Road Draftsman is yet another construction kit template copy+paste from serial shovelware pushers, Phoenixxx Games. These guys (or just one guy flipping accounts to mislead gamers) do nothing but copy premade game templates and game tutorials, fill out a few things/stamp out basic levels using the construction kit templates, slap on an asset flipped set of sprites/assets, and dump them on Steam and into DailyIndieGame bundles as cash grabs. Trying to get paid for someone else's game templates, assets... at best, this is shovelware, at worst, it's a scam/cash grab.
This time they've ripped off a Yoyogames/GameMaker Studio mobile app, the type where you draw a line with your finger on your iPhone screen to create a path between various nodes. There's a 2D car theme slapped on, but it really doesn't make much of a difference what it is, the mobile app gameplay is so exceedingly shallow.
Phoenixxx Games have a known history of trying to scam people into paying them money for someone else's work. One example of Phoenixxx Games doing this is [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1683010]Cat From The Box[/url], which is really the "[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kje_0eMY7g4]Cat and Food[/url]" asset, written by the actual developers, Softrave.
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 options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics.
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 often used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.
This looks and feels like a mobile app, but I wasn't able to find it on the app stores. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was 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 this is 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 in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game only ever reached a peak player count of only 4 players. That's right, only 4. This is a pitiful enough 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. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is remarkable, but also to be expected. This complete and utter rejection of the game from gamers should be a keen information point for anyone considering buying shovelware like this. Gamers just didn't take this seriously, and for good reason.
[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.
Road Draftsman has the laughable price of $10 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games, let alone the sheer number of free games available on Steam. 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. Because this is the kind of game you can just play for free on mobile phones, it's impossible to recommend anyone should pay money for the same experience on Steam.
