[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b]
"Secret of a Dream" is a Digital Homicide style asset flip. The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store packs, 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.
Most of the game assets look like they came from somewhere else. 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 some very basic stock 3D assets and dumped them onto a Myst-like point and click adventure game template to make a 10 minute long "tech demo" made out of other people's assets. This can't seriously be considered an actual game. It has no value or merit as a real game.
The game is very very short and can be finished in 10 minutes. Developers have at least some responsibility to provide enough content to make a game last more than 2 hours if they're serious about providing something of value to gamers. There's less content here than some free game demos.
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. What do we expect from asset flips anyway? Grand Theft Auto 6?
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 controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. 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.
There's also no audio controls... in fact there's no options at all. Nothing can be done to adjust any settings or improve the poor quality visual from the "borrowed" assets here.
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 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.
The game contains stock/store assets/libraries/packages, but the "developer" here hasn't credited the people who actually did the work for the game. In some cases, like the clips from Freesounds under the BY attribution licenses, this breaches the license agreement the developer signed for the use of those assets. Claiming credit for the work of others as well as breaching software licenses is highly unethical. Gamers should be made aware when a developer behaves unethically and breaches license/copyright agreements, as buying games from unethical developers puts the gamers money at risk.
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 game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?
"Secret of a Dream" has the ridiculous, laughable 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. Remember that if you buy a game from an unethical developer, you're putting your money at risk.
