"Obsurity" (I think the developer meant to call it Obscurity but didn't get the English right) is a bit of Russian shovelware, a GameMaker Studio top down slasher with a gimmick that you switch between two characters. The developer thought he could rip off Dark Souls despite not knowing how to do 3D graphics or use any engine more sophisticated than the GMS construction kit, as a result, we get garbage. But he did manage to pay for a couple of reviews that helped this along... review manipulation is a crime, unfortunately.
This game has been translated from some other language into English... badly. If this was done through Google Translate, Google Translate should feel ashamed of itself. Regardless, the language in this game is broken and will put off a lot of gamers.
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
This looks a lot like it was designed for consoles, but released on Steam instead by mistake. While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this never made it to the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
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, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Game Dynasty has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
These flaws make this game fall far short of the professional standards we expect from a modern PC game.
[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 small 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 talk about pricing and the actual value this has for gamers. Is this game one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam?
Obsurity has the insane price of $13 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games.
For comparison, the $13 asking price for this game could get you games like "Hunt: Showdown", "Cuphead" or "Phantasmophobia". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.
No pixelcrap is worth $13. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly.
Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend.
