"My Horse: Bonded Spirits - Prologue" is not a game. It's an advertisement for a product called "My Horse: Bonded Spirits". My Horse: Bonded Spirits is a quite probably asset flipped horse ownership simulator, basically a subset of the horse management gameplay in Red Dead Redemption 2 only worth worse graphics, shallower gameplay, and a higher price tag.
But this isn't completely relevant because this is not My Horse: Bonded Spirits, it's just an advertisment for it, so it's not correct to try to review that completely distinct product. We must instead review this for what it is... an advertisement. If you enjoy advertisements, you can consume them for free on the web or on Youtube without needing to add them to your game library, download them, and then launch the advertising. It's impossible in a general sense to recommend people should do that over playing real, full games on Steam, and that applies here with "My Horse: Bonded Spirits - Prologue" too.
The purpose of this advertisement is to get you to shell out an eye watering TWENTY UNITED STATES DOLLARS to unlock the full game, and I don't recommend you do.
This is only free in the same way that adverts on Youtube and banner ads in your browser are. This is a game demo that's been dumped on Steam to advertise another Steam store page in the hopes of raking in some cash. Just because advertisements are free, doesn't mean they're worth your time.
It's important to understand there's a formal process to create a demo/page for a game which hasn't been followed here:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos
While it might seem like an inocuous mistake, publishing demos and advertisements as if they are full games is misleading and in some ways harmful. This advertisement is taking up marketing space and visibility that would be better made available to a developer that's done the right thing and created a full game. Instead, that visibility is given over to a demo/advert that's been published incorrectly and is polluting the marketplace.
It's unclear if this mistake was made through incompetence or a deliberate intent to mislead gamers. Often developers may choose to incorrectly publish demo/advertisements as separate games as a cheap way to bypass paying Valve for marketing presence on the Steam front page, which may seem clever to them, but it's harmful behaviour and it's not good for gamers.
[quote][b][url=https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/federal-register-notices/16-cfr-part-465-trade-regulation-rule-use-consumer-reviews-testimonials-final-rule]Warning: Review Manipulation![/url][/b]
This game features a number of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're all written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, very shortly after the game launched on Steam, all have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product.
Due to the 2024 FTC ruling (16 CFR Part 465), these fake reviews are a violation of US Federal Law.[/quote]
Advertisements and incorrectly published demos don't add +1 to your game collector count, they aren't full games. It's impossible for me to recommend this incorrectly published advertising spam to gamers, you deserve better than adverts.
[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]
Weirdly the developer says nothing... tacitly admitting they did indeed pay for reviews from the Russian review farm uncovered by Sentinels of the Store.
Or perhaps they didn't read that part... because, it's pretty obvious they can't read. I very clearly explain in my review that there is a correct and ethical way, provided by Valve, for developers to advertise their products without spamming Steam Direct with advertisements.
Since they didn't read it the first time I'll post it again.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/application/demos
See? There it is... how to properly advertise asset flips on Steam. Notice how nowhere in that document does it say "Pay a Russian review farm for fake reviews"?
I'm sure the developer will come back with "But Valve didn't stop us from doing it therefore we did the right thing". Valve doesn't even enforce their own rules... I could point to about 50 different NFT/blockchain games, banned under Valve's terms of service, that Valve refuse to action.
So it's up to us, in the community to warn each other about shady devs like this, doing the wrong thing and causing harm to indie devs, to gamers, and to the health of the Steam game store. Hopefully the developer response will draw more attention to their shady and harmful practices.
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 advertisement to anyone.
