{"id":10,"date":"2009-12-18T23:23:41","date_gmt":"2009-12-18T22:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/?p=10"},"modified":"2009-12-18T23:23:41","modified_gmt":"2009-12-18T22:23:41","slug":"bad-reviews-improve-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/bad-reviews-improve-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Using (bad) reviews to improve your game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ll port Spring Up!, but it won&#8217;t be an exact copy of the game. I will spend time to fix some problems people have seen. I could not afford many tests when releasing Spring Up! for Mac and PC. I only saw a few people playing the game before the release. Now that I&#8217;m making this game once again, I look back at those reviews carefully.<\/p>\n<p>I could find 7 interesting reviews. Four of these reviews comes with a grade, here are they, in decreasing order:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/harryballs.com\/2009\/09\/02\/spring-up-arcade-game-download\/\">harryballs.com<\/a> : <strong>4 out of 5<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bytten.com\/gamereview.php?id=280\">bytten.com<\/a> : <strong>73%<\/strong> (Bronze)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.outofeight.info\/2008\/04\/spring-up-review.html\">outofeight.info<\/a> : <strong>4 out of 8<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamezebo.com\/games\/spring\/review\">gamezebo.com<\/a> : <strong>1.5 out of 5<\/strong> (ouch, quite harsh review, too)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are also 3 reviews without grade, at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macupdate.com\/info.php\/id\/27096\/spring-up!\">macupdate.com<\/a> (small user review), <a href=\"http:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/news\/Stop-What-You-039-re-Doing-and-Spring-Up-81054.shtml\">softpedia.com<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meryl.net\/2008\/03\/30\/pc-game-review-spring-up\/\">meryl.net<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course I read them all carefully, and some problems where recurrent among reviewers, here is a small list, with the most important problems on the top:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>no way to lose \/ lack of challenge<\/li>\n<li>no reward for difficult shots<\/li>\n<li>ugly\/utilitarian graphics<\/li>\n<li>multiplier too easy to increase<\/li>\n<li>levels are too long, boring near the end of the levels<\/li>\n<li>not enough different power-ups<\/li>\n<li>repetitive music<\/li>\n<li>some bad sound effects<\/li>\n<li>adventure mode not really useful, need story, garden is useless<\/li>\n<li>objects can be stuck and don&#8217;t always fall at the bottom of the screen.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s already a huge list of problems. I won&#8217;t fix all of them, but I&#8217;ll certainly take these reviews into account when doing the XNA port of Spring Up! I may not be able to invest much more money to improve graphics and music, but level design, game design and the physics engine will probably be improved.<\/p>\n<p>There is often a debate whether a bad review is better or worse than no review. I think a bad review is better. Not to sell the game, but to improve it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"addtoany_share_save_container addtoany_content_bottom\"><div class=\"a2a_kit a2a_kit_size_32 addtoany_list a2a_target\" id=\"wpa2a_1\"><a class=\"a2a_button_twitter\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/add_to\/twitter?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frozax.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F12%2Fbad-reviews-improve-game%2F&amp;linkname=Using%20%28bad%29%20reviews%20to%20improve%20your%20game\" title=\"Twitter\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a class=\"a2a_button_facebook\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/add_to\/facebook?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frozax.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F12%2Fbad-reviews-improve-game%2F&amp;linkname=Using%20%28bad%29%20reviews%20to%20improve%20your%20game\" title=\"Facebook\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a class=\"a2a_button_google_plus\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/add_to\/google_plus?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frozax.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F12%2Fbad-reviews-improve-game%2F&amp;linkname=Using%20%28bad%29%20reviews%20to%20improve%20your%20game\" title=\"Google+\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a><a class=\"a2a_button_reddit\" href=\"http:\/\/www.addtoany.com\/add_to\/reddit?linkurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frozax.com%2Fblog%2F2009%2F12%2Fbad-reviews-improve-game%2F&amp;linkname=Using%20%28bad%29%20reviews%20to%20improve%20your%20game\" title=\"Reddit\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\nwpa2a.script_load();\n\/\/--><\/script>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ll port Spring Up!, but it won&#8217;t be an exact copy of the game. I will spend time to fix some problems people have seen. I could not afford many tests when releasing Spring Up! for Mac and PC. I only saw a few people playing the game before the release. Now that I&#8217;m making&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/bad-reviews-improve-game\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Using (bad) reviews to improve your game<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[119,126],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.frozax.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}