"Duke of Alpha Centauri" 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.

EGAMER/SA Industry 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:

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

This is an achievement spam game that has 128 achievements, all fairly trivial to get, and presumably that's the key selling point for the game. As a game itself it's a fairly weak shoot 'em up, unlike most SA Industry games at least some effort went into game design because you at least get to juggle different weapons/power levels and a few other bits and pieces, and there's a progression system of sorts... but ultimately this is very far from being a decent or worthwhile bullet hell game... a poor entry in a dead genre. It's difficult to recommend this kind of game even if it was one of the best, and this isn't.

You can customise your resolution and game controls, not that there's much point. The visuals are, well, I guess it's not 2D retro pixel "art", but there's nothing to write home about, from a visual perspective. Some of the weapons are a bit sluggish and the game overall lacks polish.

"Duke of Alpha Centauri" didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for shooting any weapon at all, trivial to get, but less than 15 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game.

Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a very healthy spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, and isn't consistent with the achievement stats, that show less than 15 percent of players bothered playing the game for any reasonable amount of time. How is it possible for this game to have so many concurrent players who didn't bother engaging with this game? Trading cards. People will use card idling software to collect the cards and sell them, but this won't trigger any achievements in-game.

That tells us people only really bought this game for trading cards, and that's a damning indictment of the woeful quality. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with little merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.

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?

"Duke of Alpha Centauri" has the almost scam-like price of $17 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $17 asking price for this game could get you games like "7 Days to Die", "Kingdom Come Deliverance" or "Disco Elysium". The pricing here is either a direct attempt to insult gamers, or some kind of weird, delusional cash grab.

The Candy Man CAN NOT recommend Duke of Alpha Centauri.

(It has a lot of jank. Been sitting in my library I dont know how long. Went back to 100% it and it was not enjoyable