RPG Maker strikes again!
Slime Rule is one of hundreds of low effort retro-pixel RPG Maker asset/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/canned assets from RPG Maker 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.
This is truly one of the worst, laziest RPG Maker games on Steam with badly translated dialogue and pathetically lazy content... filling out templates in RPG Maker isn't hard, but apparently that was beyond the so-called "developers" here... but there's more about that which I'll get into later.
Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger.
The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game only ever reached a peak player count of just 10 players (read below on this... because it's a doozy). This is a pitiful enough 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, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is remarkable, but also to be expected. This complete and utter rejection of the game from gamers should be a keen information point for anyone considering buying shovelware like this. Gamers just didn't take this seriously, and for good reason.
The developer here has a bit of a trail of unethical actions and associations... review manipulation is the first of these. They're also connected to the "GamesForGames" syndicate of Russian asset flippers, who routinely use review manipulation and asset flips to try to scam as much money out of Steam gamers as possible. While reviews are about the games, it's important for gamers to be aware of unethical/shady developers, because buying games from less-than-ethical developers puts gamers money at risk.
[quote][url=https://mmofallout.com/valve-bans-titles-for-review-manipulation/]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/quote]
This game features a number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product.
But there's something special about this review manipulation. Remember how the SteamDB player count was only 10? Yep... on launch day. It was the fake review accounts all playing the game at the same time!!! But the developer goofed... while all Steam reviews count to the overall score, Steam reviews from accounts that didn't directly purchase the game don't count to the score displayed on the Steam store. Oops... the developer wasted all that time with 10 fake accounts for no tangible outcome. What a joke. Well, when your living is trying to scam PC gamers into buying asset flips, you can't expect brain surgery levels of competence.
The game carries a cash grab price of $5, which nobody should give these shady devs.
