RPG Maker strikes again!
"Shanghai1920" is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker construction kit flips spamming the Steam catalog, made with the RPG Maker video game construction kit... in their own words, "Our easy to use tools are simple enough for a child." Like all RPG Maker "games", this is essentially a bunch of low quality assets coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction.
This RPG Maker construction kit train wreck eschews the usual asset flipped pixelcrap for even worse hand-made MS-Paint tier "art", and eschews the high school anime club fan-fiction about the developers imaginary girlfriend for some claptrap about vampires in Shanghai in the 1920's. This doesn't make it better. There's more emphasis on the badly done fan-fiction writing than on gameplay, which raises an interesting question about RPG Maker... what's worse, the crap fan-fiction writing that goes along with them, or the godawfully bad Final Fantasy ripoff gameplay?
As with all RPG Maker games, the poor quality engine displays badly in fullscreen and doesn't have full HD support or any graphics tweaking options, making this unacceptable for any dedicated modern PC gamer. The point can be made that the intention of RPG Maker is to make demos and small games to pass around friends, and shouldn't be used for "professional" game development.
Like most RPG Maker shovelware and asset flips, the game features extremely low quality 2D retro pixel/"Baby's First Wacom Tablet" art, looks awful, and has even worse gameplay. RPG Maker is an absolutely terrible construction kit, and never results in games of any reasonable quality or value to gamers.
There's an overwhelming amount of mediocre Visual Novel/E-book style cutscenes in this game. The developers failed one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of game design.. "Show, don't tell." So you'll spend a huge amount of time not playing the game, but clicking through endless lines of poorly written VN text cutscenes because the developers couldn't work out how to relate their narrative through the game mechanics, and decided instead it would be better to compete with reading a book for your time.
We're here to play games, not read through hours of garbage intersituals. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
This is "free" enough (not every "free" game in the "free" section is truly free, there's usually some hidden price tag), at least you won't be expected to spend any more money after you download this, but just because something is free doesn't mean it's good, and the cost of a game is more than just financial, your time is valuable too.
In terms of public reception, this failed. There's over 130 million unique gamers visiting Steam every month. SteamDB showed the game peaked at [b]only 6 concurrent players[/b]... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
Since free games don't contribute to your game collector badge and other profile stuff, is this a worthwhile addition to your Steam library?
This is a hard pass. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.
