Nuts and Bolts

[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b] Nuts and Bolts is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store assets, dumped them all in a blender, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.[/quote] Two notable criteria for what makes an asset flip instead of legitimate use of stock assets are whether those assets comprise the majority of the game, and whether the "developer" properly credited the people who created most of the assets in the game. This game fails both of those tests. The "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as cash grab shovelware. Nuts and Bolts is another "fake game" deal from Russia, another Unity kitbash, this time an ultra simple Unity project the "developer" ripped off from someone else. It's a very basic variation of the "Towers of Hanoi" game except all you do is move coloured nuts onto various threads, trying to get them all to match. The developer has a known history of pushing basic Unity asset packs onto Steam and trying to get paid for them. It has no value or merit as a real game... and yet, of course, the Russian "developer" is charging an eye watering $30 USD for this garbage. So you can see pretty quickly what's happening here. Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it 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 game assets are fairly mediocre/low quality which fits with the idea they weren't developed by the game creator... they look like they're "just reasonable enough" to go on sale as part of an asset pack. The issue of asset flipping aside, ultimately the quality of these assets is low and low quality always makes for a less than optimal gaming experience. The game assets, such as they are, are much higher than the general quality of the game and it seems apparent the developer has just plagiarised/kitbashed them. Stock assets are just there to be used as placeholders while the developer creates their own assets for their games, but what happens far more often is lazy/unethical developers just throw a bunch of other peoples assets into a blender and put their own name on the horrible Frankenstein's Monster that results. Like this mess. 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. Those technical flaws drag this game well below the minimum quality standards expected of a 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 game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. 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. This kind of asset flipping isn't harmless. It makes it harder for gamers to find genuinely made games from ethical developers. It makes it harder for genuine indie developers, who put hard work into trying to make real games, to find an audience for their products. It gives indie developers a bad name. Let's talk about price and what this asset flip is actually worth. Is this significantly better than any of the 140,000+ genuinely made games on Steam? Of course not! Nuts and Bolts has the almost scam-like price of $30 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. For comparison, the $30 asking price for this game could get you games like "Sekiro Shadows Die Twice", "Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord" or "Rimworld". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. Ethics aside, there's enough defects and quality problems with this game that it's not worth recommending to gamers, but the unethical nature of the developer/their associates makes it completely impossible. Because this is just a fake game/cash grab scam, and due to the sheer unethical nature of the developer, you should avoid this completely. Don't reward this morally bankrupt, unethical behaviour from Neki4 Electronics. [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]