The Haunted Spot

Lucky me gets to be the first to warn gamers about yet another garbage asset flip. The Haunted Spot is the 61st in a row of asset flips from Anamik Majumdar, who keeps reskinning the same lame GameMaker Studio game templates and re-releasing them on Steam with a few minor changes. He has released [i]hundreds[/i] of these asset flips onto Steam, roughly 2 every month. This asset flip spam is incredibly harmful pollution on the store. The GameMaker Studio templates he keeps re-releasing are just basic retro pixel (couldn't he rip off a template with proper graphics??) 2D top down/platformer stealth/action games. Here's some other copy + pastes from Anamik of [i]exactly the same game template[/i]: [list] [*] Abandoned Cabins in the Woods [*] Abandoned Croxon Mansion [*] Arata Haunted Asylum [*] Axizon Labs: Zombies [*] Canterz Paranormies [*] Canterz Paranormies 2 [*] Carlos Haunted House [*] Charles Haunted Mansion [*] Clara Wraiths [*] Davis Haunted House [*] Emi's Solo Ghost Haunting [*] Gaze At Maze [*] Ghost In The Barn House [*] Gregor Hills Haunted Hospital [*] Haunted Jail: Alcatas [*] Heltons Haunted Hotel [*] House Number 666 [*] Koverpark Haunted Subway [*] Manicos Haunted Hotel [*] Mello Haunted House [*] My Grandpa's Haunted House [*] My Haunted Doll [*] Palmvil Haunted Villa [*] Rescue Rina [*] Ryo The Haunted Office [*] Shelley's Haunted House [*] The Chills [*] The Haunted Exmone Theatre [*] The Haunted Nora Apartment [*] The Haunted Spot [*] The Haunted Tunnel [*] Zeroton Hauntings [/list] [b]These are all EXACTLY the same game!!![/b] There's also this other 2D platformer template which has been copied+pasted many times: [list] [*] Ava's Adventure [*] Balloon Azuna [*] Boon Boon [*] Christmas Cats Revenge [*] Electronic World Z [*] Emiko's Pledge [*] Emiko's Pledge 2 [*] Emiko's Pledge 3 [*] Emiko's Pledge 4 [*] Fight For Love [*] Jaxon The Thief [*] Keatz: The Lonely Bird [*] Mika's Battle S [*] Mika's Battle S 2 [*] Mika's Battle S 3 [*] Mission XAM [*] NightmareZ [*] Orange Santa [*] Smash Halloween Pumpkins: The Challenge [*] Super Strawberry Man [*] The Christmas Gifts [*] The Hero of Bangaona [*] The Valley of Super Flowers [*] Yui Tui [*] Zack Y [/list] These are all exactly the same game, same assets, just a pallette swap every now and then... the laziest "game development" known to mankind. And it's all garbage! And honorable mentions, the shoot 'em up copy+pastes, Ayako's Mission, Proxy Air Force and Warships on the Halloween Night. These are all basically the exact same GameMaker Studio game templates with a different skin and a couple of things changed. No professional effort was made in terms of game development, using a game construction kit requires no game development talent, and unsurprisingly produces products that have little to no value as games, especially when compared to the work of professional developers who create genuine products for gamers. We can consider this to be asset flipping, in this case only barely more ethical just because it's the developers own assets that keep getting copy + pasted, but the end result for gamers is the same as any Russian asset flip: A fake game with extremely poor quality, no value or merit as a serious game for gamers, polluting Steam and abusing Steam Direct as a cash grab. No matter how many times this guy copy+pastes the same game, it's not suddenly going to become anything but garbage. Rehashing the same game over and over again is just a cheap nasty cash grab. While Anamik Majumdar occasionally breaks Valve guidelines for partners and attacks reviewers, any legitimacy he may have is eradicated by the way he pumps these copy+paste asset flips out and bulk sells keys to crapware bundle merchants like DailyIndieGame. It's also important to note Anamik Majumdar has denied using GameMaker Studio to make his asset flips, despite every single one being made with GameMaker Studio. It's unclear why Anamik Majumdar has been misleading about these templated cash grabs. The poor quality of this asset flip is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. And that was probably just the developer himself. How bad can it get? But Anamik is spamming at least 2 of these asset flips onto Steam every month. He's single-handedly published more games than Bethesda, Bioware, Blizzard put together! And they're all just crap copy + pastes. So, should you buy this asset flip? Is this one of the best of the 130,000+ games on Steam? The Haunted Spot has the almost comically optimistic (if it wasn't so sad) price of around $4 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 $4 asking price for this game could get you games like "Dragon Age: Origins", "Shadow Warrior" or "Portal 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game 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 game.[/quote]