Mang Ojek: Driving Test

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[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b] This is one of literally thousands of creatively bankrupt asset flips infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere.[/quote] "Mang Ojek: Driving Test" is another low key asset flip. This is just a collection of mismatched (probably store-bought or free stock) assets thrown together to form a basic, shallow experience... more designed for the sake of an amateur developer being able to call themselves a "game developer" thanks to Steam Direct and stock assets than a product designed for gamers. For that reason it's obviously not going to provide a decent gaming experience. This garbage asset flip makes the misleading claim that it can prepare you for a moped driving exam. If you use this to learn how to drive anything, please never go near a public road. Not even on foot, you might be a danger to yourself and to others. That misleading claim aside, this is a garbage Unreal kitbash with flipped assets and the exact same quality you would expect from a developer who can't make his own assets and can't afford to hire anyone capable of doing the job of game development... it's trash. And it was rightfully rejected on Steam Direct. So the visuals might look halfway decent at first glance, if mismatched looking in places. But that's only because the "developer" is using other people's assets. When a dev is too lazy or untalented to make their own art, they usually aren't capable of competent coding or game design either. That is exactly the case with this mess. Insultingly, the developer used a bunch of GPT AI slop for the Steam store page and marketing material. AI slop is an insult to gamers everywhere, it's trained on copyrighted material without permission. Worse, if they had no qualms about using it here, there's no telling how much of the rest of this product is also vibe coded or made with AI slop. On the important matter of pricing and value for gamers, there's a lot going on here with monetisation, so this really shouldn't be considered a truly free product because of that. There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $2 USD for this. Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded. Even after that, you're expected to pay up $7 USD to unlock content through DLC purchases. The game should not be considered completely unlocked until you empty your wallet for the developer. This is misleading and predatory pricing on a product falsely marketed as "free". They also have their hand out for a $7 USD "donation" for this as you're expected to give them money from buying empty DLC from Steam... digital panhandling. Like the homeless guys who splash dirty water on your windscreen at the traffic lights. No thanks. Even as a free game, this couldn't find an audience. With a peak of [b]only 3 players[/b], it's clear the Steam community took one look and walked away. They literally couldn't pay people to spend time playing this. 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? Definitely not. This isn't worth it. I'm paraphrasing another reviewer here, but this should be a paid product... they'd have to pay people to download it. [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 they deliberately ignored the part 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 an appalling admission that this garbage should never have been published on Steam at all. The developer drops a bombshell... this was not intended to be a full game. It's just a demo, an advertisement for some other product that the developer deliberately published as a full game, to mislead gamers, for profit. Here's the instructions for putting a demo up on Steam, to demonstrate that there is a correct process for this, which hasn't been followed here: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos The developer did the wrong thing, on purpose, for profit, to the detriment of gamers and real developers who do the right thing and follow the rules. Disgusting, isn't it? The developer, through absence of comment, tacitly pleads guilty to the crimes of plagiarising the work of others, this is an asset flip... the developer took someone else's work, and then published the work of others on Steam with a price tag on it. How is this even legal? It's horribly unethical. Likewise, the developer admits to the use of disgusting AI slop on a for-profit product. This is nothing but an unethical cash grab. The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game. Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered, although I have clarified the point that this is a FOR PROFIT asset flip. I cannot recommend this asset flip to anyone.