Deadly Animal Duel is a lazy shovelware 2D retro pixel single screen wave survival brawler slapped together with Unity Playmaker, an addon for Unity that removes any requirement to know how to make games in Unity, turning it into a basic construction kit, which explains the deplorable quality of this garbage. I can see the developer wanted to have an array of interesting monsters with unique attacks and so on, but just had no idea how to implement that in such a way it would make a decent game (hence the use of Playmaker, what a surprise, devs who don't know how to do the technical parts of making a game, usually can't manage to do any of the other important parts of game design properly either). Thank goodness Valve added trading cards to Steam, so talentless publishers who rub shoulders with asset flippers can still get sales. [list][/list]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.[list][/list]A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.[list][/list]While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.[list][/list]The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming.[list][/list]The controls and game handling are notably very clunky and unsmooth here. It's janky and unsatisfying to play... and any experienced gamer will tell you, the handling, responsiveness and general gameplay feel of the control scheme must be well polished for this kind of game to succeed. Unfortunately, this is something the developer seems to have phoned in, with little to no apparent gameplay testing. They dropped the ball on this one.[list][/list]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.[list][/list]These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.[list][/list]Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the game. But this only appears around the same time that trading cards were applied to the game... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.[list][/list]It's also important to note the "developer" here has connections to a number of shady Russian asset flippers (such as Mihai Morosanu) who show an organised pattern to scam and defraud gamers with fake reviews and asset flipping the work of others for profit. While reviews are about the games, gamers should be informed when developers act unethically. Whether these connections are the same developer using multiple accounts, or just working closely with other unethical developers, gamers should be warned about the harm to gamers by this developer and their associates. Buying games from unethical developers puts your money at risk.[list][/list]Deadly Animal Duel is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend.
