Huge Enemy is one of the games I’ve purchased in a Fanatical Bundle ages ago, more than likely at a cost of £4.99 for 12 games, or something along those say lines getting this game at a steal at that time. Now the game is free for anyone to play, which I think is a great thing in regard to the negative attention this game has had in the past. In spite of those past reviews regarding the game, which a lot of I agree with, this game at least deserves some attention because it is good. It’s maybe not great, or fantastic, but it’s good. The visuals are definitely the best thing about this game,“Paid For” and when this game was “Paid For”, the visuals were what you were paying for.
This game is a good, avoid ’em all, R-type clone, side scrolling sci-fi game. It hasn’t got much of a story to it, you’re essentially a newbie pilot straight off the bat, they pulled you into that position because they need more pilots and after one training session they set you off into the real world. From there you’re doing that bullet-hell thing, you start blasting, and you don’t stop (until the enemies randomly stop) until you reach the boss and blast the boss as well. The game is a little inconsistent with its difficulty and the amount of enemies on the screen at one time, but while it’s difficult, it’s still somewhat manageable.
Pros: — It functions as a game with no audio bugs or game-breaking glitches. — The intro and the splash screen are really cool aspects to the game and set the player up to feel that this is a game of epic proportions. — The game does well of setting up that tension and combination of feeling hyped for what’s to come but still filled with anxiousness as you know it’s just going to unleash hell on your unsuspecting self. — The game has a vast array of weapons which keep gameplay fresh and allow the player different methods of getting around problems and overall game completion. — The artwork in this game is exactly the type of design I love, gritty and detailed, which both looks and feels great when you’re playing it. The bright flashing of the lasers, the explosions and worn battleships all combines to paint a picture of almost hopelessness against the masses that oppose you. — All music and sound effects are chosen well and fit their purpose.
Cons: — The upgrade system kinda baffles me, I maybe misread or didn’t see where it told me what to do, so I went a few levels without upgrading a thing. — Some audio effects were unbalanced in volume, some were really quiet, then the voice-over would boom in. Likewise with in-game, I’d feel as if my guns were so much quieter than the enemies. — Not so much a con, but this game used to sit at £23.99 back in 2018, so a lot of disgruntled reviews are due to its old price. It came down in price to £3.99 before the pandemic, which is a lot more reasonable. — Also not so much a con, but the game is pretty difficult, or at least for me who is pretty bad at these types of games, found even the first level (not the tutorial) quite challenging. I couldn’t really get a hold of the default controls of switching guns and also switching which way I’m firing. — And the last con is kind of a mishmash, the game is a bullet hell, and not, sometimes the screen is too busy, sometimes there’s hardly anything, sometimes bosses are hard, sometimes they’re not, sometimes a level will feel like it lasts seconds, some will feel like they last forever. The game seems to lack consistency, which makes it a bit of a slog to get through.
Apart from all that, there’s also some stuff with graphical errors, nothing game-breaking (or at least from what I found). That and the guns didn’t turn to face the way I was aiming, which I only noticed until after I’d read a review that was a little too upset about that.
Price: Free Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 19 Cards: None Worth The Money: £23.99? Not at all. £3.99? Yes, to those who like R-Type Bullet-Hell. For Free? Yes, why not? Dip your toes in it.
Honestly, the game is pretty good despite its flaws, and really, there’s nothing stopping you from trying it out to see if the cons I listed do actually affect your gameplay “immersion”. Maybe my cons are a bit too harsh on it because I don’t usually play bullet-hell games due to never being able to have my eyes keep up with what’s onscreen. Overall, it’s free. Which doesn’t mean that flaws are okay, but considering it came from a very dear price down to a more reasonable one, to nothing at all; I can say it’s more acceptable now than what it was before. As if it was still at its original price, I probably would score this game so much lower.
Zesty Rating 4.5 Out Of 10 A game that shouldn’t be passed up, especially while it’s still free. Japanese influenced bullet hell R-type game. While I don’t tend to like or have the ability to keep up with these kinds of games, I can appreciate that the artwork is amazing, and behind its cons is a playable/enjoyable game.
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.
Unturned is a game that I’ve spent countless hours in. Excluding the games that I used to play on my Xbox back in the day, when hours weren’t counted, and you couldn’t see how addicted to a game you really were. It goes as far to say that after a year of playing Unturned, I was already satisfied with the product. Having downloaded it back in 2013/2014, (ass-end of 2013 or early 2014) by the time that 2015 rolled around I had already bought the “Supporter Pack”, or whatever it’s called (Permanent Gold Upgrade).
The Permanent Gold Upgrade was a $5 pack that was purely cosmetics (at the time) and the key purpose was to show your support to the lone, Canadian developer. I’m pretty sure I jumped on that about 3 months into the game.
Along comes 2015, and my first-ever review was for this game:
~“Unturned is an excellent game with great potential. With the latest updates, the games mechanics run much smoother and the crafting mechanics are much easier than first off. Servers are easy to access and a little less glitchy than before when hosting numerous players, but overall a brilliant game in the making, would’ve expected a game like this to cost money. I’m still playing this game after a good 2 years. It’s got better and worse in many ways. *cough cough* nerfing. But I still love the game.”~
I’ll leave in all the horrendous spelling mistakes and horrible grammar, as much as it kills me to look at it. That salt is hilarious, though. This wasn’t actually my first review, as I believe that I’d made one before that, which was similar to, “its a good game :)”. Steam, however, didn’t have the function at that point where if you edited your review, you could quote the previous version.
After 7 consecutive years of playing Unturned, I am revisiting this review, and the game itself. For the first year solid, I played entirely single-player, like the little idiot I was. Being 12/13/14, I had the most limited grasp on online lobbies and how it worked for PC. I was a console pleb and the only multiplayer I knew of, I only had to press one button to be opposite hordes of squeaky, screaming, cat-calling pre-teens and teens (If you guessed Call of Duty then you’re correct).
After that year, an update caught my attention, and for some reason I pressed multiplayer. Four years of my life, and it was the only game I played after pressing that damn button. I found a clan of people that I got along really well with, who in turn really enjoyed the fact I was female, which in turn always got me staff in servers in less than 7 days. And for the last 2 years playing, once the clan had disbanded as everyone had to go off and be adults, I played on and off after I got my orange beret (which you received after two thousand hours in-game).
This game is worth money, but it doesn’t cost money.
If you’ve not had a chance to play this game before, the best thing I’ve heard it be called is Roblox zombies. Which is somewhat of a compli-sult, really, but I’ll take it. After playing many more games since then, I can tell you that it merely has the graphics of Roblox/Minecraft, but with that come the endless capabilities that these games ensue, with full moon mechanics like 7 Days to Die. The zombies raid your base, but at a less startling rate than what those of 7D2D do. They are, however, empowered by the moon and have glow-y red eyes, which for a newbie player and people easily startled can give them a startle. The game is experience-based, and nearly everything gives you experience; from chopping trees, to mining to killing zombies, each gives a varying amount. The experience you then get, you can spend on levelling up skills and abilities, which makes traversing and surviving a lot easier, not only that but attacking, gun accuracy and damage output. The game also comes with different levels of playing, easy, normal, hard, custom. Which not only alters physical difficulty but the scarcity of food, item drops, the condition of food and items and so on.
Of course, the game does have its issues as well, like any other game. The fact that the game is free means that the game will always be populated to a certain extent. However, the numbers have been dropping for a good while. In my opinion, it’s been dropping the entire time, but the biggest drop was when the “special” zombies were added and several names for zombies, map areas and guns changed. At the time of the changes, there were a fair number of maps out, and the player-base was split across them in terms of favourites. There was one map; however, that was the least played on. The original map called PEI. There were major changes to this map, as well as most people’s favourite part of the map (a hidden bunker that everyone used to fight over) being completely deleted. The special zombies that were added were different to the regular zombies. Regular zombies had 3 different types, standing, on all fours and crawling. Except for the “Mega Zombie” who was a massive zombie that could one-hit you with a punch or through a boulder in your general direction. The special zombies, however, were weird. Introducing zombies that spit acidic goo as they walk, zombies that are coated in fire and explode in flames if you shoot them, and electric zombies that can zap you from afar. Most players at the time were more or less thinking “What the heck is that?” rather than “This is precisely what we need, fantastical fantasy-esque powers for the zombies that were already bordering on perfection.”. What was messed with was an already fantastic formula of zombie-making, those bland and “usual” zombie designs were all that the games needed, no fantastical elements.
(Editing notes: Going back on this, the supernatural way that these zombies seemed to have these “powers” was what made them ridiculous. Fire Zombies: Make sense if you’re in a burning building or near one a la 7 Days To Die style, different zombies, different biomes. Fire zombies in fire environments, burning cars, burning buildings, forests engulfed with fire. And would also make more sense as to the firefighter equipment being added. Being in a fire environment depleting the oxygen bar, but slower than when you’re underwater. Also adding to your disease meter, but slower than when you’re in a deadzone. Electric Zombies: can’t find any reason for them to exist, honestly, but I’d honestly nerf them as they were perfectly capable of sniping you last time I checked. Acid Zombies: Slightly alter them, instead of having a spitting attack, replace with a “semi-ground pound”. When a zombie falls from a height, have it splodge out “toxic goo” instead. Being in proximity of them causes disease to decrease slightly slower than being in a deadzone. Being touched by them not only taking the regular chunk out of your health but an even bigger chunk out of your disease, leaving also a residual timed effect of slow disease increase.)
If you’ve played a free game before, you’ll be aware of what comes with a free game is no pay-wall. Absolutely no filter to the type of people you come across in the game. This is good and bad in and of itself, but it means you have no idea the age or temperament of someone until their gun is up your arse, cursing, swearing, profanities and the occasional racial slurs.
In terms of bad things about the game itself, there’s not much. There are plenty of things that will be subjective, like the art style and the mechanics; like bullet drop and things. Things that are considered “controversial” within the game’s community. However, there are certain problems when faced with multiplayer, as a lot of the maps used for single-player. While these maps great for multiplayer, they can’t cope with the number of people building things at the one time (aka Washington, and it’s Lag Wall). There are unplayed maps like the barren, snow map called Yukon. Which I know many people like, but just not enough people like it for it to be used for any of the multiplayer servers.
Price: Free To Play (Can Buy £3.99 upgrade) Time To Complete: N/A endless survival game. Achievements: 63 Cards: 13 Worth The Money: It’s free…. Yes. If they charged the £3.99 for the game instead of an optional extra, it would still be worth it 100%.
Genuinely, if you’re looking at this and considering it, you should definitely pick it up and play it. I made some of the best friends and memories within this game, and I do not regret playing it one bit. I’m always looking forward to the next big thing from the developer of this game (and still waiting for Unturned 2 despite the fact it was supposed to be being released years ago) and cherish it with all my heart.
Zesty Rating 9 Out Of 10. A free to play, open world survival, zombie game. Created by a lone developer and built with a lot of love and devotion, and it shows. One of the main reasons it’s still a very highly played game today, and has been for a long time. It sustained my interest for over two thousand hours, and if I got other people into it with me, I could probably play two thousand more.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 calledSturgeon’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.
jinxlgamez
Doubtful Player 