There is not really a lot to complain about the game, despite the number of cons I will inevitably put at the end of this review. Most of them are because the game is a little price-y for only having 25 pretty short levels, which I’m sure scale in difficulty. It’s more or less nitpicking after the whole price check complaint.
The game is simple. You are squirrels and the enemies are squirrels. The premise of the plot is really just a “The Squirrels Are Playing Human Roles; Therefore It’s A Rodent Revolution”. Place your pieces, they fire. The enemy place their pieces, they fire. Place three of the same type of piece in a particular pattern, and they evolve into a bigger, more beefy or lethal piece. It honestly Plants vs Chess vs Match 3 and is actually great for what it is… But that’s all that it is.
If this was a mini-game in a larger game, then it would definitely have me head over heels for the game. Alas, it is not, so I would recommend to thee that thee fair gamers wait until thy game has been taken down a notch in terms of coppers, before picking this game up.
Pros:
The game works and does not crash or have any bugs or graphical glitches.
All music suits the theme and does not disrupt from the lore or the game itself, everything is suitable.
Some aspects of the story are genuinely entertaining and funny at times, watching squirrels quarrel about trivial manners is really ridiculous.
The unique take on the plants vs zombies vs chess vs match 3 fighting is actually rather refreshing. It’s almost nostalgic as it reminds me of an old game that I used to play, that I don’t have mind the name of.
The game genuinely does not look bad at all. They are very obviously 3D models of squirrels, no realism here, but it doesn’t hurt your eyes or soul to look at, which is something I can say has happened to me before.
Cons:
While refreshing, the plants vs zombies style battling is the only thing that happens. There is dialogue between battles, but that’s it. There are 25 levels of this which progressively gets harder, but that’s not worth the full price in my opinion.
The squirrels have just about the same dialogue every time. I’ve only made if halfway through, but Cortex is really fixed on capturing the bandicoot.
It teaches you early on that combining three squirrels makes a bigger and better squirrel, but it didn’t give you a little nudge for you to find that these big squirrels can combine into an even bigger squirrel. Maybe it’s expected, but my dumb face could’ve done with knowing it a little sooner.
There’s also no way of preventing your squirrels from becoming blue eyes white dragon, perhaps I want a nice row of them, to block the incoming bullets.
Price: £7.19 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: None Cards: Yes Worth The Money: Only When On Sale
In conclusion, it’s not the best game to ever surface upon Steam, especially for the price that is being asked of it. However, when it’s on sale, it’s a brilliant game to buy and play. An hour’s worth of playing in 5 levels, with about 25 levels in total. If you love puzzles, and match 3 stuff, then you can probably get a good number of hours out of this game.
Zesty Rating 5 Out Of 10 A decent jab at combining elements of Match 3 and Plants Vs Zombies. Squirrels take on the affairs of humans and battle it out in cute little uniforms. Not a horrible game, and has good puzzles, but not amazing.
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…
Saying this right here first before I write anything, as I know that the amount I write can prevent people from seeing how I feel about this game.
Do not buy this. At any cost. Do not. If you’re an unlucky sod who has this in their steam library already due to buying 150 game bundles from dodgy Russian game-code websites, then do us a favour. This game only has 4 reviews, write one. Even if it is only “This game is very bad.”, just be honest. In aide of mindless fools who would buy a game just because it’s on sale, turn them away with the sight of red. (Negative rating).
This game is a shill, a shell, and a bombshell all at once. Now, it’s not outrageously bad as the game actually functions and does not crash in the middle of playing like so many AAA games, that’s a plus, so we are now up to at least a 1/10. Then there is the matrix-like binary code type theme, which I’m fond of. I’ve always liked the green text on the black background aesthetic. The generation of money is also interesting, it is your standard “currency is click=dollars”. To level up, you purchase bits bytes and kilobytes to auto-collect your money. So now we are at least at a 2/10. (If we were giving out pity points, that is).
As soon as you enter the damn game you are hit with a wall of shattered expectations, no ear-blasting music, no cheesy copyright free music, no music that breaches copyright laws, nothing. None of the buttons make noises, nothing makes a noise. It’s just you, the button and the noise of your mouse endlessly clicking as you try to figure out why life has doomed you to this fate. Not of this game, but why you even thought this game would even be worth playing in the first place. Silence of the void, asking you the crushing question of why you even bothered to buy/download/play this game in the first place.
The fun stuff is, is that this game is so easy to replicate. It’s so un-unique. You get maybe 10 “enhancers” to your click bonus, and you’re just left to fend for yourself with your underpowered clicking and the severe lack of money to purchase your next 10 megabytes. Yes, the binary and computer theme is cool! So what? A mindless clicking game was made with visually intriguing aspects, not visually appealing ones, and boom, done. Perfect. You’ve got yourself what the developers consider a “game” worth “money”.
Do all these images look the same? If the answer is “Yes”, or any variation of agreeing, then ask yourself this: “Did you expect anything less?”
Pros:
It functions as a game, no crashes, major bugs with visuals or audio.
Computer Theme/ Binary Theme/ Matrix Theme
Cons:
No Music
No Sounds
No Effort
No Imagination
Nothing Unique
No payoff for all the time you’ve wasted clicking at binary.
This game is nothing.
Oh, and the achievements are borked.
Price: £0.79 Time To Complete: There is no completion. I have 6.9 hours in the game for the “lols”, but it probably only took 1 – 2 hours to max everything out. Achievements: 5 Cards: N/A Worth The Money: It’s not worth wiping your arse with.
If you recognise this image, then you already know what I’m implying. Play it instead if you want a clicker.
This game is a shell of a clicker game, so much so that I don’t even consider it a game, as there’s no payoff. There’s no effort, no life, and no reason to play it. So, therefore, there is no reason to buy it or to endorse the “maker” of this “game”.
Zest Rating 0 Out Of 10. I’m drinking bleach for a pallet cleanser after that. The endless void which is the expanse of my life can’t hope to be just as dull, empty and meaninglessas this game. It’s devoid of passion, creativity, and meaning. Honestly, describing myself as well, but at least I have really nice eyes, the game can’t boast the same.
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.
I am an avid lover of horror games, ever since way back in 2012 I found Markiplier’s first ever SCP – Containment Breach video, where he had streamed his very first interaction with the game. Since then, I was a regular watcher of not just his content, but horror game content in general. Watching people play Cry of Fear and Resident Evil games. I remember specifically going onto Wikipedia and searching “All Horror Games” and looking at each one of them on YouTube to find playthroughs of them all, because at the time I was limited to my Xbox and Xbox360 which never had “a lot” of horror games despite having things like Dead Space.
From there to here, I’ve had an obsession with horror games, having now got a PC and not just having the full extent of Steam to explore, but GOG and Epic Games Store (despite Epic Game Store being quite barren apart from their exclusives IMO). Not just that but sites like Itch.io and Gamejolt where people upload their creations, and you can access them for free most of the time.
So, when it comes to Keymailer, the moment I see a horror game, I throw myself at it. Fisherman’s House is no different to that, I threw myself right on that game hoping that by the looks of it, it was another Granny game. While I was correct, it was not only a complete rip-off of Granny while also completely failing to do what Granny did.
Fisherman’s House is a game where you don’t wake up in your own room, or your own house. Spend the best of 5 minutes at the start, looking for your torch because it’s very obscurely placed in your room, while being groaned at from whatever direction the “Fisherman” is. From there, you will wander around the house aimlessly looking for what you can assume is a means of escape, finding various things such as a generator you need to get working, a sledgehammer, a crowbar, and a paddle. You need to figure out how all of these things fit together in order for you to escape not only the house but the vicinity as well.
The items used in the game are set out the exact same way from Granny, which is not too bad, Granny however has sequels where the mechanics and gameplay have been massively improved on. However, Fisherman’s House falls flat in the entirety of the rest of the game. Where other games have tension and add fear, Fisherman’s House does not build on it, nor does it add any. You are pretty much always being chased when you’re close to the guy, walking slowly does nothing, nor does losing him in a loop, he will always know where you are when you come within a certain distance of him. Once you realise that there is no consequence for getting caught, the game crumbles. I was caught for the first time very quickly into the game, as that’s how I deal with my games, the first try is always to test your limit, test the enemy and see what you’re up against. I was jump-scared, despite already knowing the Fisherman was running right at me, then left. The Fisherman just left me, exactly where I was, after saying (not literally) “Ooga-booga” in my face and running away. There was no sign of me being injured or my character suffering from acute shock that they needed to recover from, I was free to move again immediately.
Is this game possible to win and finish? Yes, I do not doubt it. The A.I. may flip dramatically between extremely stupid and constantly on your tail, but this game is simple enough to beat. However, it’s more of a test of whether you can be bothered or not to actually finish it due to the lack of fun and fear. Did I finish it? No, after completing the game nearly halfway, I got extremely bored and leaned into my audience at the time questioning whether you can really die in the game or not, considering I seemed to have no consequence of being caught. The answer was “Yes”, I could die, but only after I’d been caught at least 7 times. At that point, after the Fisherman ran away from me after catching me, I ended up chasing him, to find he always “restarts” his behaviour in the same area, right outside the attic. Lazy A.I. programming.
Pros:
The game works, has no visual or audio bugs from what I’ve found
The starting atmosphere is genuinely unnerving, and the first sighting of the “ghost” Fisherman is actually really good for what it is.
The actual level design is okay, it feels like a believable house with lots of floors. Maybe not your standard British house, mind you, but I’ve definitely seen layouts similar to this in big American country estates.
The item placement being random gives a good level of difficulty to the game, not just being able to go to where you know everything is, proving a challenge that every instance of the object placement will be different each game.
The game provides loops and hiding spaces very frequently to avoid the Fisherman, letting you (in theory) manoeuvre around with ease.
Cons:
The atmosphere completely disappears, however, after your first encounter with the Fisherman, as nothing happens. You get a spook and that’s it. The atmosphere and the sight of the Fisherman does nothing anymore as the stakes are not high enough.
No consequences are where this game fails massively, as said before it takes away everything this game builds up and doesn’t even give you a slap on the wrist for being caught. I was caught at least seven times before I actually died. There was no “You have a boo-boo from being caught” or “You’re now so close to death that the next capture will make you die.”, absolutely nothing to hint to the player that being caught is bad, just endless chasing and jump-scares.
The A.I. for this game is horrible, as said before, once you got into the vicinity of the Fisherman he would “just know” you’re there. In a game like Granny, it made sense as Granny is visually impaired yet has enhanced hearing, the entire floor of the game either being covered in something like glass or twigs, or the floorboards being squeaky. Fisherman’s House offers absolutely none of this and resorts to just chasing you when you’re in range. This doesn’t cause as many you, many you problems as you might think however, as the Fisherman constantly walks into walls and even if you hide while he’s looking right at you, he’ll treat you as if you’ve just disappeared, even if you’re shining your torch right in his face from under the futon.
While RNG creates an amazing aptitude for challenge, it can also really take away from the game if applied incorrectly. Developers not taking into account what bigger items like the “generator” looking like in the same place as the crowbar, making the graphic glitch uncontrollably, is something that may have happened. Or maybe just the fact that items randomly move around the house to places you’d never consider keeping those things, but it’s a game, why should things make sense?
Some items are broken, I believe, as during my playthrough there were named items such as the “crowbar” that I couldn’t pick up, despite seeing in the trailer that you can utilise that tool. It seems to be a persistent problem within this game.
Price: £3.99 Time To Complete: N/A (Could probably speedrun it 10 min) Achievements: 7 Cards: None Worth The Money: No, as cheap as it is, I’d rather play Granny at the exact same price.
Overall, this game is a shadow of the game it draws inspiration from. While it does all the same things as the role-model game, it does them in a more lacklustre way, lacking in nearly every aspect in comparison. While I can appreciate that this is the developer’s first game (on Steam), Granny was also a “Dev’s First” game as well, and it’s significantly better at what it does, while also being the exact same price as Fisherman’s House. Fisherman’s House is just another one of the Granny clone games that come with the flood of the game’s popularity, as soon as a game/show gets popular you can sit back and shake your head while you watch the cheap rehashes and clones appear everywhere. This game is no different.
Zesty Rating 2 Out Of 10. When a game becomes popular, you’re hit with a wave of copies and shameless rip-offs, this is one of them. Literally the same price as all the Granny games, just go and play that instead. Bland, boring and not scary after the first encounter. Just another RNG-based, find-em-all to find-a-way-out, best to be ignored.
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: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
Ratropolis takes the cake from Castle On The Coast from me for “best game I’ve received from Keymailer yet.” in the grounds that I am playing this game off-stream and really am enjoying it. Castle On The Coast is still by far a better game, but due to me getting motion sickness and Ratropolis being the extremely simple game that it is, makes for a super addicting, challenging but fundamentally easy game to come back to.
Ratropolis is a card battling game, where you use the random draw of the cards to build and upgrade your settlement, all while tower-defencing at either side of your settlement, fending off zombie rats.
You start off the game by choosing which leader you wish to play as (at the start, only being able to pick from a few due to you needing to win games to unlock them), each leader having different advantages to playing them and different powers which you can use to give yourself a boost mid-game. From here you can also choose where your settlement is located, there are a few areas such as the forest, the coast, and desert, each having their advantages and disadvantages.
From here you’re presented with your “town hall” and a few cards to start you off with, a few army cards, a few cheese cards (when played right give you money), labour cards and house cards. You gain money in the game via using cards that grant you money or from the tax that’s collected every 5 seconds in-game. You also have a limited number of mice (citizens) at your disposal, which you can increase and decrease with a good strategy. Every 15 seconds you can reshuffle your deck and draw new cards, the natural amount being 4–5 cards, reusing ones that have multiple uses and using up ones that are one use only. The game gives you the option to reshuffle a lot earlier than this but at the cost of your money, which the cost increases for every wave that passes.
The game is “over” once 30 waves of enemies have been defeated, from here you can choose to exit the game and claim your rewards to keep playing, despite there being no additional rewards. Things get excruciatingly tougher from there, no news is good news and everything that happens is bad. The game really tries to kill you if you decide to continue, to the point where I only survived an additional 5 waves after winning.
Each cheese costs 40 gold, but gives you 30 gold for every cheese in your hand when it’s played. There are 3 cards in hand, so the player gets 90 gold. But when only one cheese card is present, if the card is played, the player makes a loss of 10 gold.
This game is honestly a treasure, I’ve actually not found a lot wrong with this game, and I’ve clocked at least 16 hours into this game by the time I actually get this review done, and possibly by the time that the review comes out I could be at between 20 and 25 hours. Each game is roughly about an hour if you make it to around the 30 wave mark, so maybe I’ll have unlocked everything by then.
Pros:
The game works, there are no graphical or audio errors.
This game masterfully combines card battling and tower defence in real time in a way that forces you to be strategic but also fast thinking, the enemies come in waves all the time, and you can refresh your hand often with more money, making this game fast-paced and challengingly stressful.
The art-style is cute and cartoony, lending itself to the people centred in the game, the mice. When the rats come on screen, the cute art-style lends itself to making the rats oddly more grotesque.
Each leader has a completely different playstyle as they all have different buffs and super abilities. Not only this, but they also tend to have their own range of cards that appear too, making it feel like you’re running a different kind of settlement with each different leader.
The game produces different waves of different enemies after every 5 levels or so, throwing bosses, mini-bosses and different species of enemy at you. This adds a lot of variety and gives a feeling of progression.
Once you’d beaten wave 30 it’s not over! You can continue afterwards on the same game and the game will outright try to slaughter you, or you can exit to the menu and start another settlement with the same character to unlock more cards and in the same area to increase the overall difficulty.
So that you don’t have to click everything or scroll/drag around the settlement, the game has easy shortcuts to do things in game. Pressing [Tab] moves you to the latest event, like the merchant appearing or your cheese is ready. Pressing [Space] will reshuffle your cards and [R] will use your ability.
Cons:
The tutorial leaves a lot to be desired. I feel as if it taught me all the basics, but when it came to the rewards from the reward chest, I saw “Increase Leader Level” as one of the options and felt like the game had completely skipped out on explaining what that was. Also, a few other small things as well, like the bounty system (for the war leader) and the souls system (for the spirit leader) that were never explained or told where to look or what to do with it.
The game is a tad unbalanced, from waves coming too quickly sometimes due to the enemy number increasing every wave, so by the time you’re done with one wave the next is already attacking the other side. Some leader’s abilities are a lot more useable than others, the newest leader that was added not too long ago probably needing a tweak. The overall game is focused heavily on the RNG of everything, especially the cards, which will sometimes blow an entire game out of the water.
The interface of the game isn’t the best. I personally would like a tab I could pull up mid-game that show all my stats (maybe not pausing the game but slowing the time down to the same as when placing the cards), or possibly an easier function for moving your military mice around. What this game excels at in ease of play, it loses in the finickiness of everything else.
The settlement is initially set up like so; Town Hall-esque building, lots of space either side and then your walls. Once those walls fall you’re done for, you have to then sit and watch the enemy tear through every building between the wall and your town hall before smacking the town hall a few times, and it’s game over. I feel like the last stance should be at the town hall, give it some more HP, some walls, allow me to place troops at it or move troops to it. (Maybe I’m salty because I know that I easily had enough troops to finish off the remaining enemies, but they wouldn’t attack because they didn’t have a wall to defend, and I was on wave 30 and could’ve won, but I think it’s definitely a thing that should be considered.)
Price: £13.99 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 46 Cards: 6 Worth The Money: To the people who really like this kind of game, yes, definitely. On the current sale at time of review publication (£9.79), it’s certainly something to be picked up by anyone.
Overall, this game has stolen my heart and my free time. Over the course of writing this review, I’ve gone and played it multiple times when I should’ve been writing more. Looking back and forth between the achievements and my game to see what I’m missing and what I still need to complete the glossary. It’s still being updated to this very day, which is why I think it’s done so well. If you’re interested in this tower defence, card-battling deck-builder, settlement building simulation game, I’d absolutely say it’s worth a look.
Zesty Rating 8.5 Out Of 10. A lovely little card-battling, deck building, settlement management tower defence indie game with a lot to offer to those who seek the challenge of not only keeping a colony alive, but keeping on top of tax, and amassing a formidable army. With new and interesting features attached to every different leader, and different ways to die in each different biome, this game is honestly a breath of fresh air.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
Another game from Keymailer, this time I was hoping for a good, fun experience, akin to PayDay 2 but a little more lax and a lot more goofy. While I can definitely say that this would’ve been the case if it weren’t for the fact that the game is only suited for multiplayer.
Now, I can’t blame a game for being bad, just because it is dead. There are certain things you just can’t control, nor can you do much about. There is an over-saturation on the market of multiplayer games. So much so that I doubt every single multiplayer game ever made is being played right now, a lot will have dropped out of relevancy and a lot will have never actually been picked up.
When it comes to Perfect Heist 2, I can’t reasonably say that “the reason that I didn’t get to experience this game fully is because there was no one playing at the time”. I was not monitoring the number of people playing the game that day. Looking back on the statistics of gameplay, however, it appears that it would’ve been extremely lucky for me to even consider catching anyone else playing due to the fact there were only 5 other people playing on that day. I could’ve, of course, just assumed that the “Quick Play” button wasn’t working and that’s not how other people were finding each other. That would, however, be rude of me to just assume nothing works, and it’s way more likely that I was just unlucky.
So, generally, what can I say about this game? I wish there was a legitimate Singleplayer mode. What I can do is set up a custom lobby and just fill it full of bots and see how things turn out, which was the majority of what I did when “playing” the game. The A.I. seems to just charge full force in with not a care in the world for anything, regardless of what level I set their difficulty to. This led to a few funny moments where the police officers were emptying full clips into the lifeless bodies of my former comrades over and over again until I was red in the face laughing, only feet away. There’s honestly not much else that I’d like to discuss in great detail, as I don’t think I can get the entire feel of this game without playing with other real people, as it’s intended to be.
Pros:
The game works, with no graphical errors or glitches (as far as I’m aware)
The art style of the game gives off a great vibe, while the styling lets you know that you’re getting into a serious situation (with the colour palette). The chunky, lower poly-count lets you know you’re in for a goof and a good bit of fun.
The amount of selectable characters in the game with different weaponry is refreshing and interesting. I’m sure it’s more than what PayDay has, you can really feel that you’re helping out the team in different ways with all these roles, which all have some things in common too.
The custom mode with bots is essentially what made this review, whoever had the idea to have this in the game needs a pat on the back. The A.I. may be very “special” but it provided countless good laughs.
The U.I. of the game is actually rather decent for an indie game, everything is clear and concise and nothing is obstructing the view of the player.
Cons:
The game does have a GPU issue on the main screen, which is quite weird. Forces my GPU to rise to around 90% only on the main screen, but everywhere else it’s at a reasonable level.
The game relies on the player having someone to play with for the game to function as designed, which in itself isn’t a major flaw. Considering the player-base it has, it fails to provide the desired feel of the game.
The A.I. for the game seems not to change when adding different level custom bots. The robbers, no matter the level, dash straight into the bank and start smashing glass and grabbing necklaces. The police gun down people immediately, even if it’s supposed to be easy. It may just be only damage scaling, which is fine, but I honestly don’t notice much of a difference there either.
When I picked a specific character (possibly called “infiltrator” or something) where you spawn inside the building. The police automatically shot at me, despite my character depicted as wearing the same outfit as the staff, and not holding anything threatening. Not only that, but when I died, my A.I. companions were nowhere to be seen, waiting for a bit, I then flipped the camera to discover they’d spawned outside the map, so that’s fun.
Price: £7.99 Time To Complete: None it’s multiplayer Achievements: 19 Cards: None Worth The Money: Honestly, even if you got a group of friends together to play it often… No, not really.
Overall, I wanted this to be a great game, and fundamentally this is an okay game, or a “more okay than the average shit I get from Keymailer” game. Everything works, a few glitches here and there, but its reliance on solely multiplayer is what lets it down greatly. A hollow version of Payday, which would’ve been super fun if there were other people to play it with.
Zesty Rating 5.5 Out Of 10. With no doubt, it would’ve been higher if I’d had access to a single player of sorts or found a lobby with people. A Payday parody/clone that could’ve been super fun to play, and funny with other people. Looking for a “Quick Game” finds no one, as there’s not many others playing this game at the moment. For a game that is designed to only be played multiplayer, it makes it a tad boring.
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: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
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 