RPG Maker strikes again!
The Devil's Womb 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 MS-paint/"baby's first Wacom tablet" "art" coupled with a cringeworthy high school anime club fan fiction.
Notably, the "developer" couldn't work out how to use RPG Maker to make a JRPG (the only thing it can do, and it's terrible at it). Instead, we have a more e-book than game experience, a high school writing class dropout fan-fiction with a mild horror theme about a girl/doll thing with psychological problems. It's extremely badly written to the point of being contrived and cringey.
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 "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.
This game is fairly dated at 6 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
On pricing, this is "free" enough, 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.
Despite having no up-front cost, this failed to appeal to the 120 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at only 9 concurrent players... this is a dismal public reception. This was so bad they couldn't even give it away.
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. There's no financial cost up-front, but you'd still be spending your time and a little hard drive space on a product that's far from the best. There's thousands of better alternatives on Steam.
[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]
The first thing the developer wants everyone to know is that they are "The Main Character". You, as a gamer, don't matter. They breach Valve guidelines for developers just to complain about a fully accurate and informative review (with facts their ego doesn't like). It's evident from their attitude that they never created this product with gamers in mind.
They did so to stroke their own ego. When developers, especially failed ones who would never be able to get a professional job in the industry, put themselves before gamers, we end up with garbage products like this. That explains how this trash ended up on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it. At least we finally got to meet THE MAIN CHARACTER.
If the developer of this trashware wasn't so full of themselves, they might understand that game reviews aren't here to instruct and teach developers how to make games. They should know this before they publish badly made garbage on Steam that nobody wants.
Game reviews are here to inform gamers about which products are of high quality, professionally made, and worth spending their hard earned time and money on. But the developer is so arrogant, it's all about them, so what's good for gamers is something that never crossed their mind.
The developer claims this is their first time trying to make a game. If I went to a restaurant, got sick from eating bad food, and got told "The chef is new and has never cooked food before", would that make it okay? No, it wouldn't. The developer supplied a very valid reason why this should never have been put up on Steam in the first place.
The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.
The developer clearly has poor comprehension, and didn't understand that RPG Maker is a tool (not a good one) for people starting to learn how to do game development and to make small toys to pass around with friends. But that doesn't mean you should use it as a substitute for actual game development. It is not "ez-mode" to slap together garbage in RPG Maker and burn $100 self-publish crap nobody wants through Steam Direct.
The developer quotes numerous examples where people have warned other gamers about the low quality of this product. It's fact, SteamDB does not lie, this had a pitiful number of players even bother trying this despite the low price. But it never occurred to him to understand that reviews are for gamers, he takes them personally because he's the centre of the universe.
John Romero didn't publish all the failed games he made on Steam. It's unclear why this guy feels it necessary to dump garbage on Steam like this.
The developer, arrogantly, is OUTRAGED that game reviews inform gamers about bad products, but because he is the MAIN CHARACTER and nobody else matters, it hurt his feelings so much he had the AUDACITY to report my review to Valve just because he can't cope with his own failure.
But I am not to blame for this product being rejected by gamers for such poor quality, the developer is. Why attack me for it? That's the mental coping mechanism.
This disgusting attitude from a failed developer explains how such garbage like this got on Steam, but it doesn't excuse it.
See how desperate the developer is to make this review for a bad product about ME, instead of the crap game he made? Why is this disgusting attitude good for gamers?
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this game to anyone.
