RPG Maker strikes again!
Shattering Obsidian 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.
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.
In this case, an unusual deviation from the norm, a lot of the game assets aren't taken from the stock tilesets provided with RPG Maker, but seem to be bespoke... that doesn't mean they're good, of course, they look pretty bad, lazy retro pixel garbage. It would arguably have been better for the stock assets to be used. But, you complain, then it would look just like all the other RPG Maker garbage! Yes, yes indeed it would. That says a lot about RPG Maker, doesn't it?
The game does feature an original story and features adventure game elements as well as the crap RPG Maker RPG gameplay, but due to the garbage nature of RPG Maker, nobody bothered with it, even when the game became free.
The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. That's right, only 2. This is a remarkably low 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 and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is to be expected. Gamers just didn't take this low quality game seriously, and for good reason.
The game is currently free, but the developers were charging money for it. Nothing speaks more to a developers belief in themselves and their product than making their game available for everyone without remuneration, but this is also in some ways an acknowledgement that the game failed to achieve any commercial success (unsurprising due to the quality issues). It's a shame in this case that the implementation is below the minimum standards a dedicated PC game should offer to enthusiasts. The quality here is simply too low for me to recommend, even for free, and once more, gamers should be warned when
developers behave unethically.
One final note: The developer has been caught using fake reviews on their games in an attempt to mislead gamers by creating a fake positive review score. The reviews are all from known/compromised pay-per-review accounts, all in Russian or broken English, and show as Steam purchasers (to make the fake reviews count). The fake reviews are all posted within roughly 24 hours of each other, and usually shortly after the game launch. There's no evidence of fake reviews on this game, but that may change in future. Gamers have a right to know when developers act in a highly unethical manner.
