Having written a game called “The Eleusinian Miseries” and another called “Sting”, I can confirm that this is important.
(But for the latter game, I never would have learned of the New Jersey city councilmember with my name who was caught taking a bribe through an FBI sting investigation. So that’s a nice little twist of the knife).
I’ve been incredibly impressed by how many people have posted reviews of a substantial fraction of the games. I’ve got one more review on deck (for Prince Quisborne) but I think that’s all I’ve got in me for this year.
I’m still reviewing and hoping to get to 30 games or so before I have to stop in the middle of next week. But I’ve been wowed by how many enthusiastic new reviewers we have this year. Thanks so much folks! It’s so appreciated. Not just by authors and fellow players, but also by your fellow reviewers. I love reading other reviewers’ thoughts on games I’ve reviewed myself.
Here’s one posted just a day ago! This blogger has played a bunch of games, so I’m not sure it’s not someone who already hangs around here and I just don’t know their name?
I’ve been away for a while–I admit I haven’t even looked at all the reviews for my entries. But thanks to the reviewers who have made the effort. (I am trying for NaNoWriMo for real. It takes a lot of focus, even with an idea that bumped around in my head for a while!)
I was also pleasantly surprised to see what Manon noted: all entries had a minimum of 7 reviews!
So I poked at the numbers and thought, what if we could hit 10 reviews, private or public, for each entry? Here is what is left as of the morning of 11/6.
Needs 1:
Artful Deceit
Creative Cooking
Escape your psychosis
Have Orb, Will Travel
How Prince Quisborne the Feckless Shook His Title
The Library of Knowledge (withdrawn)
Virtue
Needs 2:
The Long Kill
One Knight Stand
Out of Scope
Paintball Wizard
Shanidar, Safe Return
Needs 3:
For Eternity, Again and Again
Hawkstone
Meritocracy
This puts us at 26 reviews (25 not counting the withdrawn entry) to write in 10+ days. Obviously we don’t want to just write a review for reviewing’s sake, and maybe it’ll be hard to find reviews for the emulated games with the prolific reviewers done.
But if you feel this is a reasonable goal, maybe pick one remaining and see how well it works for you & if you have something to say about it.
Personal notes about entry length: Creative Cooking, Escape Your Psychosis, For Eternity and Virtue are all ones I know to be quite short. I’ve enjoyed others I reviewed in this list as well … you can maybe guess them by looking in the spreadsheet, but I don’t want to endorse anything specifically! (Well, I do. But it feels like putting my thumb on the scale.)
Now a bit more than a hundred more and this will become the most reviewed IFComp ever !!!
(I think? 2020 was standing at 1124 total, 800 public, but I couldn’t find the sheets before 2019 [see early answer of this thread]. we already passed the review/game ratio)