Since the game is now released to the public I am no longer bound by the NDA I signed. I was tapped briefly to work as the main writer for this game back in 2019, and suffice it to say I quickly found out why I was the seventh person to be hired to fill that position. When I started, the story was a disjointed mess of incongruous ideas ranging from Greek Mythology to superheroes to alien invasions. I -thought- I would be brought on to fix these problems, but I was woefully mistaken.

The lead developer, if he can be called that, was the most purposely obtuse person I have ever worked with. He refused to give any sort of roadmap for where he wanted to take the game or intended features that were coming up, despite me asking for this several times. After all, how am I supposed to write a plot for a game if I have no clue of its intended content? This not being given, I then endeavored to fill in that void with ideas and details of my own, including character writeups, cosmology, and when prompted, sample quest texts and so on. This was all unilaterally thrown back in my face as being 'too complex'. This confused me, as the dev had mentioned multiple times that he wished to have a deep, involved story, on the same level as something like Nier: Automata... in fact, he repeatedly boasted that he had tapped the voice actor for 2B to voice lines in this game. Now granted, I don't think I will ever compare to that but I tried my best. Flatly rejected.

So, I vastly simplified the opening arc and presented it again, complete with suggested quests and objectives for the player to progress. I was informed that these things were not possible. When I asked why, I was told that such features were not planned or assets didn't exist for them. When I asked why again, the question was evaded and I was told to focus more on the 'gameplay loop'.

I revised yet again, this time only utilizing assets that already existed in game, employing them only once or twice in a slightly novel combination towards the culmination of what would have been the first three to six months of game release. This was also rejected, with the dev becoming increasingly irate that I wasn't respecting the 'gameplay loop'. I asked him how I was supposed to tell a story, let alone a meaningful one, with zero change from point A to point B. Any person that was actually engaged in the business of developing a game would at the very least be able to utilize existing assets in a new combination, but even this was refused. Story does not have to lead design, but I wasn't allowed to know the 'secret' of planned features so what exactly else did I have to work with?

It was at this point that I realized that the 'dev' was not actually a developer at all - he does not know how to code, and pays some poor sweatshop bastard in southeast Asia to write segments of spaghetti code to cobble together a wide variety of pirated or flipped assets from other games. Even things that seem unique to LoM are superficial things largely paid for by raking in money from people that just see big boobs and shut down rational thought.

At any rate, when I confronted him about the fact that his 'game' was a stagnant mess, I was removed from the team and banned from the Discord, then later the Community page when I tried to warn people there. This review will probably be flagged too, but its the unequivocal truth. MaidenCommander does not tolerate dissent and has no vision beyond fleecing gullible people of their money.

Do not support this game, call attention to its scummy monetization and lack of content as aggressively as possible.

Oh and, I wasn't paid for my work.

++++++++

EDIT 1+1.5+1.555: Review continues to generate tons of attention but Steam gives me an error every time I try to comment. Added more details here.

I have not taken action against the company because our contract wasn't breached by either party from a strictly legal perspective. My compensation was to be rendered after staying on board for a period of time, which I didn't reach for reasons described in the OP. My primary gripe is not that I wasn't paid but that the guy in charge exhibited terrible character.

Secondly, I am not a sensationalist, I didn't write this looking for adulation. If some game journo wants to hunt me down to talk about the experience they can. I just wanted to shed light on what the lead's mind is like for people thinking about purchasing this product, in a place they are the most likely to see it.

I have nothing to do with the upvotes, if people are happy to have had my perspective, I am glad to have given it.

EDIT 2: Fixed typos.

EDIT 3: Still can't reply. Feel free to message me directly if you want to.

I want to address mainly the story-related details a tiny bit further. A couple of points:

1) I am not a professional writer as per the definition, it is not my main profession. I do consider myself talented however, and have done it for pay on the side before in various contexts. Obviously, I submitted samples to the team and was accepted on that basis.

2) The request to make the story as involved as Nier was decidedly not my idea, it was the instruction given to me along with ostensible freedom to build the world around what I saw in the then even less complete game. Then I was actively prevented from fulfilling that mission statement.

3) Related to #1 above, I took on the job initially unpaid specifically because it was a side gig for me and because I was happy to have a project to work on. I was hoping this could be my foot in the door to move towards starting a career in that field.

4) I found out I was the seventh writer because MaidenCommander specifically mentioned it in my starting interview. At the time, it was framed in the context of 'They didn't know what they were doing, or they were too pushy with their own ideas and unwilling to adapt to changes in the game.' So I went out of my way to try and accommodate the requests made. Right until the end I was pretty jovial, I happily went back to material and reworked it several times.

The issue was that I was being given two main goals that were directly opposed to each other: a) create a deep, involved story worthy of top quality voice actors and b) do not propose the implementation of any sort of change in the game world and keep the player focused on the grind. And no word was given on upcoming changes until they had already been added, meaning it was impossible to plan around them. To give just one example, at one point I was informed that a helicopter was being added to Freedom City (I don't know if it was ever fully implemented). I asked what its purpose was -
"Well it will look cool and maybe we can have it shoot at the player sometimes."
"So would you like me to write a quest to interact with it? I can work this in for an objective. Maybe shoot it down for a daily or something?"
"It can't be interacted with."
"Okay um... so maybe its a rogue element of the remaining Earth forces? Can I have it strafe the player during a timed event?"
"No that isn't implemented. Focus on the gameplay loop."
"... Okay, but if I can't do anything with it why are you telling me about it?"
"You asked for updates."
"Well can you tell me what your plan is for it? I'll use that."
"We don't know yet."

Perhaps there is a more competent and seasoned writer out there who could have reconciled these completely opposite instructions. Steam has decided to remove my archive link.

5) Some are asking how I had access to source code. I didn't. However, when the only communication with the team is through lead, they only are active and deploying changes in SEA timezones, and glaring issues are not hotfixed in situ but delayed weeks or months to the next major update, its not hard to figure out what's going on.