Someone is charging $100 on Steam for an almost entirely AI-generated visual novel

Kryonull is a visual novel on Steam about a manned mission to Europa making first contact with something under the ice — and it's listed at $100 US, or £90 in the UK. Developer NovelkaGames openly states in the AI-Generated Content Disclosure section that all images and voices in the game, as well as on the store page, were AI-generated. The only thing apparently written by a human is the script.

The premise is genuinely interesting — hard sci-fi, first contact, snap decisions with major consequences. But the execution is pure AI slop, and the price makes it worse. SteamDB shows the ruble price still converts to around $53 US, so even accounting for regional pricing, this thing is expensive by any measure. There's no version of this that makes sense as a purchase.

AI-generated games on Steam aren't new, and neither is wasted potential. What sets Kryonull apart is the audacity of that price tag attached to a product with zero original visual or audio craft. Valve's open platform policy means stuff like this keeps flowing through, and Kryonull is just the latest and priciest example.

If you actually want a short, experimental sci-fi experience, two much better alternatives exist. South Scrimshaw Part One — a Planet Earth-style nature documentary about whales on an alien planet, with hand-drawn visuals and sharp writing, made by a solo dev working as a dishwasher — is completely free. Water Womb World, a surreal horror game about a religious fanatic searching for God at the bottom of the ocean, costs just two dollars. MandaloreGaming's YouTube review is what put it on the map.