Faith & Shield:4044 Tower Defense Reviews

[quote][b][url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_flip]Warning: Asset Flip![/url][/b] Faith & Shield:4044 Tower Defense is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store assets, dumped them all in a blender, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers.[/quote] Two notable criteria for what makes an asset flip instead of legitimate use of stock assets are whether those assets comprise the majority of the game, and whether the "developer" properly credited the people who created most of the assets in the game. This game fails both of those tests. The "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as cash grab shovelware. In this case, the asset flipper took the [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/tower-defense-toolkit-4-tdtk-4-91023]Tower Defense Toolkit 4[/url] from "SongGameDev" on the Unity Asset Store, slapped a few asset flipped objects and effects on it, and tried to pass off the toolkit as if it was their own work. It has no value or merit as a real game. As always when developers can't work out how to create their own assets, they can't do the rest of the job of a game developer and that's painfully obvious here. This dry-paint-generic TD game is clunky, uninspired, and downright boring to play. Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The mismatched game assets are fairly mediocre/low quality, it's a wonder why they couldn't be bothered "borrowing" higher quality assets for this asset flip. This is a lot like going on a shoplifting spree but only stealing the cut price store brand goods. Regardless, the poor quality assets alone should be enough to deter gamers from bothering with this. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. PC gamers will be insulted by the interface for this game as the mobile app devs demand you tap/swipe on your screen to interface with the game. While this is probably just due to sheer laziness from the mobile devs behind this game, it's offensive disrespect to PC gamers and a sign of an extremely shoddy mobile port. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. 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 only 5 players. 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 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. This kind of asset flipping isn't harmless. It makes it harder for gamers to find genuinely made games from ethical developers. It makes it harder for genuine indie developers, who put hard work into trying to make real games, to find an audience for their products. It gives indie developers a bad name. So, should you buy this asset flip? Is this better than any of the 110,000+ genuinely made games on Steam? Of course not! Faith & Shield:4044 Tower Defense has the gamer gouging price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Batman: Arkham City", "Far Cry 3" or "This War of Mine". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.