Defendoooooor!! is yet another construction kit template copy+paste from serial shovelware pushers, SA Industry. These guys do nothing but copy premade game templates and game tutorials, fill out a few things/stamp out basic levels using the construction kit templates, slap on an asset flipped set of sprites/assets, and dump them on Steam and into cheap nasty shovelware game bundles as cash grabs. Trying to get paid for someone else's game templates, assets... at best, this is shovelware, at worst, it's a scam/cash grab.

This time it looks like the developer got their hands on a basic Cocos2D shooter template and reskinned it lazily, once more rushing shovelware onto Steam. Needless to say there's no value as a serious game for gamers here, it's like a really dumbed down version of Space Invaders flipped on its side. Shoot waves of enemies as they move toward you from the right of the screen, that's all there is to it. It's a "fake game".

SA Industry/White Dog Games have shown a repeat pattern of unethically dumping other people's work onto Steam as a cheap, nasty cash grab, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. Here's some examples so you can see for yourself:

• "Kingdom Defense" = Tower Defense Basic Pixel Art Pack[assetstore.unity.com] developed by FreeThePlayerOnGame
  
• "Falling Words" = 2D Typing Game[assetstore.unity.com] developed by Steelkrill Studio
  
• "Drive For Your Life" = Zombie Drive - Full Game Template[assetstore.unity.com] developed by Puppeteer

Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

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 implementation here is of such poor quality, the developer couldn't work out how to make the game display in fullscreen, it only runs in a window.

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.

Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Cocos Creator/Cocos2D game engine/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it's free (so they don't have to pay for GameMaker Studio) and doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's arguably worse than GameMaker Studio). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

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 all-time peak player number was only 3 players, and the worst part is these weren't genuine players, these were the Russian fake review accounts that the developer paid to make the fake reviews. Since the fake reviews are all done, 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 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.

It's also important to note the "developer" here has connections to a number of shady Russian asset flippers and review manipulators who show an organised pattern to scam and defraud gamers with fake reviews and asset flipping the work of others for profit. While reviews are about the games, gamers should be informed when developers act unethically. Whether these connections are the same developer using multiple accounts, or just working closely with other unethical developers, gamers should be warned about the harm to gamers by this developer and their associates. Buying games from unethical developers puts your money at risk.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

Defendoooooor!! has the far too high price of around $9 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer.

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