SILVIERA'S PROFILE

I am amateur game developer, and even more amateur reviewer, currently in and out of college.

I am currently developing a game called Eternity: The Black Star along with Solitayre, which is nearing its first release.

I have extremely high standards, so please don't be offended if you believe that I have reviewed your game unfairly. My focus is on improving the body of a work primarily by pointing out what I think are its flaws, but feel free to ignore me if I am wrong (and I will be).

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Fable of Heroes I: Legendary Edition Review

post=207547
Thanks for playing and reviewing my game Silviera.


No problem, I had a lot of fun with it. Probably one of the most polished games I've seen on this site, even if I did have a few problems with it sticking too hard to a few old school conventions.

To Arms! Review

I personally like when a setting makes up its own curse words. This allows for strong language without making the characters sound like foul mouthed teenagers. It I told you to "Pike off, berk!" you would know what I meant.


Just to note, this is not actually made up slang. It was used by the working class in 19th century England. I'm assuming you saw this in Planescape since it's a commonly used phrase (most of the other slang in that game is also based off of this, minus the terms they created to tie in with the game's lore).

Anyway that aside I also like when a setting makes up its own lingo, the effect is even stronger if it extends beyond curse words (and using obscure slang from history works just as well). Tabletop games make use of this quite frequently to great effect.

Darksoul: Revival Review

comment=31769
Perhaps a new set of standards should be applied to the Game Gale contestants, there has been quite the slew of negative reviews for many of them which I don't think is fair given the short amount of time they were in production.


Completely disagree here. Game Gale was a contest and nobody is expecting masterpieces, but that doesn't mean they should be elevated above other much more playable games just because they were made for a contest. This site has a much broader user base than the active forum goers who tend to be the ones who participate and follow this kind of thing. It's unfair for the site's average user to have to try and apply some 'contest standards' when they're trying to search for something to play.

Starseed: Blood Machine Review

Sorry, honest and careless mistake! I have edited my comment above to reflect that. But one thing that you'll probably agree with me is that in the review here they had a completely different gameplay experience than you, DE and me had. Agreed?


No worries about the mistake. My experience was similar to this review (combat had the same flow of attack/heal but instead of having difficulty I breezed through everything), but yes this goes without saying really, people have different standards and tastes. No one is going to experience a game the exact same way which is why it's important for the developer to get feedback from as many people as possible in order to improve their work. This includes positive and negative feedback as long as they are detailed (this applies to both types) and to me both this and FG's review are well thought out and carefully constructed reviews written by people with vastly different tastes and standards.

Starseed: Blood Machine Review

From your balance part of the review, you give the impression that you mind numbingly just enter to do the melee attack and sound as if you found battles difficult, so there's an apparent contradiction in what you just stated here.

I did not write a review. Also if you read Sol's review the reason he mashed enter is because it was the only available command to an Alpha (besides the heal). This is not a lack of skill on his part, it is that there was nothing else for him to do.

Starseed: Blood Machine Review

Chaos has a good start there. Aside from that certain stats need to be defined (still no idea what Control is) either through a description in the intro (make it optional so that players can skip it if they've played before) and/or including a game manual. This is pretty standard stuff when you're using non standard statistic names and isn't a bad idea to include in any game if you expect to have players that are not familiar with RPGs.

DE: Ignoring the fact that you've already played this game and obviously know those things to be true (really who looks at Control and immediately thinks speed? When you start the game you don't even know how many stats there are! You don't know if there's a speed stat at all!) the fact is that confusion on the part of 'any' player is a bad thing even if you happen to somehow know exactly what the creator means from a vague description.

As for Megidolaon, in SMT can you can press a button to see a detailed description of every skill from the status menu or during combat. Esoteric terms need explicit descriptions.

Starseed: Blood Machine Review

Which brings up the final point I will make: I don't think any of the reviewers for this game (Fallen-Griever included) really got how to play it to advance successfully.


Both Sol and Karsu finished the game, so I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. (I did too but I didn't feel like reviewing it). There were other issues present besides difficulty (and personally I found this game mind numbingly easy which didn't help keep things interesting).

I didn't figure to be as famous as I have become here. Unlike what you expect of many of the game players here, just because I had no knowledge of the gibberish, doesn't mean I would be able to figure it out on my own.


"Omega Configuration grants the best battery management and Control out of all Celestial Configurations. Omegas can use their innate pyrokinetic abilities on a vehicular scale from a Jackhammer."

Please tell me how when you read this statement you knew exactly what the class description meant despite the fact that these terms are not introduced during the intro. If you're saying that you figured out what the stats meant after you played for a while that's another matter but the problem remains that someone playing for the first time has become stuck in a class they don't understand.

Unlike Fallen-Griever who was willing to listen to reason and reconsider what he had written, these two are examples of what not to do when writing a review, IMHO. That's why I restrict myself to writing reviews to those I feel merit it.


Reviews do not exist for the sole benefit of the developer.

Starseed: Blood Machine Review

You stamp on creators for submitting their best work in earnest good faith, and then tear their efforts apart to teach them a lesson. All that is encouraged by the way these reviews are written is that I should give up.

Since so much of this game is focused on the combat I cannot give this project in its current form a very good score. But that does not mean I think it is unsalvageable, not by any means. With a little more work on combat, such as making use of the customization options, this project could be a lot more fun one day, and I would very much like to see it developed further.

You seem to block out some important parts when you read a review. Really the part that saddens me the most is you don't see negative reviews as an opportunity to improve even when the flaws are described in great detail. It's possible that a negative review would be completely useless but this is certainly not one of them, there are some very obvious changes you could make to vastly improve the game based on his feedback.

Starseed: Blood Machine Review

But why would anyone play the game if it was as bad as Solitayre said. Oh. Wait.


Probably since he was doing you a favor and it takes roughly 20 minutes to play through the game (probably a lot less if you mash through text, which I imagine he did on subsequent playthroughs). It's not inconceivable that he liked the game (I like to reference Twilight that not only do there exist people that will like anything, but there are large numbers of them), just for the love of god don't use the fact that some people actually like the things you make as an excuse to ignore criticism and stop improving your work. Your attitude regarding your past works frankly horrifies me and I'd hate to see this become the plateau of your abilities.

Contrary to popular belief I will read and consider just about anyone's opinion. Except yours. After that "review", it's laughable you expect me to believe anything you say has any motivation other than spite or any purpose other than douchebaggery. Well, there is one thing...


This too, is a terrible attitude. No matter how you feel about Karsuman he's taken the time to describe flaws in your game in detail. It's absolutely fine to not agree with them but to close your eyes and pretend they don't exist just because of who's saying them is just depressing.

Take what you can use, throw away the rest. That's all i can say here.

Starseed: Blood Machine Review

Because this = "the protagonist in their ordinary world"?

I was not addressing that part, just the comparison to Starseed's intro. That brief moment of character introduction makes all the difference. Anyway even Sol stated that you didn't have to adhere to some specific structure, but I agree that paragraph probably should have been describing problems with character development in the game rather than describing a specific method which probably wouldn't work for this type of story.

Edit:

I'd argue that the player's initial confusiuon mirrors the confusion the main character is feeling and, as such, it should be quite easy to empathise with them - if not sympathise. Then again, I'm a shoddy writer, so... :)

The main issue is the player is never given any reason to care about Claudia to begin with so her confusion becomes annoying for the player (at least to me). Doesn't really help that her personality is inconsistent and she's pretty unlikeable.

Also for the record your own writing is quite competent, you were able to make me care about your cast within the first few minutes. Probably shouldn't discuss that too much here though :P.
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