Whenever this game pops up on F95zone, so too do two voices pop into my head: "Don't click on it, you idiot. You know there will be nothing." And the other voice says, "Well, but mayyyyyyyybe this time...."
That second hopeful voice is always wrong, and he withers a bit in my mind with each subsequent update. He's zombified, hobbled forward and forced to walk on a cane. But he won't die; he continues to persist, and likely will continue to exist, waiting for the waters of salvation that shall never come.
In various threads, I continually say something like "oh, this game is in my top 5 of worst cases of #fuckarounditis," but this game has taken the top spot. Why? Because where other developers seem to mean well but are just inexperienced or confused about what they need to focus on, and this inexperience is often made worse by lack of resources to develop consistently, Sad Crab is the opposite: they have resources, an extremely talented artist, and a perfect idea for a game, and they go nowhere not because of inexperience (no one could remain so aloof for so long that a boat needs a rudder and a sail) but because they are consciously taking advantage of the system.
There is no way that such a unique and promising game could have been conceived by ignorant minds. Or, if I'm wrong about that, and perhaps some blind squirrel managed to dream up this game and artwork but couldn't see the way forward, there's no way that the blind squirrel wouldn't have lucked out and finally found a way forward, by simply reaching out and feeling for the path. That is, even an imbecile dev would have learned by now, after so many years of development, how to develop one of these games properly, the psychology of sexual attraction, what customers are looking for, etc.--assuming that the dev is actually trying, of course.
You have to applaud them. They are living the dream of scammers who try out this business. And what is that dream? It probably goes something like this: come up with a basic framework of a great game, get people enamored with the glorious vision, and then do the absolute bare minimum of work, and live off the fools who let their hopes get the better of them and end up paying out money. If that original vision is promising enough, all the scammer has to do is keep shelling out a few empty promises here and there, a few shallow updates, to placate the fools and renew their hopes. And it works because that initial vision is so powerful and promising that the paying supporters remain blind to the obvious, that the devs are scamming them.
But, as scammers, they did their job well: that seed they planted, this game, has so much potential. The artwork is insanely good, and the story world seems so rich and alive, just as much as the literary world they are ripping off. When they came up with their snake oil, they at least made sure it was uniquely appetizing, one of a kind in appearance, a game that might have ended up having it all.
