"bomber-un" is a basic asset flip/copy + paste + reskin of a Unity puzzle game template from the Russian asset flipper behind Laush Studio, using a shell account to try hide his identity. He took a basic Unity template for a puzzle game using Bomber-man style bomb placement, and a "minimum viable" number of lazy slapped together levels, and dumped it on Steam as yet another lazy cash grab in the shovelware section of the store. There's also some bonus stolen sound bytes used without permission, which means, yep, copyright infringement.
As a game itself, there's no value here for gamers. It got images of the DPRK's leader slapped on in the hopes it might go viral and earn a few more roubles for the asset flipper behind this, but make no mistake, this was never made as a serious game for gamers, it's just a cash grab.
From a technical perspective, if you decided to take this seriously, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.
The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. 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.
The very poor quality of this game puts it squarely on-par with ancient 1990's Flash/Java games, and given it's 2024 (and this was released not so far back in ), gamers and the industry expect and deserve better than this kind of low effort shovelware.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The game contains stock/store assets/libraries/packages, but the "developer" here hasn't credited the people who actually did the work for the game. In some cases this breaches the license agreement the developer signed for the use of those assets. Claiming credit for the work of others as well as breaching software licenses is highly unethical. Gamers should be made aware when a developer behaves unethically and breaches license/copyright agreements, as buying games from unethical developers puts the gamers money at risk.
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 5 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.
It's also important to note the "developer" here has connections to a number of shady Russian asset flippers and review manipulators who show an organised pattern to scam and defraud gamers with fake reviews and asset flipping the work of others for profit. While reviews are about the games, gamers should be informed when developers act unethically. Whether these connections are the same developer using multiple accounts, or just working closely with other unethical developers, gamers should be warned about the harm to gamers by this developer and their associates. Buying games from unethical developers puts your money at risk.
[b][quote][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][/quote][/b]This game features a small 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.
So, should you buy this game?
Nope. "bomber-un" is overpriced for what it is at $3 USD, it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
