Stick Infinite Kingdom is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs.
This mobile app is yet another godawful "stick fighter" minimum effort shovelware game... sure, most stickfighter games are 2D, but whatever, the effort put in by the devs is negligible, but the price is astounding. Stick fighter games are super popular amongst amateur/lazy developers as they give the promise that the developer can get paid for minimum effort... crappy stick figure graphics are all the rage. Amongst the lazy. But, you may ask, why is this developer laziness good for gamers? And the answer is: It's not. When developers push low quality shovelware onto Steam, especially mobile apps, it just pollutes the store with thousands of garbage entries that we're supposed to sift through to find decent games. So yeah, this kind of thing is a real problem.
I'm not really sure if Stick Infinite Kingdom is an asset flip. Some elements of this mobile app certainly make it seem like the developer put some effort into assembling some kind of original here (at least, I don't think the stick figures themselves are stock assets, but the backdrops seem to be). On the other hand, a lot of the game assets don't seem like they were created by the developer, but they haven't credited any asset creators for supplying assets, which might be a case of plagiarism. There's no evidence, so we need to give the benefit of the doubt... regardless, asset flip or not, the quality here is indistinguishable from many asset flip/cash grab scams, and that's a problem in itself.
From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The mobile app features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the 1990s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the mobile app (although the requirement for this to run on low end mobile phones is a factor), and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the mobile app unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.
These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
Stick Infinite Kingdom didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the mobile app, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the mobile app didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "Survived 1 night", playing the mobile app for a few minutes, trivial to get, but less than 34 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the mobile app. Hardly a success story, even the people who own this mobile app weren't interested in it.
The poor quality of this mobile app is also 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 10 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 130,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality mobile app is to be expected.
So, should you buy this mobile app? Is this one of the best of the 130,000+ games on Steam?
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this mobile app as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the mobile app (to date). Until this status changes, this mobile app will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this mobile app.[/quote]
Once more we see greedy mobile devs trying to scam PC gamers. On Steam, this is $10 USD, on app stores, it's free. Mobile devs must learn PC gamers are not here to be gouged, and can't be expected to pay a premium for a free mobile app just because it's been lazily dumped on Steam. This is unacceptable disrespect for PC gamers. Because this can be played free elsewhere, and because of the other defects, it's impossible to recommend.
Yes, that's right. TEN BUCKS FOR A FREE MOBILE APP. Disgusting.
Just who do they think we are?
