[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b][/quote]
12 HOURS is a fairly basic Unity asset flipped first person horror adventure, one of many hundreds, if not thousands of these glutting Steam. The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store packs, arranged them haphazardly in a first person adventure game template, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.
This asset flip is your usual haunted whatever (looks a bit like Backrooms, but with a bunch of "borrowed" assets strewn all over). As usual you wander around badly lit areas and try not to get jumpscared. It's truly garbage with no value at all to gamers.
Two notable criteria for what makes an asset flip instead of legitimate use of stock assets are whether those assets comprise the majority of the game, and whether the "developer" properly credited the people who created most of the assets in the game. This game fails both of those tests. The "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as cash grab shovelware.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's an ugly screen filter (or maybe it just looks blurry because they didn't know what they were doing) meant to make the game look even more obsolete... like the game looks bad enough already, but they actually went out of their way to make it look worse. There's no way to turn this off.
Arrogantly, the developers demand you should find a way to plug headphones into your gaming PC to experience the craptastic audio they shovelled into this terrible game. I run a 9.2 surround sound system for my gaming rig, I'm not interested in downgrading just because the developers demand I experience the game in a compromised manner.<br><br>Developers must never dictate to gamers how a game should be consumed, it's their JOB to ensure a game is experienced well on any gaming rig. Failure to do this is a failure on their part, and not the gamers.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 7 players, and the worst part is these weren't genuine players, these were the Russian fake review accounts that the developer paid to make the fake reviews. Since the fake reviews are all done, now the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
[quote][b][url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2017/01/18/steam-takes-down-art-of-stealth-after-developer-posts-fake-reviews/?sh=750e13e12354]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/b]
This game features a number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product.[/quote]
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
12 HOURS has the preposterous price of around $4 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
