Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?!

Well, it's that "potatoes" franchise again... the marketing guys at Daedalic are clearly getting high off their own supply. The demand for "holy potatoes" themed game is a lot lower than they've convinced themselves. This time they've turned the potatoes to do a Nintendo Switch based "tycoon" game where you grind, grind, grind and wait, wait, wait. The game "works" but it's immediately tedious, and bookended with endless, cringey e-book visual novel text. No voice acting, just mobile app style "Simlish" gibberish that's immediately annoying. So you click through the text then you get to make the same small set of weapons over and over again, then dispatch them for sale, wait for the sale, and just keep repeating. Here's the thing, with these tycoon games, they really work like progressive/incrementer games and rely on that same "sense of progression" that incrementers use, only more rewarding because you grow your shop, develop new products and markets and so on... the elements of that are present here, but the feeling of progression doesn't come through. It's just a tedious grind. On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. 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. The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, of the type you normally expect to see in low effort Flash/browser games and mobile apps. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. Ultimately, while this is a Nintend Switch game (and that's bad enough), this might as well be a mobile app... it's not what PC gamers expect for their bleeding edge gaming rigs. As a casual tycoon game, it's inferior to almost every other one. These flaws make this game fall far short of the professional standards we expect from a modern PC game. Now on to pricing and value for gamers. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam? Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! has the greedy, cash grab price of around $10 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Dead by Daylight", "Hearts of Iron IV" or "Mass Effect Andromeda". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. 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. Holy Potatoes! A Weapon Shop?! has the completely insane price of $10 USD, which is incredibly suspicious, higher than AAA pricing for an asset flip shovelware scam game. Why would the "developer" put such a high price tag on an asset flip with no true value as a game? There's no direct proof for this, but it's entirely possible this game is priced this way for money laundering or other criminal purposes. Higher prices allow more money to move with fewer transactions. Valve have previously banned developers for running money laundering scams. While there's no direct evidence in this case, it's highly suspicious and gamers should be wary. 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. There are over 140,000 games on Steam, not every one of them is a hidden gem. I'm here to try help gamers find the ones that actually matter in that sea of Steam Direct self published mess. If you don't agree with my findings in this review, you should definitely buy it, download it, and play it to see for yourself. I'm happy to have helped you make an informed choice, regardless of the outcome.