Naxos

Note: This review is going to appear similar to my reviews for other products from this Brazilian review manipulator and shovelware pusher. This is because the developer is reskinning and republishing the exact same pointless idler game onto Steam multiple times as a cash grab. Same game with a different name? Same kind of review. [i]Naxos[/i] isn't really a proper game, it's just a lazy vibe coded 2D browser/Flash-tier "number incrementer" game where the object of the game is to increase the in-game currency by clicking/doing repetitive "idler" dungeon auto-runs, and sometimes buying things that increase the rate at which your currency/score goes up. It's an incredibly shallow game loop, to the point you might as well just run a program that does "i=i+1; print i" and watch the numbers go up automatically. You'd get the exact same outcome. If this sounds completely mindless, you're not wrong. This one (and all the other copies of it the developer recycles and republishes on Steam) shapes up to be possibly the worst ripoff of Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms ever made, and despite the Hasbro branding, I still think that was a horrid nasty mobile cash grab. Oh how far has the beloved franchise of Baldur's Gate 3 fallen. Now you look at how bad that was and you can look at this incredibly bad, AI slop generated pixelcrap ripoff with no clear instructions and no motivation to learn the incrementer systems and you can see why we have such a failure on our hands. Of course this was rushed into cheap nasty game bundles as quick as possible... it's a cash grab. The presence of fake/paid reviews from the Russian review farm uncovered by Sentinels of the Store proves this... highly unethical, illegal review manipulation. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded [i]despite[/i] the bad graphics, not because of them. 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 controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. 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. The very poor quality of this game puts it squarely on-par with ancient 1990's Flash/Java games, and given it's 2026 (and this was released not so far back in 2022), gamers and the industry expect and deserve better than this kind of low effort shovelware. These technical shortcomings push this game below minimum standards for any competently developed 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 [b]only 6 players[/b], and the worst part is these weren't genuine players, these were the Russian fake review accounts that the developer paid to make the fake reviews. Since the fake reviews are all done, 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 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. [quote][b][url=https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/16-cfr-part-465-trade-regulation-rule-use-consumer-reviews-testimonials-final-rule]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/b] This game features a number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian, broken English or ChatGPT AI slop, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product. Due to the 2024 FTC ruling (16 CFR § 465.4, 15 U.S.C. § 45), these fake reviews are a violation of US Federal Law.[/quote] Let's look at the price and what kind of value this actually offers gamers. Should you buy this game? Is it one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam? Naxos is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Ethics aside, the quality problems and defects with this game makes the asking price totally unrealistic. It's impossible to recommend this to gamers here on Steam, especially considering the unethical stuff going on. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]