RPG Maker strikes again!
Dark Side of Fate is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction.
As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.
Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers. It's a painfully generic bare bones RPG (sold as an "quest" game to make up for this deficiency), made significantly worse because the developer just piped all their Russian garbage writing through Google Translate to come up with the English garbage writing you'll see in the game. It's pure trash, but then this was never intended as a serious game.
LTZinc/Big Black Bear have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work. One example of LTZinc/Big Black Bear doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/817150]Factory Pirates[/url], which is really the "[url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/historic/polygon-pirates-low-poly-3d-art-by-synty-92579]Polygon Pirates Low Poly 3D asset pack[/url]" asset, written by the actual developers, Synty Games.
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.
[quote][url=https://mmofallout.com/valve-bans-titles-for-review-manipulation/]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/quote]
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.
Dark Side of Fate is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but 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.
