Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.
But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.
He continued: “That was a hasty judgment on my part. Unless AI takes one more leap and reaches a point where no one can tell the difference, what I believed was still closer to an ideal than a reality. I expected some of you would be disappointed by our use of AI. I did not expect it to become this big.”
So… they’re completely fine with hiding AI usage as long as noone can tell the difference? That is super shady, man.
Yeah, it shows they think the bad output quality is the only valid reason you’d be against slop.
It’s not the AI itself I hate, it’s the laziness and the shoddy quality it churns out. Ten years ago, mistakes like these wouldn’t have stood a chance in a human artist’s work, so why are they suddenly acceptable just because it’s AI? Does nobody bother with quality control anymore?
If your budget is tight and you want to scrimp, fine, that’s understandable but you should at least make an effort to hide how cheap you’re being.
If a game has AI touch it, im out. Pay the fucking artists and developers. AI is always the tool of the c-suite to save money on paying humans. Dont let them live it down, ever.
I got expedition 33 as a gift. Still haven’t played it
“Saw the very first cutscene, before any gameplay, and how the generative AI they used couldn’t even keep the main character’s model consistent,” reads the “most helpful” Steam review for Vapor World. “From the trailers the gameplay looked pretty fun [but] unfortunately I support people not robots. If the look you want to go for is beyond the scope you can achieve right now then I suggest you change it or wait until you can produce the art and style you want with people doing it.”
That’s pretty representative of the Steam reviews at the moment: Vapor World is currently sitting on 64 “mostly negative” reviews.
Can you leave a steam review and then refund a game? Otherwise how are so many people making the mistake of buying it when other reviews are already saying it has their dealbreaker issue of having used AI (that’s apparently obvious as soon as the first cutscene)?
