Ok, so the post by logicGamesFan prompted me to actually check out the descriptions that DROD games have on greenlight with an uhh... open mind and see if there might be anything wrong with them that might turn off potential new players from the game. I'm gonna cling to every minor detail, so this is gonna be a long post...
I don't know if those descriptions will be used for the actual releases on steam, but even if they're not, I hope my criticism will help write better ones.
Quick links to greenlight pages for reference:
GatEB /
TSS /
RPG
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Let's start with GatEB.
>
"
Deadly Rooms of Death"
(DROD) is a turn-based puzzle dungeon crawl.
>
>
It is a 2D top-down puzzle adventure that focuses on hardcore gameplay mechanics, best described succinctly as "
Zelda chess."
Yay marketing buzzwords! Not that there's anything wrond with them, but...
>
dungeon crawl
What? I'm not so sure about this because I can't find a concrete definition of what a "
Dungeon Crawler"
is, but wikipedia classifies it as a sub-genre of Role-Playing Games and that's also the impression I get from searching for
Dungeon Crawler tag on steam. I see games with health bars, mana/energy/whatever bars; various items found in RPGs, like weapons, armor, potions; inventory for managing said items; occasional game with randomly generated levels. Those aren't things present in DROD. Well, aside from weapons and potions, but those aren't items you can carry with yourself (at least not without scripting), they're puzzle elements. If anything, DROD RPG is more of a Dungeon Crawler than regular DROD.
I guess you can argue that Dungeon Crawler just means that you spend a lot of time in dungeons? But then why not also generalize RPGs to "
games, where you play a role of a specific character in a story"
? Thing is, DROD is just not the kind of game I imagine when I hear the words "
Dungeon Crawler"
.
>
It is a 2D top-down puzzle adventure that focuses on hardcore gameplay mechanics, best described succinctly as "
Zelda chess."
Did you just shove the word "
hardcore"
before "
gameplay mechanics"
? What does that even mean? I'm geniunely confused. That whole sentence reads like it's trying as hard as possible grab the reader's attention, but not in a good way. Why are you trying to describe DROD succinctly? That's not a thing you should do with a complex game like this. If you want the reader's attention - well... they've already clicked on the game and they're reading the description, so you've got that far, why not write a short paragraph propertly describing the gameplay instead of two sentences shoving generic meaningless vague safe filler
(ok this joke got old fast) words that can be used to describe tons of other games. I barely got any information out of that. Turn-based. Puzzle. 2D. Top-down. Adventure. Sure, plenty of games are that. What makes yours
special?
Hint: just the combination of these terms doesn't.
>
"
Zelda chess."
So you're saying this is actually a chess game with pieces being characters from Zelda series? I'm legitimately confused as to what you're expecting readers to get out of that phrase. It's hilariously ambigious.
>
This game is not about the graphics.
No. Please. No. NO.
Do NOT. As a
developer you simply CANNOT say that about your game. You're getting into defensive position before even telling the reader
anything (meaningful) about your game. That is really unprofessional. This is not something you do when you talk about your game, it sounds like you're not confident in your product. It sounds desperate, like you got offended by someone telling you that the graphics are bad and now you're telling them "
well our game is not about the GRAPHICS, it's about THE
GAMEPLAY."
, which is
maaaaybe fine if you're just talking about your game to someone on a forum or in comments, but you DON'T put that into the game's description. And if the developer himself admits that the graphics aren't very good RIGHT IN THE DESCRIPTION, why should the reader trust the developer when he talks about other more relevant parts of the game?
Besides, I think DROD looks pretty good, especially so with the graphical upgrade that TSS received. I get that you're trying to avoid negative comments like "
game looks bad, downvote
"
, but those people aren't the audience you should be catering to anyway, so why bother? Especially why bother at the expense of possibly scaring away the players who might actually be interested in playing the game. "
This game is not about the graphics"
is something that PLAYERS should be saying to convince others to check out the game (if they really, really have to resort to that), not the developer himself!
>
It's about clever puzzle design and unique play mechanics... etc, etc...
Good so far... Except what's so unique about the game exactly?
>
Gameplay is turn-based...
>
...and by making moves as fast or as slow as you like...
Yes, I'm pretty sure that IS what turn-based means. I don't know why did you feel the need to emphasize that you can "
make moves as fast or as slow as you like"
.
>
...you can experience the action...
It's turn based. As a DROD player, I get what you mean, but to an outsider this might sound really confusing.
>
This game features a completely unique puzzle-adventure play style.
Again, what's so unique about it?
>
This game is the latest title in the ongoing DROD franchise... etc...
Now that's great, while this paragraph doesn't tell much about the gameplay, it tells plenty of relevant things about the game itself. Also...
>
The level layout
is has multiple hub areas to explore.
Typo.
>
...making for a delightful blend of fun and challenge.
>
* Active player community
>
* Over 25,000 usermade rooms available for download! ... etc ...
That's... an awkward transition. Did you forget to put a header like "
Key features"
before the list?
Also, the "
over 25,000"
rooms is a GREAT point, because it, firstly, proves that the game
does indeed have an active player community, as is stated in the first point, and secondly, shows that the game is at least good enough that it managed to generate sooo much usermade content. Seriously, 25000 is an impressive number for a rather obscure game. If I didn't know about DROD and saw that, I'd be sure to consider checking the game out. If this point is absent from the release's description, I'll be very, very sad.
>
The story: ... etc...
Don't see anything wrong here. I just wish that gameplay got as much attention as the story.
_______________________________________________
Moving onto TSS
>
dungeon crawl
>
"
Zelda Chess."
Pls no.
>
hardcore turn-based strategy
That sounds hilarious. You can't just shove the word "
hardcore"
anywhere you want and expect it to make sense. Hardcore game/gameplay? Sure! Hardcore strategy? wat
But honestly, just remove the second sentence and the random "
hardcore"
from the third one, and this paragraph provides a pretty decent introduction to what DROD is. At least much better than anything in GatEB description.
>
Guide Beethro Budkin, professional dungeon pest exterminator... etc...
No problems here. Even the word "
hardcore"
was used properly! Hooray!
>
Experience with previous titles in the DROD series is not necessary to get into and enjoy everything in DROD:TSS.
That's
ss... a lie, sorry. Just because the first few levels are kinda accessible to new players, doesn't mean the rest of the game is. I'm also pretty sure this is something that DROD community has generally agreed upon, so I hope I don't need to explain myself here.
>
Main game features: ... etc...
Cool! Wonder why GatEB didn't have this.
Some points seem kinda not very relevant to players new to the series, but if you advertise the game as for experienced players, it's fine.
>
Other goodies you get with DROD: ... etc...
Aww! Here's the sad tiny list from the GatEB description! It looks so small next to the previous one. It actually makes the "
over 25,000 rooms"
seem kinda insignificant. Dunno what to do about that. Maybe move it to the previous list. I mean, that seems like a huge selling point, not just "
other goodies"
...
>
greenlighted
Greenlit.
>
Same for everyone who has a registered copy any content released on Steam as DLC.
I'm not
sure but I
think you might've
missed a few words there?
_______________________________________________
Does anyone here even care about DROD RPG? Well, I do!
>
DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale is a 2D RPG-lite resource management puzzle game.
Umm... did you mean RPG-
like?
>
This game is not about the graphics.
I'm not gonna repeat myself here, even if the graphics in RPG actually
are worse than in regular DROD.
>
What makes DROD RPG different from the typical role-playing experience... etc...
Cool! This is also a pretty decent description of the gameplay. Although maybe you can tell the reader more about how the lack of randomness makes this a puzzle game. Like how you have to decide whether you want to fight a monster and get the reward for killing it now or maybe come back later when you can take less damage... yeaaa, I'm not very good at explaining this myself.
_______________________________________________
Should I write something in conclusion? After writing this wall of text I don't think I can think straight, but anyway.
So my biggest problem with the descriptions is the lack of gameplay explanation. While I feel like DROD gameplay might be pretty hard to showcase in a trailer, it can be described reasonably well. Case in point:
http://drod.wikia.com/wiki/Deadly_Rooms_of_Death
Under "
What is DROD?"
section is an excellent explanation of the gameplay. It's not very short, of course, but it can at least give you ideas what to talk about when describing the gameplay instead of throwing around meaningless marketing buzzwords such as "
unique."
My second biggest problem is "
This game is not about the graphics."
I said enough about that already.
I'm done. I think. Good luck with the steam release!
[Last edited by DezzTech at 12-09-2015 02:35 PM]
