Once more I'm lucky enough to warn gamers about yet another lazily reskinned asset flip from 8floor.
Mystery Solitaire. The Black Raven 5 is a basic mobile-app like solitaire puzzle game. Solve various puzzle levels using Klondike style card moving and matching. It's been done a million times before, for free, and free on mobile app stores too... yet this one has a hefty price tag on it. Who knew you can just charge $5 for mobile trash? I guess Creobit does.
The developer, Creobit/8Floor, has copy + pasted this game an insane SEVENTY FOUR 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]
[*] Dangerous Solitaire. Zombie Fever
[*] Dark Solitaire. Mystical Circus
[*] Detective Solitaire Inspector Magic and the Man Without Face
[*] Detective Solitaire Inspector Magic
[*] Detective Solitaire The Ghost Agency 1 + 2
[*] Detective Solitaire. Butler Story 1 + 2
[*] Detective Solitaire: Inspector Magic And The Forbidden Magic
[*] Egypt Solitaire. Match 2 Cards
[*] Fairytale Solitaire. Witch Charms
[*] Fairytale Solitaire: Red Riding Hood
[*] Gnomes Solitaire
[*] Holiday Solitaire Easter
[*] Knight Solitaire 1-3
[*] Mystery Solitaire Cthulhu Mythos
[*] Mystery Solitaire The Arkham Spirits
[*] Mystery Solitaire. Cthulhu Mythos 1 + 2
[*] Mystery Solitaire. Dreamcatcher 1-3
[*] Mystery Solitaire. Powerful Alchemist 1-3
[*] Mystery Solitaire. The Black Raven 1-6
[*] Mystery Solitaire: Grimm's tales 1-8
[*] Pirate's Solitaire 1 + 2
[*] Restaurant Solitaire Delicious Lunch
[*] Restaurant Solitaire: Pleasant Dinner
[*] Solitaire Beach Season 1-3
[*] Solitaire Bonbon
[*] Solitaire Christmas. Match 2 Cards
[*] Solitaire Christmas
[*] Solitaire Halloween 1 + 2
[*] Solitaire Jack Frost Winter Adventures 1-3
[*] Solitaire Legend of the Pirates 1-3
[*] Solitaire Match 2 Cards. Thanksgiving Day
[*] Solitaire Match 2 Cards. Valentine's Day
[*] Solitaire TED and PET
[*] Solitaire Victorian Picnic 1 + 2
[*] Strike Solitaire 1-3
[*] Sweet Solitaire: School Witch 1-3
[*] True Detective Solitaire 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.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio (with some lazy "wings" to fill the pillar). It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.
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 Mystery Solitaire. The Black Raven 5 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 3 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.
Mystery Solitaire. The Black Raven 5 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.
