New Lands 2 Collector's Edition is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. This mobile app is a pointless "12 Labours of Hercules" screen tapper/clicker mobile app. There's no gameplay, just tapping on the screen. The mobile app is made to look like you're making interesting decisions as you're presented with a map of a town/village/pathway that has you clicking on various things to collect things which are then consumed when you click on an obstacle, which unlocks more things to click on. This is so lame and shallow, you could write a script to randomly click the screen and given enough time, it would beat the game.
The shady developer behind this valueless shovelware has proven to be a persistent nuisance abusing Steam Direct... they've dumped over a hundred valueless mobile app tier asset flips onto Steam, many featuring plagiarised/stolen stock art and other unethical, shady behaviours.
8Floor has copy + pasted this particular game, with minor reskins, an insane THIRTY TWO TIMES onto Steam... 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 8Floors's copy + pastes of this asset:
[list]
[*] Argonauts Agency: Captive of Circe
[*] Argonauts Agency: Chair of Hephaestus
[*] Argonauts Agency: Glove of Midas
[*] Argonauts Agency: Golden Fleece
[*] Argonauts Agency: Missing Daughter
[*] Argonauts Agency: Pandora's Box
[*] Elven Rivers 2: New Horizons Collector's Edition
[*] Elven Rivers: The Forgotten Lands Collector's Edition
[*] Emergency Crew 2 Global Warming
[*] Emergency Crew Perfect Getaway Collector's Edition
[*] Emergency Crew Volcano Eruption
[*] Garden City
[*] Gnomes Garden
[*] Gnomes Garden 2
[*] Gnomes Garden 3: The thief of castles
[*] Gnomes Garden Lifeseeds Collector's Edition
[*] Gnomes Garden Lost King
[*] Gnomes Garden New Home
[*] Gnomes Garden: Christmas Story
[*] Gnomes Garden: Halloween
[*] Gnomes Garden: Return Of The Queen
[*] Lost Artifacts
[*] Lost Artifacts Mysterious Book Collector's Edition
[*] Lost Artifacts: Golden Island
[*] Lost Artifacts: Soulstone
[*] Lost Artifacts: Time Machine
[*] New Lands
[*] New Lands 2 Collector's Edition
[*] New Lands Paradise Island Collector's Edition
[*] Royal Roads
[*] Royal Roads 2 The Magic Box
[*] Royal Roads 3 Portal
[/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? This valueless copy + paste garbage is taking up marketing space for genuine indie developers who are doing the right thing. It's harmful to the industry and to gamers.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no options to change the resolution for the mobile app or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this mobile app is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this mobile app 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 mobile phone graphics.
The mobile app only displays in mobile phone style ultra-pillarboxed aspect ratio unless you switch to Windowed mode. While it's possible this could be due to hamfisted attempts from the developer to tell me without any doubt that he knows the native resolution of my monitor better than I do (he is wrong), this is just one of many indications this was developed to be a mobile app and not a serious PC game. It's not acceptable for developers to dump garbage like this on Steam when it's not even formatted or designed to run properly on modern PC gaming displays, to the point that this could be considered insulting.
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 8 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 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 the Play Store, it's free. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay FIVE BUCKS FOR A FREE MOBILE APP just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this can be played free elsewhere, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend.
Who do they think we are?
