ErikH2000
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The lady at Home of the Underdogs didn't wait for us to tell her about the release. Nope, she grabbed up the game and wrote us a beautiful review just a week after release.

the review

-Erik

[Edited by ErikH2000 at Local Time:04-10-2005 at 03:10 AM]

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Malarame
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Wow, this is awesome. Hopefully a review like this will bring in more customers. Erik, you should see if you could somehow ask people who're buying the game where they heard about it. That way, you could judge the impact of reviews like this. Maybe Plimus would add a text box to the order form. Matt, you should add a section on DROD.net with links to reviews and such.

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bovis
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I posted about JtRH on the underdogs forum, a few people have read the post, hope it brings in more customers.

BigRedCat
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Underdogs is where I first heard of DROD:AE a year ago, so it's definitely a possibility.

eytanz
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Cool!

I'm not sure JtRH belongs in the hold of belated fame, though. Given that it's under two weeks old, I just don't think this review was very belated.

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Mattcrampy
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Hurrah!

I've never thought that a box saying 'where did you hear about this' was particularly effective, because either I'd hear about things from a variety of places and eventually decide to check them out, or the place where I heard of them does not fit in one of their categories.

I've been thinking of getting some review quotes on the site for a while now, but links to reviews would be good. So review links, guys! Good or bad - I think having the chutzpah to post bad reviews may help in demonstrating what sorts of people will like the game, and having good reviews where people get it will offset those bad reviews.

Ooh, I've got much to do... nice.

Matt

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b0rsuk
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Heh, everyone seems to choose Deep Spaces screenshot for reviews. When I did short review for grylogiczne.pl, it used it too.

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Watcher
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Congratulations, Erik!

I actually noticed yesterday that the newest forum member was called "Underdogs", but I didn't think much about it. That would've been her, then.

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Mattcrampy
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b0rsuk wrote:
Heh, everyone seems to choose Deep Spaces screenshot for reviews. When I did short review for grylogiczne.pl, it used it too.

Mr. b0rsuk, although I don't know Polish, I do know you've done both DRODiacs and badgers worldwide proud. And we're like second on their alltime rankings, which is good.

Matt

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b0rsuk
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Mattcrampy wrote:

b0rsuk wrote:
Heh, everyone seems to choose Deep Spaces screenshot for reviews. When I did short review for grylogiczne.pl, it used it too.

Mr. b0rsuk, although I don't know Polish, I do know you've done both DRODiacs and badgers worldwide proud. And we're like second on their alltime rankings, which is good.

Matt

So-called alltime ranking is based on data from few days and 2 people, or more specifically - a man and a badger. I expect JTRH DROD rating to drop A LOT, seeing how low the DROD:AE rating is. Seems like people
1) Don't like to think
2) Go for shiny graphics. All top-rated games have shiny graphics. And they're very, very simple compared to DROD.
They're the "suitable for everyone" games. Or games often taken as examples that women actually play games.

I have no idea why Rocks&Diamonds is so high. Yes, there are thousands of levels for it, and I played it, but you rarely see something unexpected, just the same concepts over and over.

By the way: I see no JTRH on http://happypenguin.org, which is one of most popular Linux gaming rally point. And there were some updates since JTRH was released. Is that intentional ? Does it have something to do with Erik and the team waiting for all bugs to be nailed before making more fuss in may ?

EDIT: Probably yes, I see multiple trick's replies on DROD:AE subpage.

[Edited by b0rsuk at Local Time:04-10-2005 at 12:00 PM]

[Edited by b0rsuk at Local Time:04-10-2005 at 01:25 PM]

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Stefan
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b0rsuk wrote:
By the way: I see JTRH on http://happypenguin.org, which is one of most popular Linux gaming rally point.

About this review... Who said that DROD didn't play in the console? I can play it fine without starting X, as long as I've got framebuffer enabled (hmm... perhaps that doesn't count as being 'console-ready'?).

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b0rsuk
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Yuck ! I meant "I see NO Jtrh review"

I edited my post.

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Mattcrampy
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Yeah, we're not pushing JtRH outside of people who already know about it until we have the CDs ready and we make some other key announcements. Which is why the Underdogs review is nice - we didn't say anything, and Underdogs came and visited all on their own, instead of being obliged to do it.

Matt

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wmarkham
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Mattcrampy wrote:
I think having the chutzpah to post bad reviews may help in demonstrating what sorts of people will like the game, and having good reviews where people get it will offset those bad reviews.

Huh? Bad reviews of DROD? Is that even possible?

wmarkham
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Yeah, we're not pushing JtRH outside of people who already know about it until we have the CDs ready and we make some other key announcements. Which is why the Underdogs review is nice - we didn't say anything, and Underdogs came and visited all on their own, instead of being obliged to do it.

Matt

Hmm. You know, the CaravelNet high scores will almost certainly be completely dominated by DROD.net folks after a couple of weeks. Some of the enjoyment that I have gotten out of the game has been from getting to see the "third place" (and sometimes "first place"!) show up. But I seem to be roughly the tenth person through the game, so I get it alot. I have a sneaking suspicion that the general populace will rarely, if ever, see that feature at work. That's a bad thing, isn't it? Maybe the database should get reset or something at some point. I expect that we could just upload our demos again later, after other folks have played.

Maurog
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Aww, just extend the top scores database to 100. This way people will get encouraging messages like '99th place!', years after JtRH first came out.

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Mattcrampy
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Well, see, it's one of those features that both reward playing under-appreciated holds and give you a reason to go back and play a room again for a highscore. We'll have more complete highscores on the site, of course.

Re: bad reviews, definitely possible. People can, for example, find the game too hard, get frustrated at some of the trial-and-error puzzles and puzzles where you know what you need to do but the doing of it is tedious (e.g. slashfests).

Don't be fooled - not everyone will like DROD. We're not aiming for mass appeal, because not everyone enjoys being humiliated by a game designer's massive brain. But one of our big strengths is that we've managed to provide new sources of appeal (like our slightly batty storyline, and I maintain the story was the absolute best thing about Starcraft, and the great world-building we've got going here at DROD.net) while not losing what made DROD great in the first place.

That said, we have no idea just how many people will like DROD, and it's an intriguing idea to find out. Just don't be worried that some people will put it down after a bit.

Matt

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