Over the next few weeks GameMaker Blog will be experimenting with the inclusion of GameMaker game reviews on the site. Instead of reviewing well-established and already popular games we will instead focus on games that are currently in the development stages and may not be well known. The first of these reviews, of Doodle Balls, is already online.
In a move directly related to this I would also like to introduce a new member of the GameMaker Blog team, Josh Coffey, who will primarily be writing game reviews. Josh is a member of CoffeeStained Games and is currently working on a non-linear assassin game dubbed “Free 2 Kill”.
The current members of the GameMaker Blog team are tuntis, gamez93, Dan Eggers, Josh Coffey and myself. Full details can be found on the About page, where you can also find information about contributing to this GameMaker news blog.
I would appreciate your feedback on the inclusion of more game-related material on this site.
Hi,
All the sites have reviews for the top games. What about the new omers, challangers, different games?
Thankx,
Anke
Great idea! Keep up the good work!
@Josh, what I really like about Game Maker Games is how they prominently promote an awesome game which I’ve never heard about.
So an important thing is to promote high quality complete games which are not yet popular, at least in the Game Maker world.
Also make sure you appear objective, don’t review games because the author asks you or your friends with the author.
You are as reliable as your reputation is and a reputation is far easier to loose then to gain.
Don’t limit yourself to just your preferred genre but try to vary which kind of games you review.
As this is a Game Maker site it’s also interesting to note interesting methods people use. For instance if a user has a simple but effective menu or an original way to present the controls, that might be noteworthy.
Further I would personally prefer if you do not directly redirect people to the download but redirect them to the GMC topic / game website / promotional page of the author for the game. That way the author gets some extra visitors to his site and also gains the ability to tempt users into playing more games by him. That way the author can also inform users of useful information such as filesize, GM version (6 doesn’t work with Vista), newer versions, does it change the resolution, known issues, redirect to mirrors, …
Anyway, a very good initialive and I’m looking forward to more reviews. I’ve always found this blog spend more time making fun at people then at actually promoting the wonderful things Game Maker can do.
@Simon Donkers:
Thanks for your feedback. I only really reviewed Doodle Balls as a complete game because, well, it really has the polish of one. Do you have any suggestions on how I can make the reviews better?
@Elmernite:
Thanks! Glad to know my hard work is appreciated 🙂
I like the game reviews! Keep them coming!
-Elmernite
Beta games and wips tend to be (or should be) intended for testers looking through them and giving valuable feedback. The review seems to pomote this as a game interesting to play, rather then to test.
As a designer, I would not want such promotion for a WIP. I just want a few dedcated testers who don’t mind some rough edges. Now users will play the game looking for a omplete game and get disappointed with things like missing difficulty levels or lack of a fully implemented level editor.
Either choose to promote games as fun to play and talk about complete games or rewrite the story to make it a simple heads up about what’s coming rather then a full list of what is and isn’t implemented yet.
I like the concept though of game reviews. I feel it’s a good move to have this blog less about making fun at people who make mistakes and more about promoting interesting things that are happening.
I like it too. A mixture of game reviews and news is the reason I enjoy reading indie blogs such as TIGSource and IndieGames so much, I’ve always thought it’s an underused concept in the Game Maker world. I hope to see this idea continue.