[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
"Katy and Bob: Cake Café" is an asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated someone else's example/template for a restaurant management mobile app game, changed the name/reskinned a couple of things, and submitted it to Valve as if it was their own game.[/quote]
The "Developers" behind this, 8Floor, are serial shovelware pushers and intellectual property thieves, having taken many assets and photographs (for their jigsaw puzzle asset flips) and have dumped literally hundreds of low effort asset flips onto Steam, claiming credit for the work and assets of others (they never, ever credit the people who actually created the assets). These games have no value whatsoever for PC gamers, being all browser/mobile games, even if you can look past the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of stealing and rehashing the work of others for profit. Katy and Bob's Cake Cafe is no exception (and it's worth noting they've reskinned the Katy + Bob restaurant mobile app a few times as well). Ugh.
So, let's look past the unethical developer, the asset flip/IP theft, and pretend this is a game anyone might actually want to buy (don't, seriously, don't).
"Katy and Bob: Cake Café" is a pointless restaurant management platespinning type screen tapper/clicker mobile app. As featured in hundreds of mobile apps, gameplay here is a woeful routine of platespinning... that is to say, you need to tap on your iPhone screen to satisfy various customers as they come in and take care of other little busywork jobs. You'll soon find yourself tapping away madly at your iPhone as you have so many customers all at once! Surely the iPhone is the greatest gaming platform of all time, so understandably the developer wants you to pay them for this free mobile app garbage on Steam.
Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The mobile app features simple, cartoony 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort mobile apps. 3D graphics programming does require a degree of skill and competence and unfortunately not all developers have the budget or talent to deliver this, despite 3D graphics cards hitting the mainstream in the 1990's. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing.
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.
The poor quality of this mobile app 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 10 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, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.
Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $5 USD, on app stores, it's $3 USD. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay a premium for a cheap mobile app just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Mass Effect 3", "Portal 2" or "Left 4 Dead 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. There's also thousands of free, superior quality games on Steam.
Because this is a mobile app, is priced to insult and gouge PC gamers, because it's an asset flip, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend.
Just who do they think we are?
