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Xbox may have delisted that terrible God of War ripoff, but its creator still has blatant copycats of several high-profile games listed on the Xbox store.
It turns out Dolaka LTD has quietly released a whole stable of doppelgangers in the past six weeks, and I've been poking through them like a vulture neck-deep in a buffalo carcass. This operation is approaching the realm of a counterfeit ring; just look at Classic Platformer Mariones, which could hardly be more Mario-like if it tried. If the mushrooms, spiky turtles, and gold question blocks weren't obvious enough, its official description gives the whole act away:
"Are you ready for the 2d classic platform game? Try to save the princess with Mariones. Skip many chapters. Kill the enemies. Collect items and gold. Collect and earn stars. It is a very enjoyable classic game."
Gold, stars, princesses, Mariones – it's all there and just $3.99, which is a recurring price point for Dolaka. And for the record, I think I would like to "skip many chapters," thank you for the option.
Then there's Hi Neighbor Hello There, a near one-for-one rip of Dynamic Pixels' stealth horror game Hello Neighbor. I'm pretty sure some of the assets used in the store images for this one are genuinely just Hello Neighbor screenshots with worse menus overlaid on top.
It doesn't end there, either. Zombie V Rising After Deaths uses sloppily edited art for Steam survival hit V Rising to promote a completely unrelated and utterly hideous driving game. Shooter Garenattacks seems to have combined Superhot's glassy enemies with DMC: Devil May Cry's neo Dante while lifting parts of its name from mobile battle royale Garena Free Fire MAX. Dinasaur Falling Survival is off-brand Fall Guys, and Mystic Epic Fnafena (or Fnafeno, the art can't pick a title) is just Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach, right down to some of the identical animatronics.
That said, my personal favorite may be Fly Monster 3D (pictured up top), which inexplicably uses a model of Arceus from Pokemon because Dolaka apparently exists to stupefy lawyers. Its product description is an all-timer: "Are you ready to fly with the creature? Fly with the most majestic creature over the sea. Try not to hit the stones on the mountains. Try to get the highest flight score. Get higher score than other creatures."
I am not ready to fly with the creature, no, and I have to wonder if Xbox is. We've had bootleg games almost as long as we've had games, but given how quickly Dolaka's God of War ripoff was taken down after it surfaced, it's a wonder the publisher's gotten away with so many rips on a major platform. They may have been pushed through the wild west of the Xbox Creators Collection program, but these games are still easily found through a Microsoft Store search. We've reached out to Microsoft for comment.
Here are the most promising non-bootleg upcoming Xbox Series X games for 2022 and beyond.
