Since I’m an avid user of the site backloggd.com as a neat and interesting way to catalogue thoughts about the video games I’ve played, and believe a few of the members here have profiles on there too, I thought it’d be neat to create a catch-all thread for people to drop their newest written reviews on that site here - or just review any games they’ve recently played separately from any similar websites or frameworks like that (aside from the excellent framework of our own aregames.art itself!! B)
My biggest ask with this thread is that you don’t just blindly drop your link and hit the brink, but give a couple of comments on your more visceral post-writing feelings about a game when you do. Here, I’ll start:
THE FEELIN’S: Kentucky Route Zero is one of my favourite stories ever told, which led to me being very worried about writing this review and maybe not being able to capture the extent of its influence on me. But in the end, everything is always just “good enough”, so I decided to just give it my best shot and edit or re-write it if I ever get a better, more structured idea.
Post your favourite reviews you’ve done, or create one if there’s a game that’s simply grinding your gears!
EDIT: Just to ensure that’s known: Your reviews do not need to have a numeric rating! I’ve heard great cases being made for a complete removal of that aspect from game reviews. I just like to do it for the fun of it!
lighting a beacon in the night sky shaped like slugcat to summon @vehemently
something i think about for this site is a point where i could build something to encourage editorial writing or reviews here specifically. not that people shouldn’t be using tools like backloggd - but it would be really neat i think, (scale of the site permitting) to have somewhere members talk about each others projects or more typical community things. its definitely something i miss from previous ages of forums, but admittedly it is kind of a ‘volunteer’ act to contribute like that.
this is a fun thread idea! i somehow haven’t played Kentucky Route Zero still, but Quinn your review was very well written and makes me want to play it! i agree with your sentiment about the difficulties of capturing a game’s influence in a review, and it’s what has kept me from writing any of my own, but i wanna try anyway
Oh hey! I made another GAME REVIEW. Finally, after all that time!
For a long time, I’ve wanted to assemble some thoughts on Night in the Woods, but I always felt like I’d have to either veer into extremely verbose territory, or begin spoiling the damn thing if I did.
I think I hit a happy medium in this review, for my tastes - I like concise writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, it’s interesting to me to say as much as possible in as little space as possible.
I also like tipping my hand completely at the subjectivity of my thoughts and my review.
So yeah, pretty happy with how this one turned out. I need to write these more frequently again, though, I had to shake off a little rust with it.
I only recently started posting Steam reviews, mainly for indie games, since I only recently learned that reviews factor into visibility. So, I’m trying to do my small part to help them out. Steam reviews are not really the place for lengthy analysis, and I don’t like hyperbole, so I try to keep it brief and stick to the key points. Most of the time I don’t bother writing negative reviews for indie games that I didn’t like. It feels like I’m picking on them, so I just move on.
It seems like the longer and more detailed ones that I write (a few paragraphs) are for good or decent games with significant flaws or just niche appeal. Writing an informative but brief qualified recommendation takes a bit more effort. These are interesting because they offer an opportunity for both targeted praise and constructive criticism, or for identifying contentious design points.
I don’t have anything specific to share, though. None of these are masterworks, I’m just cataloguing my experiences.
I do wish I had started doing this sooner, though. There are some games that I’d like to review, but it’s been too long since I’ve played them to write clearly about them. If it’s a short game, I can just replay it, but if it took me 80 hours to finish the first time, refreshing myself on it is more difficult.