HASVERS'S PROFILE

Also, another quick remark : a gameover screen is a very acceptable kind of feedback, but I DO believe that if the player actually ragequits, then you've done something wrong. I doubt that getting enraged is the reason why we play games. Challenge is okay and I don't mind retrying a battle ten times if necessary, but getting frustrated because the cause of my defeat was totally out of my control is not, is never a good thing. So, having a grand vision for your design is good, but at some point I think that the feelings (rather than the opinions) of the players should be taken into account.

Oh actually that was meant as an earnest question, not an accusation - and not necessarily about your own games, I don't know them. I just can't see where you're coming from. Averages don't mean much since most games have 3 reviews at most and a fluctuation of 1 star can happen any time, but nevertheless, with 40 games rated 4.5/5 ( = 90% !) I'm not convinced that we're that different from the other rating systems. We must be somewhere between IMDb where 8/10 is already a very high level and Famitsu where it's physically impossible to have below 38/40.

Well the visuals are highly sufficient already, so any of these improvements will be great but they shouldn't prevent you from finishing this project in a reasonable amount of time !

As for the ending, I declined to join Jacob's team and saw the Muse in the streets (I had seen the Muse on that night already, I went outside and met the hooded gun-toting guy). I'll try the other path(s ?) when the complete version comes out.

Thanks to you for this great visual novel, I've had a real good time with it.

First time taking part in one of these threads (I'm going downhill), nevertheless I like writing reviews on this site so I thought I might comment.

author=Craze
I score by amount of fun and the ease of accessing fun

games are fun

hopefully

Now this seems sensible. The only reasonable way to rate in my opinion is : if I've had a perfectly good time, I'm willing to give it a 5/5, and I don't care if the game is one hour long or the graphics are awful or it's just a comedy game or there's almost no gameplay or whatever. It must be good at what it tried to do since I'm not bored, and that's the whole point, isn't it ?

If you need to talk about professional games, people love Starcraft and Xenogears for entirely different reasons, the only thing that counts is whether a given game achieves what the devs were striving for, and you know that when you enjoy the game, that's all. There's no such thing as a "universal" or "official" scale, not even according to "professional" game reviewers.

Anyway there's no perfect system and the current one isn't bad at all ; if it causes some people to give a 0/5 or 5/5 just to change the average score, then the same thing will happen with a word system or anything else, and it happens all the time on "serious" sites and in magazines. Any kind of reviewing gives rise to ridiculous results and fads and whatever (have you ever looked at the top movies and games on IMDb or Metacritic ?). And the concept of "good" or "average" is just as relative and hazy as that of 2/5 : "average" with respect to what ? It will always be different due to the expectations and experiences of each gamer.

And frankly, it isn't even that important for the visitor. I have a rather standard procedure, which I think is shared by a lot of people, for determining which game I want to try on a given site. Of course, I go for featured games or those which I've heard about first. For other games,

- first, I do look at the score. I have a threshold : 80% and upward retains my interest instantly, and if there are too few games in this class, when I'm finished browsing them I extend to 60-80%, so the actual mean on a given site is not that important, the quantity of games at the top is what is meaningful.

- then, the titles and scores of the individual reviews. These often convey the additional information that is lacking in a simple score : a context, to know relative to what the game has been rated (for instance, if it's a simple minigame, a 50h epic, usw.)

- then, if I'm still interested, I read one review or a few (depending on whether the scores are very scattered or not)

And I'm quite sure that this, combined to simple word of mouth for the rare exceptions, is highly sufficient. Everything else averages out in the end, so there's no point in trying to change it.

Honestly the comparison to ABL came quite naturally : great writing, pretty original setting, and an intriguing story. Even stylistically, there are some similarities - I mean, they may turn out quite different, but both belong to some genres that are quite rare among RM games (and among other good things, they're on the more literate end of the spectrum).

Now of course it's only an intro, but as intros go, I'm sincerely impressed. If you manage to keep it as original and plot-twisty as it could be from this short glimpse, I see no reason why it shouldn't become a truly great game. I would have written a full review if this demo had been a bit longer, because I feel that some projects around here receive much less attention than they deserve, and yours is clearly one of those. I hope you'll be able to work in the shadows and come up with a longer release some day.

By the way, I for one have no problem with long dialogues, on the contrary, and it would be a shame to cut them too much ! (although if you plan on being really verbose later on, it could be a good idea to give players an option for skipping text or at least displaying it instantly, as much as I did appreciate your use of the text speed e.g. for Alastair's lines)