Parasite (2022)

Bought this game a few years ago because the concept looked cool, didn't imagine it would start using AI slop so it's a shame really.

the embarrassing state of proud AI sloppening

A fun game definitely worth the price although personally one aspect I am not a fan of the "Group" (Your main threat) just seems to appear from nowhere often feeling like it doesn't really give you a chance to develop your habitats and play into the development of the parasite. I feel like this wouldn't be so bad if you had certain locations like for example the uninhabited regions being a lot harder for the group to locate your habitats but with the downside of having to travel so far to get hosts adding its own risk. That aside this is great game which I will look forward to playing more and more.

the core concept is really cool and theres some good stuff here, though it does need quite a bit of polishing and balancing, in particular it's very punishing for your host to die on you out in the world, you die very quickly without one and it seems with the 3d art update the areas became a little less populated so im losing a lot of runs due to just not being able to find a host, maybe having host degradation be a little easier to read would be nice too as sometimes my host just outright dies on me while im evolving and screws me over. the AI art stuff is fine, I think people are blowing their gaskets a little too hard about it, some of it was quite ugly before but the AI art currently in the game honestly looks alright and isn't too distracting, plus with this game being a solo project sold at an extremely cheap price tag i can't fault the dev too much for it as commissioned art is expensive

Dev decided to pivot to AI art. Before you respond, yes I am aware there is an option to turn it off, I'd just rather not support projects which support an industry that is fundamentally based on massive corporations increasing their stock value and swaying global politics off of scraping the works of individual artists that don't receive a dime.

Really great concept!