s not because the game is bad.

So, here I was, probably on a shady website or browsing Fanatical Bundles. If I’d seen this game on its lonesome, outside a bundle, I would not have bought it. It came in the bundle regardless, and as part of my “I need to get through my massive backlog of games” effort on Twitch, I played it to give it a go.

About this time I was thinking, “Wow, this game cost £0.99, and it’s not bad.”

I’m zipping about in this simple, and minimalistic, but challenging, nonetheless, game, and it’s pretty damn good.
Still not groundbreaking or amazing, but nothing like the other shovelware on Steam which they let pass through these days.

Low and behold, I don’t need to look very far, and I find that this game is an asset flip, complete and utter plagiarism. The developer of this game is claiming this game as his own when the rightful maker made this available on Unity.

Here is the Unity: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/tutorials/avoid-82067
Here is their website: http://thatgamesguy.co.uk/

There are pros and there are cons, but Abscond is not this developer’s game. So, there are only cons here, which are:

“Dev does not know how to make a game” / “Dev is too lazy to make a game by themselves.”

So, what do we do now?
I’m downright refusing to acknowledge the “developer” as the creator of this game, and left with nothing to gripe about.

Things like this do leave me to be curious, however.
If a “developer” on Steam, is willing to get free assets from Unity, not alter the game in ANY manor and attempt to sell it passing it off as their own… will they benefit?

As it stands, Steam charges the developer $100 per game put through the Steam Direct program, meaning that as soon as a developer puts it up, they are $100 down. Unless you have lots of expendable cash, it’s not money you’d get rid of without being completely certain that what you’re doing is worth it/profitable.

So, the developer, XiNFiNiTY Games, takes a free asset bundle and sells it on Steam without further modification.
— $100.
If you’re a nerd like me and have Augmented Steam and SteamDB browser extensions, you will be given some useful information, but I’ll touch on that in a second.
Looking at the initial data of the game that the regular Steam user gets, you can see that the game only has 9 reviews despite it being “released” in December 2017. You’d possibly think to yourself, “Fuck, maybe it’s just because it’s an endless, simplistic little arcade game that’s not had a ton of spotlight.”
Scrolling further down, you’ll see the usual thing of there being actually more than 9 reviews, there actually being 24, which is still not a great deal despite the game being released for 5 years.

The bigger majority of these reviews being negative, calling towards the simplicity of the game, low effort and not being worth the money being asked of it.
A couple of others, including myself, using these points others had made along with the fact that the game is an asset flip to point out why it was so ridiculous that it was paid for.

24 is still a small number, but thanks to my add-ons, you get a rough estimate of how many people actually own this game.

Now, as you can probably tell already by looking at the picture. 20k to 50k is not really that much of an “accurate number”, nor is it really all that accurate at all. It’s quite the ballpark range.

Okay… So let’s outsource this a bit, and try a different thing to guess how many people own this game.

Oh…

So, we have the same numbers from SteamSpy, but some huge numbers from PlayTracker. And honestly, on first viewing of that number it seemed unreal and did not want it to be accurate.
But concerning the number of reviews, and also looking at that third number (actually the first in the set, but the third that I mentioned), it looks a lot more realistic.

Therefore, on some basic maths, entirely ignoring a few factors such as Steam sales, discounts, and devs giving their keys away to bundle sites:
If SteamSpy’s upper estimate is correct, and 50k copies have been sold, then you’d be right to assume that they’ve pocketed $44,900. Which would be absolutely ridiculous.

Even going by the “Owners By Reviews” lower estimate it would still mean that the “developer” made a net profit of $1340, which is still disturbing considering that this is not even their content.

So, looking a bit further into this game, on various blogs, I happened upon a very useful site, or maybe I found it useful as it provided me the information I wanted to see. (Rather than the news I wanted to hear).

A site known as Game-Stats that has a lot of information on games had something more in mind of what would’ve been earned by the so-called developer. Fair enough though, despite being a lot more realistic and what I’d had in mind, it was still unfortunately above the $100 they had to pay to release “their” game.
Meaning, at the end of this (if this website’s more realistic looking evaluation of the revenue is correct) they still gained $70 from essentially stealing someone else’s work and slapping a different name on it.

Meaning, if anyone wants to almost double their money, just steal someone’s game and slap your name on it and pop it on Steam, they won’t do anything about it. (obvious sarcasm)

Hi, I’m not finished yet.
So, this “developer” can yoink practically an asset pack from Unity, not change anything about it and claim it as their own, gaining almost double their money back.

What if this is not the only time they’ve done this?
Or at least, that’s a question that I start to ask myself because I’m a weird one like that and apparently have too much spare time, despite never seeming to have any at all.

XiNFiNiTY Games have 22 games to their name, 6 of which being DLC (Downloadable Content), so we can bring that number down to 16. One of the first-ever games, of which being “Infinity Wings – Scout & Grunt” actually gathered enough reviews from people to generate an average audience score, which is not a good one.
What the more early games of XiN have in common is that they’re not the sole publisher of the game, and that OtakuMaker SARL are the ones publishing instead. These games also still not getting great receptions, but looking and seeming to be more fully fledged games than the Abscond rip-off.

The first one that we actually take a look at is another game with a very similar thumbnail to Abscond (in fact, they all are very similar looking in terms of simplicity).
Spinning Around is a basic game where you have to fly your Spaceship into the correct colour, while the colour position that you have to fly through changes.
You’ve all seen someone playing a mobile game with this concept.
This is another blatant rip-off, another asset bundle ripped from the Unity Asset store, a different title slapped onto it and published on steam as their own content.
What is the net profit that site predicts this time? $320.

Okay, let’s try another one. Infinity Trip.
Another unity asset flip, as the real developers can be seen right here.
How much is their estimated return? $56.
Okay, thank goodness, nearly everyone reviewing this one knew that it was an asset flip immediately. Must be a more popular asset bundle than the rest.

  • Trigonometry? Probably Fake. Net Revenue $340.
  • Jump! Jump! Jump!? Likely also fake. Net Revenue $56.
  • Infinity Escape? 100% Stolen. Net Revenue $110.
  • Stellar Warrior? Phone-game esque, so most likely also stolen. Net Revenue $0 (Seems improbable, yet there are no good reviews at all about this game).
  • Lozenge. Definitely fake. Net Revenue $94.
  • Dialing? Would not put it past them to steal this, but can’t find an original. Net Rev $18.
  • Genius Calculator? It is apparently an asset flip, but I can’t find the source. Net Rev $260
  • Outline? An obvious offender. Net Rev $130.
  • Cubic Color? More than likely. (Can’t find original source). Net Rev $37.
  • Color Circle? No evidence as far as I can see, but it looks exactly like what they’d usually steal. Net Rev $75.
    *All “Net Revenue” are estimates made by the Game-Stats website.

So, from the asset flipping, player scamming side of things, we have 13 games that have possibly been attained from the unity asset store. All of which have been turned around, had a new name slapped on top of the old one and put on Steam to be sold as “their” game.

13 x $100 = $1300
So, the devs have spent this much putting the games on Steam, but did they get back what they spent?
$75 + $37 + $130 + $260 + $18 + $94 + $0 + $110 + $56 + $340 + $56 + $320 + $170
When you look at it, there are plenty of small numbers that are below the $100 threshold, but a few big numbers.
The gamble was really risky, as not a lot of their flips generated a profit, but the ones that did generate a profit only did so marginally in comparison to indie games that have any real effort.

Estimated Net Revenue for all (possible) asset flip games being $1,666. (*Gasp* 666)
Provided they paid for each game to be put on Steam, they presumably made a $366 profit, assuming the website is more accurate than the others.
This is not amazing, and taking a close look at their profits from each game, if Trigonometry hadn’t done as good as most of the others, they would not have as much of a profit as they do now.

Color Circle

But realistically speaking, however, what if this hadn’t stopped in 2018 and this developer kept selling asset flips?
Also bringing to attention, these games are still live on the Steam store, waiting to be bought. This “developer” can still obtain money right now from any unsuspecting buyer.
This slow gain of $366 has happened over the course of five years, acting like an offshore bank account or investing in a really slow-moving stock, but it’s still there.

You can probably guess my opinion on the matter. I find it morally unethical, and completely condemn this as while it’s still apparently legal, it’s harmful to the image of “indie”.
Not only that, but it damages the reputation and the credibility in the eyes of players towards other games that use bought assets for their games, such as PUBG.
Many indie game devs either do not have the skill, time, or the know-how to pursue making their own assets. Buying these asset bundles and game templates are what gives these developers a head start and a clear direction of where to improve from, or what to use, or how to use what they have.
Unlike these innocent game devs who use these assets as intended, XiNFiNiTY take templates as they are, change nothing, and slap their name on it.

Call this whatever legal term you wish, forgery, plagiarism, theft.
At the end of the day, it’s certainly a scam. You can get the tools to make these games for free, you get the templates for free (sometimes paid, but a lot XiNFiNiTY took were free or cheap), and “make” exactly what XiNFiNiTY copy and pasted yourself.

If you come across any games by XiNFiNiTY Games, then please do not add to their pool of money that should’ve been distributed to the real developers.
There are many other better indie developers, and there are many other better indie developers that actually have done the work they are advertising.

The amount of time and research put into this topic could’ve been a lot more, and I would’ve gone further into this if I had the energy. However, this was made a lot quicker due to two characters on Steam. The first being Zaxtor99 TTV, whose review first alerted me to such a thing as an asset flip. I’d always suspected as such, but after playing Abscond and then being shown where it originally came from, I was gobsmacked that someone would actually do this. Secondly, to the person behind the curator called Sturgeon’s Law, Obey the Fist!, who almost had every link to all the assets that were stolen.
I’ve also now read a whole Wikipedia article on “Asset-Flips” and an article/interview with Bennett Foddy and am a little asset-flipped out now.

Edit: I’ve been made vaguely aware that it’s somehow possible for developers to cheat the $100 entry fee for releasing a game on Steam by dropping more than one game at a time (or something). I’m not fully versed in this knowledge and can’t find any info on it at the moment. But it does, however, change a lot of the “predicted profit” if these “developers” managed to do this too, I, however, will probably look at this another time.

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