[quote][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop][b]Warning: AI Slop[/b][/url]
This product is partially or completely made with talentless, soulless AI generated content.[/quote]
Sweetie Candy Maze: Pink Raspberry is yet another construction kit template copy+paste from serial shovelware pushers, Cute Hannah's Games. These guys do nothing but copy premade game templates and game tutorials, fill out a few things/stamp out basic levels using the construction kit templates, slap on an asset flipped set of sprites/assets, and dump them on Steam and into cheap nasty shovelware game bundles as cash grabs. Trying to get paid for someone else's game templates, assets... at best, this is shovelware, at worst, it's a scam/cash grab.
This is another "fake game", the Russian developer used Clickteam Fusion to generate a bunch of random mazes filled with insulting AI slop, rushed it onto Steam Direct to scam gamers out of a few roubles, and of course sell keys in bulk to crapware game bundles. At no point was this intended to be a real game, it's just absolutely zero effort minimum viable product... just enough to get onto Steam Direct.
Obviously this garbage has no value for gamers as a real game, and the Russian developer behind this who goes by a number of different shell accounts to hide his identity is just polluting Steam with an absolute deluge of these empty, fake games. Here's some of the accounts this guy is using to spam Steam with crap:
[list]
[*] Cute Hannah's Games
[*] Blender Games
[*] Quantum Quiver
[*] Green Goose Corporation
[*] My Label Games
[/list]
Under these shell accounts, the developer has polluted Steam with literally hundreds of AI Slop/asset flips and other none game garbage just like this. All stamped out with ClickTeam Fusion with AI slop/procedurally generated levels. Why is this good for gamers? It's not!
To hammer down the point I'm making about this game, why it's pollution, take a look at this list of games published by some of those fake accounts:
[list]
[*] aMAZE
[*] aMAZE 2
[*] aMAZE ABC
[*] aMAZE Christmas
[*] aMAZE Classic
[*] aMAZE Classic: Inverted
[*] aMAZE Dark Times
[*] aMAZE Double
[*] aMAZE Easter
[*] aMAZE Frozen
[*] aMAZE Gears
[*] aMAZE Gears 2
[*] aMAZE Gears 3
[*] aMAZE Halloween
[*] aMAZE Lunar
[*] aMAZE St.Patrick
[*] aMAZE Untouchable
[*] aMAZE Valentine
[*] aMAZE ZER0
[*] Maze Art: Black
[*] Maze Art: Blue
[*] Maze Art: Brown
[*] Maze Art: Green
[*] Maze Art: Orange
[*] Maze Art: Pink
[*] Maze Art: Purple
[*] Maze Art: Rainbow
[*] Maze Art: Red
[*] Maze Art: Yellow
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Blueberry
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Brown Chocolate
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Green Apple
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Orange
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Pink Raspberry
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Purple Grape
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Red Cherry
[*] Sweetie Candy Maze: Yellow Lemon
[/list]
[b]These are all reskins of exactly the same game!!![/b]
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like ClickTeam Fusion should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Cute Hannah's Games has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
From a technical perspective, the game 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, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Clickteam Fusion construction kit - the "No-Code" construction kit that "Anyone can make games with!!". Including, you know, people who aren't game developers. Which is a problem. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it's free (so they don't have to pay for GameMaker Studio) and doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's arguably worse than GameMaker Studio). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
One of the driving elements of this shovelware game is "achievement spam", that is to say the game features a ridiculously large number of trivial/automatically granted achievements, 100 of them, in fact. It's a damning indictment for this shovelware that people only bought it for easy achievements, and not because it has any serious merit as a real game. However, achievement hunters should be warned that this shovelware is "profile features limited", so your achievements [i]will not count towards your Steam profile totals![/i]
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 all-time peak player number was [b]only 2 players[/b]. 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 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam?
Sweetie Candy Maze: Pink Raspberry is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
