Melt Abyss

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[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop][b]Warning: AI Slop[/b][/url] This game soundtrack is made with talentless, soulless AI generated content.[/quote] "Melt Abyss" is incredibly creepy, it's basically an amateur developer creeping on some internet nobody e-girl so he made a super cringey fan-fiction game, at the same time breaching copyright law by creating derivative work without authorisation from the copyright holder. See, I can't make a game called "Star Wars" with "Luke Skywalker" in it because I don't have permission from Disney to create a derivative work. And when I'm in court, I can't tell the judge "No, it was a fan-fiction so copyright law is immediately invaldiated". So this only exists so long as the copyright holders don't take it down, and let's hope they file that DMCA request soon... I mean this is so cringe the guy put a photo of the poor girl in it. That is so creepy. What do you do in the game? As a game, this is complete and utter garbage. Asset flip looking backdrops, badly done console reject brawling. The awfulness of the quality is almost bad enough it rivals the sheer cringe of a fan-fiction about an e-girl being dumped on Steam. The game is really simple and unambitious in terms of implementation, more of a tech demo or one of those cases where an amateur developer spends $100 to publish something on Steam Direct to see if it's possible. Yes, obviously it's possible. A proof of concept, tech demo, or something that's less than a little blip on the radar isn't offering anything truly valuable to gamers. As mentioned, this features really godawful, "wrong" sounding AI slop instead of genuinely and sincerely created game soundtrack assets. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating real game assets or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this sounds awful because of that decision. AI slop sticks out like a sore thumb... and it comes across as insulting. There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too, and that's glaringly obvious here. The graphics aren't great, asset flip looking backdrops and some godawful character models that seem to have been ripped off from somewhere.. That's understandably a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers despite having no up-front cost. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. You deserve better than compromises. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too. In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 4 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Given that this free title won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library? Not this time. This isn't worth downloading. While this won't cost you any money, you get what you pay for, and sometimes, even when the game is free, it's still not enough. The use of AI slop is a direct insult to gamers and real, ethical content creators and artists everywhere.