Lucky me gets to be the first to warn gamers about Beyond Stories: Jester, which is part of the forefront of an era of crap games: This game is all AI slop.
I'm not really sure if Beyond Stories: Jester is an asset flip. Some elements of this game certainly make it seem like the developer put some effort into assembling some kind of original here. On the other hand, a lot of the game assets don't seem like they were created by the developer, but they haven't credited any asset creators for supplying assets, which might be a case of plagiarism. There's no evidence, so we need to give the benefit of the doubt... regardless, asset flip or not, the quality here is indistinguishable from many asset flip/cash grab scams, and that's a problem in itself.
Beyond Stories: Jester is what looks like what you expect from the Russian shovelware pushers, 8floor/Creobit, who continually stole stock art and other images from the internet and combine them with basic Unity jigsaw puzzle templates and so on... polluting Steam with literally hundreds of copy + pastes of other people's work as a kind of scam, pushing zero quality games onto Steam en masse.
As a gamer and potential buyer, you should be aware the quality of this train wreck is no different... The "art" here is all AI slop, and it's very likely the "developer" has just filled out/rearranged basic Unity jigsaw/tile puzzle blueprints. This is very much a minimum viable product of the type you expect to see from eastern bloc shovelware pushers and scammers, but ultimately what matters for you, the gamer, is what value you can get from this if you decide to buy it, and I'll be quick to tell you: None.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.
This is indistinguishable from a mobile app, but they put this on Steam instead of the app stores by mistake. Was it rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all)?.
Regardless, for all intents and purposes Beyond Stories: Jester might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones.
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 game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. 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 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam?
Beyond Stories: Jester has the ridiculous price of $4 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.
For comparison, the $4 asking price for this game could get you games like "The Walking Dead", "Just Cause 3" or "DOOM". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
[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]
