[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/quote]
Invasion Vill is an asset flip, a bunch of other people's assets assembled badly to make a basic game; typically this is done by amateur developers without sufficient budget, talent, or staff to do the job professionally. It's rushed into Steam Direct. Unsurprisingly, this never results in a product with any quality, interest, or value.
This is yet another ultra low effort first person horror adventure... almost certainly the result of copying + pasting Unity Asset Store assets on a basic blueprint. There's thousands of these on Steam, and none are good.
The game might look better than you'd expect from an amateur project, but this is because it's composed of stock assets, "borrowed" from asset stores. Very little in this game is truly the creation of the "developer", it's just rearranged assets.
While there's no up front price, the other problem with asset flips is that when developers aren't capable of creating high quality assets, they usually can't do the rest of the job either. That's definitely true for "Invasion Vill".
It's free... now, but it wasn't before. The developer was charging $1 USD.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It's a nice gesture to give it away, but it tells us the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. It's also a slap in the face to anyone who paid... nobody got refunded.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 2 concurrent players... a dismal reception. They couldn't even give it away.
Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your collector count, should you bother downloading it?
Nope. It isn't worth downloading. There's no financial cost, but you'd still be spending time and hard drive space on a product that's far from the best. There's thousands of better alternatives on Steam.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or deliberately ignored where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The developer response is a disgusting insult to common sense. It is full of misleading lies; a desperate attempt from a completely failed, incompetent developer to avoid accepting the truth about his failure. Take this response in the context of facts. This only had a peak player count of TWO people... I'm guessing that was the developer and his therapist. This is textbook failure, making this one of the most rejected games out of literally 130,000+ games on this platform. Very few fail this badly.
The developer clearly thinks he's "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. It's evident they never created this product with gamers in mind, but to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones unable to get a professional job, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally met The Main Character, and nobody else matters.
The developer complains that while this review addresses serious problems, it resembles other reviews I have written for products that share the exact same problems. There's over 120,000 games on Steam. Thousands share the same defects which gamers should know about before wasting time.
However, the "developer" of this failed product arrogantly [b]DEMANDS[/b] that I find unique ways to describe [i]the exact same defects[/i]. What a completely ignorant, arrogant demand from a demonstrably failed developer. The developer demonstrates an appalling attitude here. It's a sheer insult to gamers.
If I used different language to describe the same defects, [i]this product would still suffer from the same defects[/i]. Changing the wording of my reviews will not make this specific product better.
The developer is ANGRY that his garbage was compared to other games on the platform he launched his garbage on. This is because the developer never considered other people, never considered what's good for gamers, he doesn't understand that gamers have options. Yes, his asset flip was compared to other products here, many of which were developed by ethical businesses who don't plagiarise assets, all of which are higher quality.
The "developer" argues that I review a lot of games, therefore this review isn't valid. If I changed all my other reviews to positive, would the graphics and gameplay of this crap game suddenly improve? No. The developer seeks any angle to throw shade at me personally to discredit my review. You can see what they are trying to do. If this was the only review I ever written, would that change the properties of this game or the facts in my review? Of course not. [b]My reviews for other games have no bearing on the dismal quality of this failed product[/b].
The developer admits they're plagiarising... they took someone else's assets and did not credit them. When developers do this, they position themselves as having their name against those assets. It's 100% plagiarism. If they used someone else's work in a Hollywood film, they'd be sued into the ground. They're tacitly telling gamers because this is their game, the assets are also theirs.
We know this is deliberate. It's easy to include a credits page. Why deliberately choose not to, if not to hide the true origin of the assets? Claiming the work of others as your own, failing to credit, is highly unethical, [i]and the developer now openly admits to it[/i]
The developer LIES. I've written almost 20,000 reviews... and while asset flips are common, this is solely because Steam Direct allows anyone to publish garbage for $100... like this. [b]Successful games don't rely on flipping assets![/b] The assertion that asset flipping is done by real, professional developers is an outright lie. I've played more video games than any other person on the planet (count my reviews if you don't believe me). I know this as empirical fact. The developer is lying solely to justify his theft of assets... and worse, he thought he could scam gamers out of money for it. Yes, he wanted YOUR money for someone else's assets. This is why gamers hate asset flippers.
Finally, the developer of this train wreck [b]demands[/b] my review instruct them on how to make video games, because they obviously don't know, looking at this dismal failure.
There is no obligation for reviews to be constructive. Reviews aren't written to teach developers how to make games. They should know this before releasing products on Steam. If they don't, why does this have to be a problem for gamers?
[b]Video game reviews are to inform gamers on their decisions around which games to buy, download, or spend their time playing.[/b]
It says so much that it never occurred to this "developer" that my review was written for anyone but him. What insulting arrogance. Gamers, you can see from the developer's disgusting attitude why this garbage turned out so badly. But it excuses none of it.
Nothing in the developer's pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes the objective facts. My review stands unaltered, but I have added a banner to warn gamers about this being an asset flip. I cannot recommend this asset flip to anyone.
