It’s been a busy week here at Blit Blat HQ, with the release of not one, but two new games, one of which made the front page - thanks, @TomFulp!

As a solo developer it’s always an exciting time releasing a game, not least of all because you start to get real feedback from real players who have chosen to play your game, instead of the family & friends you’ve cajoled into being beta testers for you.

Game reviews, and critiques in general, can be a fairly daunting thing to read. No one likes being told something that they worked hard on sucks. “You can’t please all the people all of time” the old adage goes, and that’s certainly the case with this satisfied customer.

Fortunately, for my own self-esteem at least, you can please some people some of the time.

Now while these reviews are at polar opposites in terms of favourability, the do have one thing in common; neither of them are particularly helpful. Now don’t misunderstand - I love getting reviews like this and could happily read reviews like @MrHippoPL’s all day, and while they would give a much appreciated ego boost they wouldn’t improve my games or me as developer.

So what makes a helpful review? This one from @larrynachos on Pixel Dash is a great example:

Starts on a positive ✔

Politely explains the negatives ✔

Offers examples of how it could be improved ✔

This review and a couple of others, such as the one by @JarranX, immediately made my head rush with ideas, and development is already underway on Pixel Dash 2.

I also received excellent reviews from @AnAutisticHegehog and @BillyBobtheFarmer on A Spaceship Called Stability about how the lack of I-Frame after taking damage makes the game brutally hard. Now, for many, when someone complains a game is too hard the immediate reaction is tell to them to git gud. However, I listened to the feedback and quickly implemented a small cooldown after taking damage, and honestly the game is much better for it. It also lead to players coming back, replaying the game and leaving an improved score. This meant more plays for me and a more engaging experience for them. That's what we in the biz call a Win-Win.

So my takeaway is this - Game Reviewers, please be specific in your feedback. It's fine to tell us our games suck, but tell us why it sucked. And Game Developers, listen to and engage with your reviewers. They often offer up insights and ideas that are worthy of your time.