Holiday Jigsaw Halloween is a basic browser/Flash/mobile-app like jigsaw puzzle game. Solve various jigsaw puzzles made up from images that the "developer" stole off the Internet and used without crediting the actual creators, making this plagiarism, as well as an asset flip and a cash grab. An example of the "borrowed" uncredited/plagiarised artwork is [url=https://steventyler.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/fall-photo-shoot-2/#jp-carousel-1127]"Yorkie at Large"[/url], stolen and used without any apparent permissions or rights from the photographer, Steven Tyler. Sure, the image rights may allow some stock images to be used without credit (although there's no reason to believe so in this case), and claiming credit for the work of others, as is happening here, is unethical, and the creative and intellectual bankruptcy going on here is unacceptable.
So what we have here is a basic jigsaw puzzle engine that's been skinned with a bunch of photos stolen off the internet and used without attribution. The icing on the cake is the "developer" here has copy + pasted + reskinned this same asset onto Steam [i]a lot[/i].
The developer, Creobit/8Floor, has copy + pasted this game an insane SEVENTY SIX TIMES onto Steam with minor reskins... why cash in on one asset if you can cash in on multiple copies of the same game? Asset flipping begins at home! Here's a list of Creobit's copy + pastes of this asset:
[list]
[*] 1001 Black Raven Jigsaw
[*] 1001 Jigsaw American Puzzles
[*] 1001 Jigsaw Castles And Palaces 1, 2, 3 and 4
[*] 1001 Jigsaw Detective 1, 2 + 3
[*] 1001 Jigsaw Home Sweet Home Wedding Ceremony
[*] 1001 Jigsaw Legends of Mystery 1 through 6
[*] 1001 Jigsaw World Tour Africa
[*] 1001 Jigsaw World Tour Asia
[*] 1001 Jigsaw World Tour: Europe
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. 6 Magic Elements
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. Cute Cats 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. Earth Chronicles 1 through 9
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. Home Sweet Home 1, 2 + 3
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. Home Sweet Home. Back from Vacation
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. Ice Age
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. Interior Design
[*] 1001 JIGSAW. MYTHS OF ANCIENT GREECE
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. Wild Animals
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. World Tour: Australian Puzzles
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. World Tour: France
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. World Tour: Great America
[*] 1001 Jigsaw. World Tour: London
[*] Alice's Jigsaw Time Travel 1 + 2
[*] Alice's Jigsaw. Wonderland Chronicles 1 + 2
[*] Caribbean Jigsaw
[*] Holiday Jigsaw Christmas 1, 2 + 3
[*] Holiday Jigsaw Easter 1, 2 + 3
[*] Holiday Jigsaw Halloween 1, 2, 3 and 4
[*] Holiday Jigsaw Thanksgiving Day 1, 2 + 3
[*] Holiday Jigsaw Valentine's day
[*] Jigsaw Boom 1 + 2
[*] Jigsaw Puzzle Beach Season 1 + 2
[*] Jigsaw Tour
[*] Pirate Jigsaw
[*] Royal Jigsaw 1, 2, 3, + 4
[*] Tasty Jigsaw: Happy Hour 1 + 2
[/list]
[i]These are all reskins of exactly the same game![/i] What value is there in this spam/pollution glutting the Steam store for gamers?
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics.
This looks and feels like a mobile app, but it doesn't seem to have made it to the app stores. It's unclear why this was put on Steam instead of the app stores it seems to have been designed for. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was 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 this 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 and play games that might as well be mobile apps.
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 all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and 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 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
Holiday Jigsaw Halloween has the farcical price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.
