I'm not really sure if Railway Islands 2 - Puzzle is an asset flip. Some elements of this game certainly make it seem like the developer put some effort into assembling some kind of original here. On the other hand, a lot of the game assets don't seem like they were created by the developer, but they haven't credited any asset creators for supplying assets, which might be a case of plagiarism. There's no evidence, so we need to give the benefit of the doubt... regardless, asset flip or not, the quality here is indistinguishable from many asset flip/cash grab scams, and that's a problem in itself.
Railway Islands 2 - Puzzle is yet another of several hundred amateur made minimalist pathing puzzle games that's somehow here on Steam instead of locked onto the app stores where this kind of shallow game belongs. All you do is tap on various (probably asset flipped) environment tiles to make a railway rotate around. Complete the rail circuit and you can go on to the next level... incredibly simplistic stuff, probably no more than a weekends effort with Unity and the Unity Asset Store.
This is a copy + paste of Rainbow Islands 1, which tells us a lot about the developer, spamming the same game + assets onto Steam without considering if it has any value for gamers (it doesn't).
Rising Moon Games have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. One example of Rising Moon Games doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1997070]HEN, CHICKS AND CATS[/url], which is really the "[url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/environments/fantasy/cube-world-full-131386]Cube World[/url]" asset, written by the actual developers, Polysquid.
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.
The game features low-polygon "retro" assets with cartoony, mobile app style shader effects, making this look like a barely functional mobile app from 15 years ago. This visual style is a method that lazy devs often use when they have a lack of interest/capabilty to create highly detailed, high poly models and instead use shader effects to disguise that shortcoming under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It's far below the state of the art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions.
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.
This is indistinguishable from a mobile app, but they put this on Steam instead of the app stores by mistake. Was it rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all)?.
Regardless, for all intents and purposes Railway Islands 2 - Puzzle might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any 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 all-time peak player number was only 7 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. It's notable that this is a huge difference from the Rainbow Islands 1 game (this game is a direct copy + paste of that one), but Rainbow Islands 1 has trading cards. That tells you everything about the game plan for this developer... abuse trading cards with asset flip tier trashware.
[quote][b][url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2017/01/18/steam-takes-down-art-of-stealth-after-developer-posts-fake-reviews/?sh=750e13e12354]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 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.[/quote]
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
Railway Islands 2 - Puzzle has the almost scam-like price of around $4 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
