[quote][b][URL=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware]Spyware Warning![/URL][/b]This mobile app acts as spyware and performs personal data gathering and transmission. There's no immediate apparent way to opt out. This is completely unethical and reprehensible. Gamers must be aware of the dangers of installing this harmful software and should avoid this completely.[/quote]
Nothing To Declare 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 pretends to be a simple job simulator, you take on the role of a customs officer and play one of three similar minigames, basically this is just "Papers, Please" with all the plot and writing and intrigue removed... it's dumbed down app store garbage foisted on Steam for profit.
I'll mention this more than once, this is a FREE mobile app that the developer is trying to SCAM gamers into buying because they made it a PAID product on Steam. Utterly unacceptable.
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 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 mobile app features mostly static, barely animated 2D images, the kind of thing you expect to see in browser/flash games. While the artwork itself, while mediocre, might be considered passable, the visual presentation here is negligible, it might as well be a slideshow or a Youtube video. Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids had more advanced animation and visuals going on than this mobile app does.
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.
The mobile app features no proper level design or game/story flow/plot, as they opted to try to use samey repetitive procgen algorithms as a substitute for adding such content to the mobile app, to avoid doing the important job of level/map design. As a result, the mobile app doesn't actually have any content worth mentioning, just endless, boring, repetitive, soulless algorithmically generated sameyness. Developers must learn that procedural generation is not an acceptable substitute for content.
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.
Those technical issues put this mobile app beneath what is expected from a contemporary, professionally developed 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 [b]only 2 players[/b]. 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 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 mobile app is to be expected.
As mentioned, this mobile app behaves as spyware and collects "telemetry" and personally identifying information. There is no apparent way to prevent this hostile and sinister privacy invasion. The developers will make the unverifiable claim that this data isn't personally identifying, of course that's BS as they're collecting IPs and all kinds of other information about gamers, when combined with other profiling data this can 100% identify an individual. They say it's for "QA" purposes but there's no guarantee they're not profiling you or selling your data to third parties as they spy on you. Should you trust them? Of course not... if they had any concerns about user safety and privacy, [i]they wouldn't have built spyware into their mobile app with no way to disable it![/i] There's simply no reason to trust them and gamers should avoid this mobile app because of this unacceptable privacy invasion.
So, should you buy this mobile app? Is this one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam?
Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $5 USD, on app stores, it's free. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay a premium 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?
For comparison, the $5 asking price for this mobile app could get you games like "Euro Truck Simulator 2", "The Witcher 2" or "Warhammer: Vermintide 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
FIVE BUCKS for a FREE mobile app.
This is a scam.
Just who do they think we are?
