While in general my preference is to give indie developers and the games they put out into the eShop the benefit of the doubt, trying to think within the context of the intended audience whenever possible, there’s only so far that grace extends. The thing is, I’ve played plenty of awful games on these two systems, but for the most part you can feel a sense of earnest effort put behind them. Whether the issues were technical, a matter of bad design, or gameplay that just didn’t end up being fun, you can sometimes still feel the love behind the idea and appreciate that things simply didn’t pan out in the end.

Separate from that category there are also games that are bad in a way that instead feels outright cynical. So bereft of care, quality control, or even a base concept that would have any hope of providing meaningful fun to the consumer, these are the poster children of the word shovelware. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cubic Riders is a title I’d put into that category. It isn’t merely a bad game, it’s hard to even feel for a moment that the people behind it were even trying.

While you could choose to pick on the game’s pretty basic look, honestly that’s small potatoes in the overall scheme of things. At a glance, and based on the name, you could assume this is a casual racing game of some kind. The thing is, that really isn’t true, at least in the sense that as long as you don’t fall off the winding track, you can come in dead last and you’ll still be able to progress to the next level. Even if you manage to finish better than that there’s ultimately really no added reward of note since you can come in last over and over, continue to advance, and still make enough in-game currency to quickly buy all of the very minor cosmetics from the shop. There’s a reason it doesn’t worry about what place you come in though, and that’s because the controls don’t allow you to turn fast enough to dodge between the walls on the track without hitting them. I’m sure they’d work if you used the touchscreen, but then why wouldn’t you play it on your phone for free, instead paying to play it on a dedicated gaming system where it’s obvious that zero effort was put into making it worthwhile. This has clearly earned the latest Shovelware Nonsense Award and wouldn’t even be worth your time if it were free.