Hero Puzzle is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. This mobile app is a "pin puller", that is to say you put your finger on your iPhone screen to drag pins and various other objects around, which releases the potential energy of stacked up objects (traps, piles of coins etc) which then fall down with the usual bad iPhone physics that we all expect from shovelware dumped into the trash end of Steam as a nasty cash grab.
Actually the only interesting part about this mobile app is the rather large number of paid fake reviews from compromised Steam accounts, as the developer breaches all Valve rules to manipulate the review score for this mobile app.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
While there are options to change the resolution for the mobile app, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the mobile app, 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 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.
Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.
These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
You don't have to take my word about how bad the mobile app is, we can measure the interest in a game by how much people bothered to play it. Hero Puzzle has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the mobile app absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for stealing a chest, trivial to achieve, but less than 2 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the mobile app. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch.
The mobile app never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players launching this mobile app every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just aren't using it.
[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 mobile app features a large 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 mobile app launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the mobile app, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this mobile app 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 mobile app? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $2 USD, on app stores, it's free. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay TWO BUCKS FOR A FREE MOBILE APP just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this can be played free elsewhere, is priced to insult and gouge PC gamers, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend.
Who do they think we are?
