[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop][b]Warning: AI Slop[/b][/url]
This game is partially or completely made with talentless, soulless AI generated content.[/quote]
"金砂梦咒Golden Sand Dream Curse" looks amazing at first glance... a Unity narrative driven FPS with an anime style intro sequence, wow! Then you discover the "anime" sequence at the start is just a bunch of meaningless AI slop, and the underlying game is just a laughably badly assembled Unity kitbash.
Usually you can dismiss a game right away just because it looks bad... heck, gaming is a visual medium and if developers don't want to put in the effort to make great visuals for you, then you shouldn't put in the effort of buying/downloading their games. But sometimes the old adage is true, don't judge a book by its cover... this might look okay but it plays like junk, and looks and feels like any average asset flip/kitbash shovelware slapped together in the space of a weekend. At least they're not trying to charge money for this.
What do you do in the game? Directionless and pointless FPS shooting... a weak Quake clone at best, but with a Chinese/fantasy theme slapped on lazily.
There's no English translation for the game, but that's okay. The language of bad games is universal.
As mentioned, this features really godawful, "wrong" looking AI slop instead of genuinely and sincerely created game assets. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating real game assets or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks bad because of that decision. AI slop sticks out like a sore thumb... and it comes across as insulting.
There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too, and that's glaringly obvious here.
I'm not sure if this is an asset flip, but it's one of those cases where the assets just look much better than the rest of the quality of the game... a glaring inconsistency. There's no evidence, but as always, the biggest problem with asset flips besides the plagiarism is the deplorably low quality of the other aspects of the game, and even if the game assets are genuinely created for the game, the quality of the rest of the game is indistinguishable from that of asset flips.
At least the guns look somewhat genuinely made, but wow, the gameplay is experience seems to come straight off a really low quality DFPS game template.. Like... look at the crosshairs for the "sniper" gun... straight off the Unity Asset Store.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 2 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? What's the verdict?
This is a hard pass. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.
The use of AI slop is a direct insult to gamers and real, ethical content creators and artists everywhere.
