ShapeShifter

[quote]Warning: Asset Flip![/quote] ShapeShifter is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not. In fact this is a crappy mobile app that was dumped on Steam as a weird cash grab. This garbage platformer has practically zero value as a real game, the backdrops and tileset look like they're asset flipped (who'd go to the effort of making custom tiles for a free game?)... but what's fascinating about this is the incredibly dubious promise the developers will give you a chance to win a cash prize if you play this garbage... does that look and smell like some kind of scam to you? Wait until you see just how much money the "developer" wants for this "free" garbage. Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise this failed to capture any attention from gamers in the era of immersive 3D gaming. The game graphics look better than you might expect, but that's just because it looks like some or all of them are "borrowed" from asset stores or wherever. Gamers can tell... and it comes across as insincere. There's also the old adage that those who lack the budget and talent to make their own game assets usually lack the budget and talent to do the rest of the job of game development properly, too. Even though this is "free", it failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 2 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away. Even after offering "cash prizes" (WTF) for playing this. But here's the kicker.. the developer is begging the public to give them SIXTY UNITED STATES DOLLARS in the form of completely contentless "DLC"... this is begging. Digital panhandling. Like the homeless guys that splash dirty water on your windshield at the traffic lights. Bearing in mind that free games don't add +1 to your game collector count, should you bother adding this to your library and downloading it? Nope. This isn't worth downloading. While this didn't cost me any money up front, I still feel ripped off. [quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says: [quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote] This is a little disturbing as the developer indicates they started stalking me and feverishly reading through my reviews... either just obsession with me on their part, or desperation to try find something in one of my other reviews that would somehow change the objectively terrible quality of this failed "game". Whatever their motivation, creeping on reviewers like this is [b]not okay[/b]. The "developer" argues that I review a lot of games, therefore this game review isn't valid or truthful. Huh. If I changed all my other reviews to positive, would the graphics and gameplay of this crap game suddenly improve? No. The developer seeks any possible angle to throw shade at me personally to discredit my review. You can see what they are trying to do. If this was the only review I have ever written, would that change any of the properties of this game or alter the facts contained in my review? Of course not. [b]My reviews for other games have no bearing on the dismal quality of this failed product[/b]. Then, some intellectual dishonesty, frankly, BS... the developer genuinely wants us to believe when they put empty "donation" DLC on Steam they expected nobody to buy it. What a joke. You don't put something on the store without an expectation of sale. The developer seems bad at both honesty AND maths... the beggarware donation costs for this asset flip add up to a whopping $60 USD. Disgusting, and the developer is trying to lie about it now... unwise to tell lies when the facts are right there. The developer brazenly admits they're plagiarising... they took someone else's assets, which comprise the MAJORITY of this game, and tried to get paid for it. Gamers are not supposed to "guess" if a developer didn't actually create the assets in their game. When developers do this, they position themselves as having their name against those assets... it's 100% plagiarism. If they used someone else's work in a Hollywood movie, they'd be sued into the ground and never work in the industry again. They're tacitly telling gamers because this is their game, the assets are also theirs. Insultingly, the "developer" delivers an [b]outright lie[/b], claiming, completely without basis in fact, that my review is written using generative AI. This is completely untrue, as any AI text checker will prove. The developer attacks this review with outright libel, direct lies, as a coping mechanism to attempt to avoid facing the facts about their failure... but this insulting dishonesty and blatant lying shows us all we need to know about this person. Finally, gamers, remember, I am not "making" any of this up... the facts are there, and SteamDB does not lie. A peak player count of only 2 people is dismal failure, but gamers can smell dishonest devs and scammy asset flippers a mile away. Attacking me will not change the fact the developer is an asset flipper and a failed developer. But see how desperate the developer is to turn discussion away from his failed game, and attacking reviewers seems to be the only way he can work out how to do it. Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered, with the exception of adding a full warning as the developer acknowledges this is an asset flip, and gamers must be warned about bad products from shady developers.