Warning: AI Slop[en.wikipedia.org]

This game is partially or completely made with talentless, soulless AI generated content.

RPG Maker strikes again!

"ShellPieces" is one of hundreds of low effort RPG Maker flips spamming the store. RPG Maker is designed specifically to be used by children, in their own words, "These easy to use tools are simple enough for a child". It's just a bunch of canned assets mixed with cringey high school anime club fan fiction.

This disaster from Japan was completely reviled by gamers on Steam, indeed I have the misfortune to be the first person to try write a review for it. And wouldn't you know, it's just like all the other RPG Maker asset flips/copy + paste jobs on Steam, except, perhaps, quite a bit worse than the others.

Indeed, we have an alarming scenario here because the "developer" used disgusting AI slop to vibe code chunks of the asset flip for him... apparently using a childrens toy construction kit was too difficult? Wow. And it's every bit as bad as you would expect from this unholy union of AI slop and construction kit asset flipping.

Mostly the defects are from hamfisted use of RPG Maker, but ultimately this is just an incredibly, painfully generic asset flip. The fan-fiction in this case is about the developer traveling to a magical, destroyed world where you have to fight asset flipped dinosaur sprites and other monsters and rely on the loot you pick up and other characters you meet to form your party and gear up. The focus is very much on just grinding combat, and of course the combat is incredibly lame because RPG Maker can't do anything better than weak ripoffs of Final Fantasy. I sometimes wonder why Square didn't sue RPG Maker into oblivion... anyway, the original Final Fantasy is ancient and we really don't need the hundreds, if not thousands of RPG Maker ripoffs on Steam.

Like other RPG Maker "games", the game engine is extremely low quality. It displays badly in fullscreen, and has no real graphics settings or HD support. It's not up to the same standard we expect from a modern PC game.

We can make the argument that construction kit toys like RPG Maker are intended for making small games and demos and things to pass around with friends. They shouldn't be used as a substitute or "Ez-mode" to allow unqualified amateurs to LARP that they're real, actual game developers.

This is typical RPG Maker shovelware... It uses copy and pasted pixelcrap art, looks bad and plays even worse. This construction kit is designed for children is trash, and products made with it offer no value to PC gamers.

This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that this looks much worse than most other games because of that decision, and that's a major deterrent to gamers. Games like Terraria and Stardew Valley succeeded despite the bad graphics, not because of them.

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 controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.

The poor quality of this game 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. OUCH.

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 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.

Let's look at the price and what kind of value this actually offers gamers. Should you buy this game? Is it one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam?

ShellPieces is relatively cheap at $4 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. Gamers who want a good retro JRPG experience would be better off playing the originals, like Final Fantasy, Star Ocean or Chrono Trigger.

Imagine trying to charge money for an RPG Maker asset flip fan-fiction on Steam.

Profile Features Limited!
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.

The use of AI slop is a direct insult to gamers and real, ethical content creators and artists everywhere. AI models are trained on copyrighted intellectual property without permission from the owners.