PSA: Don't Fall For This New 'Wukong' Game On The Switch eShop

The fact that such games exist means that they are too much uninformed people out there

Developers like these should be blacklisted. Bring the hammer down on these scammers.

Remember when the Nintendo Seal of Quality meant something? Pillowpants Farms remembers...

Why is the video all wobbly?
Is it because they are laughing all the way to the bank with this blatant rip and the idiots out there that will fall for this

Looks the same to me….
Seriously though, is that the video or is it actually running at like 10fps?

However, let’s adjust our perspective here, this is a particularly bad name cash in, but the eShop is full of shovelware and Ninty are happy to take the money they generate. Is this really worse in quality than hobo simulator and the like?

"instead offering a woefully animated 2D action game with bland visuals"

Now, let's just be honest here, while it may be cashing in on the real thing, I know fine well you would not be saying the above if this were just some new indie game that was trying to get by entirely on its own merit.

Can you at least try to stay professional and criticize properly and state things that are actually true, please.

Why would I get anything from the Switch eShop in the first place?

Shucks, looks like we’ll have to wait more for the inevitable Robbie Williams’ Better Man video game adaptation for the Switch 😔

Waiting for the switch 2 upgrade version

@Pillowpants For starters its called 'Nintendo Seal of Quality' so no, Pillowpants Farms doesn't remember

And before anyone replies 'Uh well, it still meant something'. No, it applied to physical games to assure the customer/consumer they were getting an official product not a counterfeit or software that would screw your system up.
Now I don't know how who does QA for the game but surely someone at GGS must have thought the name or thumbnail could be misleading...

@martynstuff Okay Mr. Akshually...

Seems so legit. I guess cash rules everything around monkeys. Non specific monetary value, ya’ll. This Wukong is for the children.

the thing is Switch 2 is gonna have no more filter for shovelware spam garbage than Switch 1 has. i just hope they do some sorting so that at the very least you can filter it out (unlikely)

@Olliemar28 I would mention it looks to be cashing in on the other currently very popular and successful Wukong game by using a similar name and cover/promo artwork, and warn people that it has nothing to do with the Wukong game that's currently winning awards and such, so not to fall for what appears to be an intentional cash-grab scam. Outside of that, I don't think I'd say much about that game other than it obviously looks and plays nothing like that other Wukong game either. The actual game itself doesn't look particularly bad or great to me based on what I'm seeing, but it's just a short trailer, so I couldn't comment much beyond that without playing it firsthand myself. And if I were reporting on this particular situation in any professional capacity, I'd try to just report on the objective facts as much as I could. But, hey, that's just me.

Are game trailers meant to give you motion sickness? Cuz maaaaaaan, this one did!

@YunoboCo yeah, I suppose it would be as in-character as me gathering a physical Switch card collection.😏

Perhaps Nintendo could actually start reviewing and vetoing these rip-off/shovelware titles. There are SO many on Switch and it wastes so much time to scroll through them to get to the good stuff. If only we could blacklist certain developers and all their products. Please, please make it a feature on Switch 2!

Kid: "I want Black Myth: Wukong!"
Parent: "We have Black Myth: Wukong at home."
Black Myth: Wukong at home: [see above video]

But in all fairness, let's not forget that the box art for games back in the 1980s and 1990s were gross misrepresentations of what we actually got. You'd get an absolutely bada** cover art, and the actual game itself looked more cutesy. So I'm not going to fault them for the "box art" not accurately reflecting the actual in-game art style.

That being said, it is a shameless cash grab, and Nintendo should frankly police it a bit more. After all, it was an overabundance of low-quality titles on the Atari 2600 that led to the Video Game Crash of 1983. It was also the wealth of low-quality titles for the Wii that helped lead people to believe that it was just for kids when it was actually for people of all ages. And it's frankly a wonder that the wealth of low-quality titles for the NES didn't leave a black stain on its legacy (and given how many NES games the Angry Video Game Nerd has reviewed, it's especially mind-boggling).

I actually did put this on my wishlist mainly to investigate later when I saw the name in the eShop. After seeing the trailer it became obvious what this release was about! Quickly deleted off the wishlist, thereafter.

I would love the eShop to allow users to hide content to declutter things. the 'Never show me this again' button.

@Pillowpants Well it's true, the "seal of quality" only meant a product was official. It has zero to do with how good a title actually was, which even then is highly subjective. Yet the bull 💩 misconception perpetuates to this day...

@EVIL-C Although I know the Seal of Quality didn't really mean that much, I can't remember seeing so much shovelware on the older consoles as from the Wii onwards. Ever since we had an e-Shop, it seems that the quality overall has gone down quite a bit. I'm sure you agree with that sentiment.

@Pillowpants Oh definitely, and if we look at the numbers, the NES has 740ish official games in its entire library, I believe?
Whereas when you factor in modern digital storefronts, something the NES didn't have, where any random publisher can poop out a digital turd for $2, modern console libraries are numbering up in the thousands of titles.

We've never had a larger number of new games being produced to play as we do today, so it gives the appearance we're drowning in an ocean of garbage games, whereas the fewer, less frequent releases of past generations, of which let's be honest there are a relative ton of crap games on the NES, the bad ones don't seem as prevalent or as widespread of a problem.

@RetroGames Good game, bad game, I do see your point, but I think you may also be missing a particular point which would justify the author's wording.

Whether the game is good or bad on it's own merits IS besides the point of whether or not the game is deliberately trying to cash in on the name of a more popular and more well-produced game - which it objectively IS.

However, there is merit in wording the game in a negative bias, as opposed to omitting the gameplay quality, or even holding it up as "not that bad". The merit is in not accidentally creating a danger in doing the "objective thing".

That danger is, if people think despite the fact that the game is playing"keyword bingo" the game itself is not actually objectively bad AS A GAME, if people DO buy the game, it will encourage the bad behavior that created the problem.

If we say the game is "a scam but actually pretty good", it may drive people to buy the game, leading the scammer to believe the scam can and should work. They would then continue to scam others in the same fashion, and they would succeed.

So, while sticking to the objective truth without bias has it's place - a VITAL one in most circles - "poisoning the well" against a game linked to a toxic practice thus would only really hurt the ... err... toxic practitioner? IDK I'm losing coherence.

I hope I made a good point.

@EVIL-C I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it's more prevalent and a more widespread problem now. Since it was harder to get a game published, less garbage was put out.

I'm glad that we have sites like Deku Deals and whatnot, to curate our own lists, but at the same time, I feel like many people get scammed into buying games that they think are the right ones, but are actually cheap knock-offs. I really think Nintendo should do more to protect their consumers on their own digital storefronts. Especially since some of the shovelware are blatant rip-offs. But that's another discussion, perhaps.

Tbh the game isn't that bad and Wukong as well as The Journey to the West IP (like the Heavenly Sword and Dragon Saber IP) is a common public domain Chinese fable so it's likely there will be many games made about it from different side of the spectrum. Though the game isn't that bad it's nowhere near as good as Unruly Heroes for Switch which also features Wukong and some of his companions from Journey to the West. With public domain IP like this you will see a lot of duds and a few goods from multiple creators (such as Stephen Chow and Hollywood) around the world.

Looks more playable than Ganso Saiyuki: Super Monkey Daibouken, though.

EDIT:
@Serpenterror Horror Journey to the West when? I'm surprised there hasn't been one given how horror movies for public domain IPs get s#@t out these days.

So who is actually falling for these shovelware rip offs? Is there a large group of gamers who keep getting duped by these cheap rip offs?

@HammerGalladeBro That's the thing, even if it's public domain, a majority of the people who recreate content based on the franchise do it with respect to the IP. The closest you get to a horror theme Journey to the West is Stephen Chow's Chinese Odyssey. The first part of that series does had a few elements of horror theme for it. Also his reboot movies of the series with Conquering the Demons also had bit of horror to it too, the beginning of that movie even had a demonic fish devouring a child alive. It's a mix of comedy, action, horror, and fantasy.

"No it's ok AI is going to help the industry make bigger, better games quicker and cheaper, it's only a good thing and totally worth the cost of all the jobs of the creatives! It's progress!"

Opens the eShop...

"Actually on second thought...."

Not only is it trying to gull people into buying it on the name/cover image, but MAN it looks like crap!

@RetroGames thanks for saying that. I was a bit shocked reading that line lol. I know the intention of the article is to warn players and do a nice thing by comparing them both. But that sentence about 2D gaming is a bit of a bad taste.

Probably because Wukong is a mythological character and cannot be a part of copyright

The fact that it's even hard to find anything on this studio, even its HQ, is enough to notice something is going on

And gives us ideas about where it might be from

@Pillowpants I tried so hard not to come across like that then figured there was no way but sound like that haha

@Olliemar28 Very empathetic of you to warn people about this man. Great article.

Always funny when the seal of quality is invoked on articles like this. The Nintendo seal of quality never meant anything other than indicating which companies jumped through Nintendo's hoops. All Nintendo did was capitalize on Atari's failures by creating consumer confidence with little more than a shiny placebo while giving them the control over cartridge production. The NES had so many terrible full priced titles which were knockoffs or just poor quality, all bearing the seal of specious quality. And there were plenty of unauthorized games which are excellent. I mean, brilliant on their part. Especially because it still comes up in this context in 2025.

@Pillowpants Technically, Nintendo doesn't have any kind of Seal of Quality on their eShop games, and maybe that's the answer to stuff like this. Maybe Nintendo should have a little seal that indicates, "We've tested this title and can affirm that it meets our standards."

Of course, that calls into question why they'd have anything on their shop that doesn't meet their standards, but it might still be better for Nintendo's shop than the big sea of question-marks we have now.

@martynstuff No worries, kind sir, it was merely friendly banter.

Nintendo, early in the Switch's life, you had one of the best curated storefronts in the game. Now, you've devolved to Epic/Steam levels of trashy. Start vetting and get more selective.

@MasterGraveheart THIS

@MasterGraveheart
Also, you have a screaming pony GIF in your image, but your name "Master Graveheart" reminds me of the character of Graveheart who was the leader of the Alliance in War Planets

That’s the state of the eshop. Haven’t we had articles on this?

I still thought Nintendo reviewed games before they were put on the eShop? The blistering amount of new ‘games’ each week and the horrendous quality of so many makes me beg Nintendo to do something about it!

@OwenOtter Well, I've been using the "Graveheart" name on the Internet since the VERY early 2000s, so, I'm gonna take indirect credit for the game character's name. ^^;

Who here buys games blindly without watching any trailers or reviews? Just goes on the shop and clicks buy at anything with a cool name and cover art. I go directly online and watch trailers, reviews. I do not let a bias reviewer change my opinion, it’s just nice to see the game in action. After seeing this game in action, I would not even use free coins towards it onsale someday.

And shovelware is not a new thing. It has existed since pop cap games and bejeweled we’re in every EB games discount bin. There is just more gamers, and more games being made.

Yes I have come across this travesty and wondered if NL might comment on it 😆
Shameless, shameless... and not the only one of its kind, unfortunately.

I feel like a similar article based on the game was posted on this site already. Bringing it up again is basically advertising it. Just saying.

Already saw it in the eshop, watched the trailer, saw the other screenshots. I have no interest in the regular game as it is. I videoed my viewing of it encase it gets taken down. But their approval process is so stupid these things happening is just laziness at this point. Their automated system is useless. Have humans that are aware of products actually do a job as a human.

If the rating system companies per country have to approve things (not mobile but console/movies, etc.) why not humans at Nintendo for eshop approval?

Or are the human staff that incompetent? We players can hear about games we don't play yet still understand things and have the general mentality towards what's what, it's not that hard just because regular people are too fixated on other things. XD

If I can learn anime/music 10 years ago now from scratch, it's called effort and understanding things from any angle because I cared enough to.

The 2D platformer alongside 1 high res image was not fooling anyone. Let alone their other game releases when looking at publisher on the eshop.

I genuinely thought I was seeing an ad for some random mobile game when I pressed play on that video, took me a second to realise that was actually this game...