ScareCrow Hunting VR

ScareCrow Hunting VR (or... Watch the Cornline VR? When a developer doesn't know [i]what their own game is called[/i], you know something shady is going on) is a fairly basic Unity (mostly) asset flipped first person horror adventure, one of many hundreds, if not thousands of these glutting Steam. The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store assets, arranged them haphazardly in a VR static shooter game template, and tried to get paid for it. I think there might be some bespoke assets, but they are of terrible quality... and the scope of the game here is, well, nothing. This is beneath the quality of a VR tech demo... you really do just stand in a field and shoot at enemies that move around. The graphics are bad, the gameplay negible, the pricetag informative... this does come across as just a cash grab. 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. Since this is basically a kitbash of other people's assets, it's visually better looking than the actual game. The thing is, when developers don't budget properly and hire real artists, and lack the skill to do the rest of the job of a game developer and the result is deplorably bad quality junkware. "ScareCrow Hunting VR" proves this point perfectly. The game is very simplistic, small and limited in scope and ambition. This feels more like a tech demo, proof of concept or student homework assignment rather than a fully fledged product designed for PC gamers. As such it doesn't offer any real value as a serious PC game. 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 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. This seems to have been made a VR exclusive to prevent any comparison with non-VR 3D games, a comparison that this game would fail very badly at. Developers must learn that while VR is great, if the only thing that makes the game great is the VR, then the game isn't great at all. These technical shortcomings push this game below minimum standards for any competently developed 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 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 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 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. Let's talk about price and what this asset flip is actually worth. Is this significantly better than any of the 140,000+ genuinely made games on Steam? Of course not! ScareCrow Hunting VR is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Ethics aside, there's enough defects and quality problems with this game that it's not worth recommending to gamers, but the unethical nature of the developer/their associates makes it completely impossible. [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]