RPG Maker strikes again!
Quest: Escape Dungeon is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality/canned assets from RPG Maker coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction.
This is a very simple, generic, badly written and badly translated RPG Maker minimum effort cash grab. There's a bad story, simple combat, simple puzzles lifted from tutorials... the whole thing was probably put together in less than a day. This should be no surprise given KuKo's long history of dumping Russian shovelware and Unity asset flips on Steam.
As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.
Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality copy + pasted 2D retro pixel art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers.
Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger.
KuKo/Mustella Games have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work. An example of KuKo/Mustella Games doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1165860]6.0[/url], which is really "[url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/characters/pixel-adventure-1-155360]Pixel Adventure 1[/url]", written by the actual developers, Pixel Frog. Also, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1053650]Drive For Your Life[/url], which is really "[url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/packs/zombie-drive-full-game-template-73074]Zombie Drive - Full Game Template[/url]", developed by Puppeteer.
The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 6 players. That's right, only 6, and they were the accounts KuKo had paid for to write the fake reviews for the game. Ouch.
It's also important to note the "developer" here has connections to a number of shady Russian asset flippers and review manipulators who show an organised pattern to scam and defraud gamers with fake reviews and asset flipping the work of others for profit. While reviews are about the games, gamers should be informed when developers act unethically. Whether these connections are the same developer using multiple accounts, or just working closely with other unethical developers, gamers should be warned about the harm to gamers by this developer and their associates. Buying games from unethical developers puts your money at risk.
[quote][url=https://mmofallout.com/valve-bans-titles-for-review-manipulation/]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/quote]
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 or broken English, 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.
Quest: Escape Dungeon is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. 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.
