On bad reviews
It's easy to get spoiled with good reviews, and even easier to quote just those. But what about bad reviews?
Well, you're going to find them, so we'd be stupid to pretend they don't exist. And one of our first was Ben Briggs' Snowferno review today on we play iPhone.
Right off the bat, it's pretty impossible to recover when the reviewer expected from our app title a different game than what we wrote, but his review still had some good points. We don't think that what essentially boils down to "not terribly compelling" merits a D rating, but maybe a year ago -- when there weren't 100,000 other apps to choose from -- we might have scored better with our freshman effort.
Our goal with Snowferno was always, in fact, to tackle the App Store with a simple concept and learn a ton getting it built. We're extra pleased that most people love playing it. And if not? Well, we're just getting going and maybe you'll like our next one better. :)
Unity3D is progressing, as is our knowledge of optimizing within that game engine... we'll see if we can't also smooth out some more of those terrain bugs. But thanks to Ben Briggs for giving us his time for a review!
And last -- about the demerit for "no save state"... he must mean returning mid-level i.e. if interrupted by a call. But it makes it sound like we make you replay Snowferno from the beginning each time, which isn't true. There is a world map, and any level you solve is unlocked for good. Even if you have to reinstall Snowferno, our leaderboard remembers and unlocks your game the next time you boot up.
Not to split hairs, but I just wanted to point that out.
Oct 22, 2009
Hello, there’s a few points I’d like to address:
i. Sometimes you do have an expectation of a game by it’s title, my expectation was a snowballing game. I definitely didn’t mean to rate the game according to how my expectations went, but I was reviewing what I saw.
ii. Reviews are mostly based on opinion, and for me I didn’t find the game fun. Indeed, it reflects the description of our D grade: ‘…If the title is average or feels overly derivative then it may recieve this grade – indeed, many D graded games need major work in one or more areas. We recognise that there’s potential in the game, but it’s usually not enough for us to keep playing through…’.
iii. Save state has, and always will be from our perspective, like a freeze game function when you press home. If Snowferno didn’t have a save *system* it would have been very much to the game’s detriment and would have been mentioned in the review. Perhaps it’s not clear from the description of that merit on the site that that is what save state is. Something I will need to address.
Even though my taste didn’t quite align with your output, definitely let me know if you’ve got something new that I can check out.
Oct 22, 2009
Hey – thanks for the response to, uh … my response! :)
Great clarifications and thanks for the open dialogue.