[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
Rest House III - Chlorophilia is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unreal Marketplace 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.
In this case, the asset flipper took a bunch of Unreal Marketplace assets and slapped them together badly in yet another Unreal first person adventure asset flip with deplorably low quality. This one even has text to speech voice work, entirely cringey. It has no value or merit as a real game.
The game has been in Early Access for almost a year and while it's still getting updates, it's deep in Development Hell. There's no reasonable expectation that this will ever be completed. Whether the developer lacks the time, funds, or skill/talent required to complete a video game isn't really something gamers should be expected to accept as an excuse.
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 mismatched game assets are fairly mediocre/low quality, it's a wonder why they couldn't be bothered "borrowing" higher quality assets for this asset flip. This is a lot like going on a shoplifting spree but only stealing the cut price store brand goods. Regardless, the poor quality assets alone should be enough to deter gamers from bothering with this.
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.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Rest House III - Chlorophilia didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Magical leaves collection", collecting some leaves, trivial to get, but less than 20 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, even the people who own this game weren't interested in it.
The poor quality of this game is also 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 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 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.
So, should you buy this asset flip? Is this better than any of the 100,000+ genuinely made games on Steam? Of course not!
Rest House III - Chlorophilia has the comically over-optimistic price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.
[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]
