When strolling through Keymailer, I often look for games I know I can play. This also means that the selection of games that I get can sometimes be rather underwhelming, or just plain shit. The ease of getting and reviewing bad games has got me this far, being not just a smaller streamer than most, but also relatively newer to streaming, less professional and less social media savvy. I can now just about get any game I ask for off Keymailer, assuming that it is indie, and it’s cheap enough made. So, when I saw Shape Shift Shaun, this was another game that I could easily get and play. Plus, it’s easy to make a review for a game when everything is so bad that it sticks out like a broken pinkie.
Shape Shift Shaun Episode 1: Tale of the Transmogrified, is a mouthful to say, SSSE1:TT is also ridiculous and the first gripe I have with the game is the length of the title of the game. Why does that need to be the full title? I get that you probably want to make more games in the future, but it all doesn’t need to be in the title. Nevertheless, I’ll stop bitching about things that don’t really matter all that much.
Shape Shift Shaun is a game where you get bullied at Hallowe’en after you get a bunch of candy, then thrown down a crater that was made by a falling meteor by the bully. You and the bully are now trapped in the centre of the earth, which is reminiscent of the setup of Journey To The Centre Of The Earth or Ice Age 3: Dawn Of The Dinosaur. Inside this area, the Bully, and Shaun freak out as there’s “no food” despite only being there for like 3 minutes, which is hardly enough time to look around for food. The Bully threatens to eat Shaun’s candy, but the candy has been dropped all over the inner planet. After threatening to then eat Shaun, the Bully then eats a little red Soot Sprite that can talk and transforms into a mega-chad bully and goes on a rampage to eat more of them. Using the power of more little red soot sprites, Shaun turns into a dragon and goes on a quest to capture the Bully.
I have no idea whether this is a game for kids or not. It’s really hard to tell. It’s a basic platformer where you can run and jump, and you collect candy for points. You can also change into a red dragon at any time during the game to then glide and breathe fire on the enemies, effectively killing them. You also breathe fire on a multitude of obstacles to get them out of the way and progress with the level. All the controls, bar a few, seem relatively alright and make sense concerning the global platforming controls. The only thing I didn’t like was the controls for switching forms and attacking enemies. They were close to each other and on a side of the keyboard that didn’t make sense to me. This often led me to change forms when I wanted to attack enemies.
The story itself goes on further than that, hinting towards being able to change into multiple things, but I just didn’t get that far. Despite actually feeling quite fluid and easy to control, the enemy placement and the placement of platforms, on the other hand, had me at a complete loss. Only being able to get close to the end of the level out of memory, makes me think that either it’s not a kids game, or it’s just a bad one.
Pros:
The game works, has no massive graphical or audio issues/glitches, and does not crash upon load or during the game.
Even though it’s not an old game, it has that old, cheap looking aesthetic of older games with the weird moving 3D character models in a 2D game. I hold this as a positive as it’s not entirely ugly, but certainly holds that old-world charm.
Everything is clear and self-explanatory, absolutely no guess-work is required to complete this game. Everything is spelt out clear as day and objectives made clear.
Most of the controls are the universal norm for most platformers.
Cons:
The story is boring, rather drab and a little ridiculous at best. Clearly overexaggerated for the comedy value. The Bully freaking out the tiny red creature talks then promptly eating it seems a little unusual.
The controls that are not the universal norm for platforming are very strange. It essentially has you reaching round the keyboard, but also accidentally smacking the wrong one. Despite being relatively easy otherwise, this part of the controls raises the difficulty immensely for no reason.
As the controls for platforming are almost perfect, the game had to fail elsewhere. This is where game design came in. The platforms are arranged so strangely that one small move can have you falling off the edge of a platform, despite the image of the platform still being under your feet. You also have to remember exactly where things are, as you can be jumping off a platform at the far right of your screen not knowing where the next platform is. Enemy placement as well is a tragedy. Three long and wide purple blob creatures on a tiny platform that I not only need to land on but also destroy the vines AND kill them and progress.
Price: £5.79 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 15 Cards: No Worth The Money: Nah, not really.
In conclusion, I’m still not really even sure whether this game is a kids game or not. It’s genuinely bland enough in the story department but colourful enough and revolves around sweets. It’s also easy to grasp, apart from the odd controls for switching forms and attacking. It’s a really mixed bag in terms of a game, but my audience absolutely hated it, they could’ve hated how it looked more than me. Overall, the game isn’t that bad, it’s just not really worth the money it wants as while it probably has the content and time/effort put into it for a £5.79 game, it’s just not fun.
Zesty Rating 3 Out Of 10 A boring and bland story paired with a colourful but ugly game. Lovely controlling of the platforming and has everything a platformer needs, except for a good game design. Dodgy platforms, terrible map planning and even worse enemy placement.
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.
Starting off with the sequel to Alwa’s Awakening, what a joy and what a delight after playing the first game. From their game in 2017 to this release in 2020, Alwa’s Legacy is one of the games that I can say visibly and thoroughly improves from the first game to the second. Nearly every point that I had made about the previous game was cleared up, rectified, and that’s always a great thing to see. As if they’ve cleared up those things that so many complained about, it means they are developers who listen, and therefore, developers to follow and trust in. (Just don’t go AAA, please, I beg.)
Despite being a little late to the party, Alwa’s Awakening was something that disappointed me, it felt like a bundle of broken promises and pandering towards those who fall for nostalgia-bait (like the Star Wars Sequels). Despite all the problems still standing, it was a legitimate game and cared about its matters. It stood the test of time for another game to be made and was still good enough to get a mixed rating. It was always a surprise for me to pick up both Alwa’s Awakening and Alwa’s Legacy on Keymailer, I had just gone through my entire 2k “maybe-list” (steam wishlist) and had no idea what to expect. Playing Awakening later had me hesitant to play Legacy, I will admit. I remembered my draining experience (further worsened by playing another bad game beforehand, I will admit.) and put off playing Legacy as long as I could. Now, playing it, I realise how silly it was to just assume that those same aspects that I loathed from the game would carry over.
Because it didn’t. Hence, why this review will be a comparison.
“Most of the platforming requires pixel perfect jumping. I found the platforming some of the easiest to control out of all the games I’ve received from Keymailer, but it takes the happiness of finally having that away from me when showing me the platforms. Granted, not all the jumps are hazardous, death traps, but the ones that are the furthest away from the checkpoint always are, and it hurt my soul.” ~ (Alwa’s Awakening Review) My soul has been healed. This game still requires some amount of “pixel perfect jumping”, which I would say most platformers need for it to not just be a walk in the park, but in this sense, all the jumping and platforms made sense. Everything made sense. I didn’t feel as if I needed to lean to the side “IRL” (in real life) to make every jump, it was smooth and nurturing but wasn’t afraid to let you fall if you fucked up. The death traps and such are placed appropriately within great consideration of where your last checkpoint was, nothing too unrealistic at all and very considerate while still making it challenging.
“Speaking of checkpoints, Red Cap Zombie Hunter, eat your heart out because you have NOTHING on the placement of these checkpoints when it comes to distance. The placement overall of the checkpoints is actually fine and is nowhere near the randomness that Red Cap does with their haphazard tornado lightshows, but the distance is actually heart-breaking and forced me to recline in my chair for a few minutes on multiple occasions.” Red Cap Zombie Hunter…. Bro this is how you do it. It’s not about putting checkpoints, it’s about listening to criticism, taking it on board,and not having a hissy fit because people are finding problems with your game. Legacy took the absolutely atrocious checkpoint spacing of Awakening and improved TENFOLD on it. There was almost a point that I thought there were too many, but after unlocking new dangers I realised that checkpoints were necessary everywhere that they were. The game had become a lot more difficult, but at the same time a lot more achievable without throwing your hands up in rage, and it’s all due to the checkpoint placements.
“So if it wasn’t for the amount of dying I was doing sending me back, I also have to do A LOT of backtracking as well. I know it was very common in most older platformers, but with everything combined I genuinely felt as if I was losing the will to live, passing the same area so many times with nothing to gain from it. I only found out that there were quicker ways of going around things, like hidden walls/doors/ceilings/floors, yet I wasn’t to know as they looked the same as everything else!” Okay, so apart from the one place that I got completely lost looking for an old woman who was the key to me moving on in the game… Once again, such a big improvement. The maps are the same way, in which you could easily get a bit lost, or a bit turned around looking for the way you need to go, but it’s different! The rooms are a tad smaller, they look better, they matter just a bit more. Not only that, but the way that you traverse the map is a lot different too. Many rooms are “one-way” making you a tad nervous as you can’t get back, but then, boom, you get your little power to summon a cube out of nowhere, and you can get back now! Every room and direction is much more purposeful, with fewer dead ends. You can only wander down a route if you have the right powers to do so. No backtracking because you went the wrong way. I still haven’t found any hidden walls/floors/ceilings/doors but seen as this game was a lot more enjoyable than the last, I might go back to it.
“As if backtracking and losing progress to things wasn’t enough, your character is also very slow in comparison to big empty and expanding rooms with not much filling them but maybe one or two measly enemies which will be super stingy about their drops.” I’m trying so hard not to write vocalised expressions of satisfaction, just thinking back to the change on just how smooth the character is when walking… Your character is faster, smoother at walking, jumps are more responsive and rooms are not big and empty. Everything is fucking tight and fluid, and it’s lovely. I’m not so mad about enemies being stingy with heart drops because my slow-ass isn’t being grabbed as much any more, I’m not getting bored in a room, I’m not actually getting lost or having to backtrack as much. It’s honestly just “mmmmmmm”, as a change from one game to the other, it’s honestly a great feeling, almost as if I’m gliding with each step. (Not to be mistaken for the character being slippery when walking, the character is very much rooted it’s just the change is that blissful)
It’s honestly a great experience, and not just the game itself, but the rise from complaint ridden game to game I genuinely have only small complaints for. — I still don’t really know the story, but that also seems unimportant. — I got lost trying to find the old woman because I didn’t realise I could jump through the big orange column, as it literally looked like a wall. — I don’t understand if I can swim? Or how to swim? Or if it’s a special power I’m missing.
But besides that, take all my positive comments from the previous game, smack them in this review and add some sparkle. “The art style is cute and nostalgic with appropriate colour palettes, nothing is ugly or “meh” to look at.” This, but without my apathetic language. The colours are now popping, and while the style of the game is still very much the same, there have been some tweaks to let things pop so much more and be more attractive to the eye. “The music fits the purpose. It’s chiptune and 8-bit, and most soundtracks fit the appropriate setting they are put in. Boss battle areas seem to lack a little, but most of the others are great.” Likewise, the soundtracks are a lot better, but I still have the same gripe about boss battle tunes, sometimes they don’t actually exist at all, which makes me wonder if it’s actually a boss battle, but on the game goes anyway. “There are NPCs all over the map that all have some sort of dialogue (whether relevant or not) which really brings a bit more life to the otherwise empty feeling game.” The NPCs are so much more real now, they look better, they have better, more believable dialogue and just genuinely, overall feel so much better. Despite me still not knowing what the fuck is going on within the game, everything reads so much better and has me a lot more invested than what I was with the last game.
“The powers learned by the protagonist within the game (specifically the first one where you summon cubes) were generally surprising to me and a lot more refreshing than the generic powerups most games would give you to get around obstacles.” Same as above, I don’t think the powers have changed much since the last game (since I didn’t actually get all that far in Awakening) but it’s still such a refreshing premise on superpowers. Replacing your typical double jump with something different that allows you to mostly get the same desired effect. “Not all enemies are the same one. There are different enemies and also different variations of the same enemies that take more hits to kill. That and the bosses are interesting and while not outstanding or grandiose were still a nice bunch of pixels.” Oh my god, this, but so much more. Yes, the staple enemy to this game is skeletons, but within the first minutes of this game, it shows you so much more. Hidden behind a door you can’t open, in the first area with the old woman, are so many new creatures. You get hit with skeletons at the start, but later on, there’s flower demons, and evil flowers and moving statues and… It’s just great, and the art style switch I think was also key to making these guys look wonderful too. It gives you such a better grasp early on of how much this world has to offer.
Price: £13.99 Time To Complete: 9 Hours Achievements: 24 Cards: No Worth The Money: Maybe. It’s almost always on discount, however, so a definite yes on discount.
Overall, this game is so much better than its predecessor, and it strongly suggests that they listen to their fanbase/community/players. From what I can see in the reviews for this one, compared to the last game, there is so much more positivity towards the game and the developers and a genuine want for a third game. It’s not a game I would play on stream and something I’d pick up in my downtime (if I let such a thing exist) and complete casually in my own time. I recommend, if you have both Awakening and Legacy, play Awakening first just to make yourself love Legacy all that much more.
Zesty Rating 9 Out Of 10. A remarkable difference from the previous game. Improved in all aspects and actually a joy to play. Smooth characters and amazing game design. Diverse enemies and not frustrating to play, but provides a worthy challenge. Massive improvement.
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.
The Captain is one of those games that takes me back to the old days of NewGrounds and Armour Games, a plethora of flash games, all of my favourites being point and click adventure games. (I tried to recreate that magic on Twitch once by only playing flash games on Fridays, but I can safely say that no one was interested.) Despite the very long intro with screeds of text that I ended up skipping most of, I was taken back to that era rather abruptly so that it gave me a bit of whiplash.
The Captain starts out with a whole bunch of story I didn’t ultimately read, but I got the fair gist of it. Bad people have a big army and are going to use a weapon to destroy the sun surrounding a planet of great stature, Earth. To make the shield, that was created to protect the sun work, a costly and time-consuming battery must be made at this station that’s on the outer rim of the galaxy. In the process of transporting this cell back to Earth, something unfortunate happens with the experimental “warp hole” technology, which leaves your protagonist stranded on the outer rim of the galaxy without the cell and a broken ship. The BBEG is still en route to s’plode the sun, so you now need to grab the cells and head home ASAP before the sun goes splat.
The reason this game gave me whiplash, however, is because during one of the very first choices, a person died. A person died because I can’t lie to people, in-game characters or not. I’m not a liar, and especially with a situation as dire as it was… I just can’t lie. Spoiler. It hurt my soul so much. This reeks of early point and click games, throwing you into situations like that so quickly and without any forewarning. This game went from boring, clicking through all the dialogue that I’m not concerned about, to “Fuck, I almost cried.” Not everyone will have the same reaction as me, however, as I feel things too deeply, but I love it when games take me off guard.
Pros:
The game works.
The game’s art style is another one I love. Tiny pixels all arranged to make a detailed picture, but still pixelated. I love pixel art so much, as there’s so much you can do with it.
The characters are believable, and the situations are gritty and dire, in the best way. Challenging dilemmas that really have you trying to think so widely out the box, but you struggle to know what to do as it’s the first playthrough.
The concept of time in this game is handled great. There have been so many games that I’ve played before that I felt handled time and time-based challenges in such a shit way. (Dead Rising 2) I genuinely felt as if I was racing against time in a way that I could genuinely handle, but also felt I had absolutely no grip on. Nothing I could do would give me more time, I just had to make the best use of it.
The puzzle elements to this game are VERY flash point and click game. Combining and searching high and low for things. No hints, but the solutions are simple once you get around to them. Minimal puzzles, but always very meaningful.
Cons:
Once again, the text in this game is overbearing. There is a lot of dialogue in this game that’s not very much needed. It does give depth to the characters and everything that’s happening in the game, but the amount necessary is way less than the amount provided, and it’s somewhat of a drag.
The game is predominantly made for replayability. Any game that has the number of choices, consequences, outcomes and just sheer “anxiety via indecision” inherently wants to be replayed. What lets the game down is the lack of a skip button for things that you’ve already seen and experienced.
I genuinely can’t think of any more cons for this game. This is literally one of the first games that I have ever played that one of the people watching me at the time came back to me and said, “Yeah, I went and bought this after I saw you play it.”
Price: 15.49 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: None Cards: No Worth The Money: Yes, play it again and again.
In conclusion, it’s not the best game there is out there for point and click adventures. It also certainly doesn’t rival any of my favourites of the flash era, but is it good? Yes, undoubtedly so. It’s more than definitely worth buying and playing, as it promises a better playthrough every restart and multiple different routes to the path of success. It’s not the most riveting or inspiring, but it’s another good space story that I can easily say is worth the money and the time you put into it. If you want something that’s as close to a 5/5 as I can give, then try the Don’t Escape series. It’s honestly gamegasm material for point and click adventure/puzzle games.
Zesty Rating 7 Out Of 10 A refreshing return to flash point and click routes. Gripping and gritty decisions ensue, with lots of space travel and sci-fi themes. Replayability is off the charts, make your horrible decisions all over again…
This instance for me was a first from Keymailer. What I’d done was go through my entire Steam Wishlist (Over 2k Games, it’s a story for another time) and requested EVERY KEY that I could for all the games on my wishlist. This took mostly the entire night until 4am in the morning, provided that I’d also watched my friend’s stream until midnight that night, and was also being distracted by everything and anything. Lo and behold, I get not one but two games from the same dev, both being the same franchise and being from as early as 2017.
Alwa’s Awakening is the first of two games, the other being Alwa’s Legacy, which I am yet to play and review, and should promptly be doing it this week. From looks only and the trailer, it looks to be a nostalgic revisit to the old 8-bit platformers coming out nearer the end of the 8-bit era, graphics and movement promising to be an absolute gem and reprise many people’s memories. I was met with this, but also met with the other thing that happens when I go back and play old games. “Hmm, something’s not right. Something just feels a little off, like something is missing. It has everything I knew it would have, but why don’t I enjoy it?” But this isn’t an old game? It’s not something I played in my childhood, yet it comes with that anticipated nostalgia haze, with the emptiness ensuing.
You are this fabled character that’s supposed to save this village/town/city of Alwa. I read the plot and one part said city, but the image was literally like 10 houses, and it threw me off, I think. You go through a mass dungeon crawl where there are enemies everywhere, destructible objects and permanent powerups that unlock more sections of the map for you to explore and conquer. It gives exactly what’s promised and delivers exactly what’s expected, but why do I feel so let down?
Well, I think after going back to the game after the stream and literally meditating on it, which you’ll never get me to do for anything else, I’ve put my finger on it. Most of which are things that other games do, but I think the overall combination of these things are what brings it down to a boring, grindy, flavourless halt. So from here, instead of doing the pros first, here come the cons.
Cons:
Most of the platforming requires pixel perfect jumping. I found the platforming some of the easiest to control out of all the games I’ve received from Keymailer, but it takes the happiness of finally having that away from me when showing me the platforms. Granted, not all the jumps are hazardous, death traps, but the ones that are the furthest away from the checkpoint always are, and it hurt my soul.
Speaking of checkpoints, Red Cap Zombie Hunter, eat your heart out because you have NOTHING on the placement of these checkpoints when it comes to distance. The overall arrangement of the checkpoints is actually acceptable, and is not as chaotic as the haphazard tornado light show by Red Cap. However, the distance is actually heartbreaking and forced me to recline in my chair on multiple occasions.
So if it wasn’t for the amount of dying I was doing sending me back, I also have to do A LOT of backtracking as well. I know it was very common in most older platformers, but with everything combined I genuinely felt as if I was losing the will to live, passing the same area so many times with nothing to gain from it. I only found out that there were quicker ways of going around things, like hidden walls/doors/ceilings/floors, yet I wasn’t to know as they looked the same as everything else!
As if backtracking and losing progress on things wasn’t enough, your character is also very slow in comparison to big empty and expanding rooms. With not much filling them but maybe one or two measly enemies which will be super stingy about their drops.
I could probably think of more, but I honestly think that’s enough to rag on the game to make you have a second-hand experience of what happened. I have hope for playing its successor as it too also has a good amount of positive reviews. I’m hoping the next game will have expanded on these Pros I now have to list to keep the review balanced.
Pros:
The game works. 💖
The art style is cute and nostalgic with appropriate colour palettes, nothing is ugly or “meh” to look at.
The music fits the purpose. It’s chiptune and 8-bit, and most soundtracks fit the appropriate setting they are put in. Boss battle areas seem to lack a little, but most of the others are great.
There are NPCs all over the map that all have some sort of dialogue (whether relevant or not) which really brings a bit more life to the otherwise empty feeling game.
The powers learned by the protagonist within the game (specifically the first one where you summon cubes) were generally surprising to me and a lot more refreshing than the generic powerups most games would give you to get around obstacles.
Not all enemies are the same one. There are different enemies and also different variations of the same enemies that take more hits to kill. That and the bosses are interesting and, while not spectacular or grandiose, were still a nice bunch of pixels.
This is honestly a review that I did not want to do. When I look at this game from afar when not having played it, I see what I want. An enjoyable look back on a previous era of gaming, brought back into the modern day, but when played it brings back all the same problems that early day gaming had with it. While £6.99 is a great price for a game with 5 – 10 hours of playtime it’s honestly, mostly filler, retracing your steps, taking the wrong route that leads to nowhere, being punished and not liking it.
Zesty Rating 4 Out Of 10
A great-looking and sounding game, but that’s about it. Has everything about a game from the 1980s including all the unintuitive and punishing game design. Nostalgia-vision encapsulated, leaves you tired, sapped of your enjoyment because it’s not as good as you remember it being, despite never having played it before.
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.
NOTE: There will be a few spoilers in this review. Not major spoilers, but more to do with the core functioning of the game and not to do with the story. Mentions: EXP, LV (LOVE), Training Dummy, Nature of the game’s “life lessons”, all gameplay routes, that some characters die (but not specified which do), and a brief explanation of the first 5 – 15 minutes of the story.
Undertale is a debated masterpiece by tobyfox, spanning a fandom which has been thriving for years (7 to be generally correct) which still, to this day, sparks the creative fires of its fans.
The last time I played this game was years ago, getting through the game on a pacifist run and getting really fucking stuck on the dummy level. At that point, I didn’t appreciate the music as I was too busy getting super aggravated at the bloody cheating dummy. If I went back to it now, I’m not certain how well I would fare. I’d possibly do better or there is the possibility I’d do worse, as over the years my style of gaming has changed considerably. (From being a COD and Halo player to Skyrim, Oblivion and Indie games).
Undertale is one of those games that tries to teach you life lessons, but has trouble deciding which life lesson to teach you, as there are so many relevant ones. But also, you are changing all the time as well, and what you consider to be the best decision may not be the same as what you once thought. It’s not the most groundbreaking game in terms of “I did a wonderful thing, why did things turn to shit?”, no, no, that award goes to the first 15 minutes of The Captain and a few other games I’ve forgotten.
You can play Undertale one of three ways, kill everything in sight (Genocide), kill every minor enemy in sight and spare every major enemy that has a personality (Neutral), or reason with everything and kill nothing (Pacifist).
What the game does, is set you up.
It gives you the basics of the game. Kill things, and it gives you XP, when you level up, you increase your HP. The point that this game makes however is that it never told you to do those things, and further on you can discover that killing people and the creatures you come across is bad (believe it or not). How bad? Well, if you go on the Genocide Route, one of the main characters reveals to you that EXP is an acronym for “Execution Points”, a commentary on how you’ve mercilessly slaughtered everyone. Okay, that’s pretty bad, but when you get enough EXP you increase your LV, which is short for LOVE, that can’t be bad, right? Nah, bro, you still fucked up. “LOVE, too, is an acronym.” Apparently standing for “Level Of Violence”, you’re executing of all the innocent creatures and people, levelling up just how much of a violent threat you are.
The neutral path isn’t that much to speak of, characters make remarks about your killing of the minor enemies of the world (which are classed as their citizens, no matter how ugly they are or if they attack you). The major characters will not really be pleased with these actions and will make some, but not all, friendly interactions unavailable, especially with the lawful good-type character.
The pacifist route is probably as you would expect, and while I do love grinding for EXP and advancing my levels, knowing that I can be friends with everyone instead is just so heart-warming. There are honestly a few minor characters that have my heart, one in particular is apparently always made fun of for its appearance, and is crying in its sprite (not the drink, the character sprite). You can console it and tell it that it’s good-looking, and the fight will stop because you’ve cheered it up! Just getting your first little “Awh…” moment is always great. Especially when coming to the big bosses as well, you will feel compelled to fight as each of the bosses (which is basically every main character) throws everything at you. You almost feel like turning around, saying “This bitch…” and using ye olde Attack button. Dodging every attack and appealing to their humour or trying to calm them down. Rinsing and repeating this a good few times can have you on their good side, and if you’re lucky, you could get a date with someone really great.
The story, as spoiler-free as I can put it, goes as so. You are a human child who, one day, when frolicking in the land humans occupy, fell into a deep, deep hole, onto a very convenient bed of flowers. Your character, who is called Frisk, apparently, wanders around until she runs into a very nice lady. The thing about this lady is that she’s a monster (but she looks super cute though, so she passes), she nurtures Frisk and looks after them until your character starts wanting to leave. The very pleasant monster lady, Toriel, panics and informs Frisk that they can’t leave. The only way to get back to the human world, above, is to go through the land of monsters, and they will try to kill any human they see.
Of course, the story can’t progress if you just stay, so you push on. Toriel isn’t having any of it, and this becomes your first battle. I’m sure she says something like “I can’t let you leave as they’ll kill you…” and makes reference to her doing it herself, so it’s less painful?? I’m not certain, I have a weird memory of that happening. After you decide whether your child character kills the very nice Toriel or not, you’re out into the land of monsters. From here you meet plenty of other monsters, minor characters, random chance enemies and major characters. Your main objective being “Escape”, but it’s so leisurely as while the monsters are struggling to survive underground… it’s such a beautiful and unique place. You find out how the world of the monsters works and the lengths they go to pursue and catch you, their hopes and dreams, and their ambitions and morals. They see you as a morally evil being due to the stories that were told about humans and their traumatic history with humans. No wonder they’re hell-bent on killing or capturing you.
Make friends or enemies along the way, discover horrible truths about monsters in general and about others more specifically. Even the practise dummy that you were told to hit by Toriel has beef with you, and it’s super pissed. But the end of this game is not the end, as, debatably, the best feature of this game is in its replayability.
From what I could tell, this game does not encourage you to replay the game, but it has a strange tone about you from the start, almost speaking to you like an old friend. But upon restarting the game, it’s immediately made known to you that the game knows you’ve restarted the game and will make commentary on your actions within the last run. Whether you killed everyone, killed no one or didn’t finish the game, it’s onto you. It turns out that you’re still playing the game, the choices that you’ve made impact your next play too. Though this is a “new” playthrough with a “new” Frisk, it’s hinted at that this is the same Frisk. Time rewinds and Frisk has full recollection of what happened in the previous game, whereas only a few of the monsters do, the rest of them are reset and have no memory of what happened. Even dying if you killed them the first time around. I’m sure at one point, a character you killed in the game before said something about dying in a dream when you start a new run. One of said characters directly calls you out on this with it’s always snarky tone, and one alludes to knowing, and depending on the route you take, will reveal to you how much they know.
This game is an expertly crafted machine.
However, the dark side of this game does not really come from within the game itself. People can find this game unappealing if it’s not the type of game for them, they may find the game ugly, or uninteresting, which are all perfectly valid. (But how can you not enjoy the music? I listen to this on repeat unironically.)
The real problem with this game is the toxic fandom. Real, great things come out of the fandom, going on from being completionists to lore hunters and theorists. Branching off that into discussing alternate universe versions of the characters and shipping other characters and art and… I could go on. Fandoms are wonderful. But one thing that this fandom is the absolute worst for is toxic backseat-gaming.
We will look at the case of Markiplier (yes this is the second time I’ve mentioned him in my reviews, I used to be a gigantic fan, leave me alone) and his Undertale experience. Not the video itself, but the mass number of comments in his videos relating to the toxic fandom attacking him over his choices in the game.
Markiplier, of his own volition, heard about the popularity of Undertale and decided to see what the fuss was about. What he was about to learn is that the overwhelmingly positive feedback of the game had led to overwhelmingly expectant fanatics of the game.
“Undertale is just oozing with charm, so get ready for an adventure! Moreover, my friends would not shut up about it, so I had to see the game for myself!”
Alas, he made the mistake of recording it and putting it on YouTube.
He managed to get a few playthroughs into the game before his choices enraged the overly expectant section of the fandom. Bear in mind, like in all cases, political, cultural, religious, fandom-based, the majority are usually never the “problem” when it comes to issues “created” by said group. Instead, it is usually those who shout loudest, the vocal majority that are usually the issue (as typically, the true majority of these groups want to be left to enjoy their shit in peace.) The vocal majority of the Undertale fandom is comparable to the stereotype of ‘feminism’ used to denigrate it, or the many “Karens” used to justify why your cousin’s newborn daughter shouldn’t be called that. So, when people mention the “Undertale Fandom”, they immediately think about the vocal majority, instead of the true majority.
“Everyone was disappointed in the way I was playing it, and ordinarily I would just be like: ‘Y’know, I’m doing it my way. I’m gonna do this,’”
Markiplier only got two videos into Undertale before the pressure of the wave of toxic fans of the game had completely overrun his comment section. A combined total of almost an hour of video, and Mark reading out all the dialogue to make it entertaining, had meant he’d not reached the first town yet. Which, on a solo playthrough without an audience to entertain, would take a lot shorter of a time. Mark did not get to really even experience the game, as something he’d done within the game, had made the toxic fandom so mad they had to harass him.
He gave a fan-favourite character… a “redneck voice”. Oh, the humanity! How dare he give a character which has no voice, a voice that is the wrong voice! How is it the wrong voice? It just is!
Oh, and he’s doing the genocide route instead of being a pacifist and completely missing all the friendships that he could’ve made, and that’s not how the story is supposed to be canonically… Wrong! You HAVE to play it pacifist first so that you can feel the PAIN of killing everyone and tugging at your heartstrings, oh my goodness, it’s just so wrong.
There are more threatening comments than this. This one was the more “on the fence one” before it got nasty.
The wave initially overflowed his chat with a wave of insults towards the voice and the fact that he was killing things because it’s not the way that they believe the game was intended to be played. There were then people trying to “reason with Mark” by pointing out why he should do the pacifist run instead. These explanations were overly detailed and spoiled a lot of the game for him.
“I’m not having fun making these videos because I know that no matter what I do, everyone will think I’m wrong.”
“I feel like I missed out on [Undertale] because people ruined it for me… Even though this game is wonderful, I feel like I missed out on it because people tried to control it too hard. And that’s a lesson to learn about something that you care for very deeply. Allow other people to experience it in the way that it should be because that’s what the game is about. That’s a lesson to learn for both the community that facilitates around Undertale and life in general in anything that’s not Undertale. Let it have room, to breathe…trust the people that you care about to find their own way, and make their own mistakes, and discover new things you may have never seen. It’s about trust, you know?”
~Markiplier at the second attempt of playing through it on a livestream.
It wasn’t only Mark who was affected by this onslaught of negativity, it had hit the entire side of YouTube that was playing the game the way they wanted to. People who had newly started the game, knew nothing of what they were “supposed to do” and were going into it blindly, as you should with games. Attacks were being felt on all fronts. And you can tell how bad a fandom is when it garners the response of the creator.
There is more than this from TobyFox on the whole “bad fandom” thing, but I could only find the one where people were spoiling the game. Which is bad enough in itself, but not as bad as harassment.
I won’t go on for much longer about the fandom, as it’s honestly not something that’s wrong with the game itself. It’s actually a sign as to how, when something is so good, that it brings together everyone to be so passionate about the game. It’s just unfortunate that they turn into mindless drones of “You’re wrong, this is the right way to do it.” Tobyfox was probably one of the people who were most affected by it, seeing their creation as an instrument used to excuse why people are turning so sour against people who are only trying to enjoy the game.
At one point, I’m confident that TobyFox even reached out, on Twitter, to condemn this behaviour. If not, there was something said, as I remember the massive uproar from both sides of the community.
However… In conclusion, this game is a subjective masterpiece. Not everyone will like the game, and not everyone will like certain parts of the game, be it pacifist or genocide. But this game, single-handedly, made such a significant dent that the impact of it will be felt until the next considerable upset. A game with a core that powerful that it drove people to be toxic (who were probably already just as vain/toxic and needed something to latch onto) to passionate levels and seek those who were in the wrong. All that mattered to me was the tricky boss fights, the freedom to choose and the epic music (which I listen to unironically).
Zest Rating 9.5 Out Of 10. Golden Lemon, super Zesty. This game is a look into the masterpieces that TobyFox can achieve. I’ve still not played deltarune and need to. Powerful enough of a story to give toxic fans a backbone to aggressively backseat regular players. The outstanding soundtrack and plot-loop is genius. I would stream the game, but we all know why I don’t.
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
Leighann Paige
Doubtful Player 