The Inaugural IF Review-a-thon

We all followed Manon’s lead and blanked out the cells corresponding to games on the list that we wrote!

Yes, besides giving more money at the $5 tier, you get to choose one of the games that reviewer reviews.

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Ah. Should I reach out to them?

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Yep, send them a DM!

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To clarify - you CAN choose a game for your reviewer at the $5 tier, but nobody’s making you. :wink:

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ah that makes sense ty ^^

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Two-week update! As of this moment, we’re up to:

  • 11 reviewers
  • 52 total reviews
  • and $274 raised! :tada:

New reviewers are always welcome to jump in, and new sponsors can sign up anytime as well—the sponsorship spreadsheet is here.

There are still 12 games (out of the 44 now on the list) that haven’t yet received any Review-a-Thon reviews—check the review spreadsheet if you’d like to see which games those are and give them some love!

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Midpoint Update

I am officially at the halfway point in reviewing (as usual, I have a queue of unpublished reviews currently ‘curing’). I do not say this to beat my chest (much), but because this effort has been more ideosyncratic than my previous Comp-related suits, and I need to document some caveats, observations and apologies.

In general, I have struggled with ‘non-standard’ release models. While I can and do hunt out ways to play all of them, the struggle to get some of these working has inevitably colored my experiences. I have attempted to divorce platform from game, but it doesn’t feel like hiding these struggles is the right answer either.

One conceit games are hard to review without spoilers, ya’ll!

I am a technical paranoid, and have shown this from time to time. I formally apologize to HHRichards. By putting his works behind a mandatory account on an adult game site, he has widened the Rubicon beyond my ability to cross. I do not begrudge or look down on pornographic works as a class, and have reviewed a few, but I am simply unwilling to have that on my PERMANENT RECORD, even under pseudonym. Absent other ways to play, I will be skipping those.

What remains in my to-review queue are works that a) are additional works by authors I have already reviewed this Thon and b) have existing multiple reviews. As a completist it is LIKELY I finish the list, but given some August conflicts possible I will not. Be assured any I miss are not cherry-picked in any way (unless you hide behind a wall I cannot scale), it is the cold, cold algorithm’s fault.

Ok, back to my regularly scheduled game-binge. Thank you for your understanding.

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This is SUCH a pet peeve of mine. I just don’t even attempt to play them anymore if they’re more than a click or two away.

And I’d never register on a non-standard IF site to play anything. I don’t think that’s paranoid at all considering the way these things tend to spam you and follow you around. Community-approved sites only for me.

It is certainly difficult to make a game easily playable online and I sympathize with the struggle-- I had to have lots of help with this on Itch since I know a lot of people won’t download an interpreter for glulx. And why should they?

But this has crystallized one of my review rules for me: like most typical players, I won’t jump through hoops at all. The fact that I’m willing to download it and run it in Spatterlight or Frankendrift is definitely going a lot further than the average player who isn’t really into IF.

Anyway, kudos for trying. It’s a lot more than I’d do.

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Enjoying the two reviews I got, so I nominated two more of my games: Chinese Family Dinner Moment (debut parser game) and Hanna, We’re Going to School (the debut game).

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Excellent, have added them both to the spreadsheet!

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Week 3 Update

Here are the Review-a-thon weekly stats! Currently, we’re at…

  • 75 total reviews (a full one-third of which have been written by @jjmcc! The rest of us need to step up our game :joy:)
  • $332 raised
  • 46 games on the list
  • 9 games on the list that have no Review-a-thon reviews yet—you could be the first!

No new reviewers this week, but anyone can join in at any time! The full list of games is on the review spreadsheet, and you can also sign up to sponsor or be sponsored on the sponsorship spreadsheet in order to raise money for the GoFundMe for Pinkunz. Thanks to all who have participated for the great reviews so far—keep them coming!

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Hiiiii. I looked at the spreadsheet and I’m a bit confused about how I would sign up for the $5 tier and be DM’d a game to review for a sponsor. I’m afraid to write my name in the wrong place and mess up the process.

(Sorry if I’m really late or if I missed it. Have not been following the forum as closely as I’d like to. Been very preoccupied.)

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I think the way it works is that reviewers who want to be sponsored put their names in the sponsorship spreadsheet, and then potential sponsors can sign up to contribute based on that; if anyone decides to go in at the $5 level, they just DM the reviewer with their pick.

I’m not sure how many people are just checking the spreadsheet at this point, so probably a good thing to do would be to just start a new reviews thread and just flag that you’re accepting sponsors.

Welcome to the thon!

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Will do~ :grin:

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Rounding up some more banners I’ve made for meowmeow’s review threads. :3

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Tabitha mentioned that upon review of the Review-a-thon, it’s raised $500 in total so far! That’s an awesome milestone, so I made a little celebratory banner for it. :3

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Made decorative review thread banners for @jjmcc (with plenty of doggies) and @SomeOne2! :3

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Week 4 Update

We’re one month in now (halfway point!), and the Review-a-thon is still going strong! We’re up to…

  • A whopping 97 reviews
  • 13 reviewers
  • 49 games on the list (see post below!)
  • Only 3 6 games with no Review-a-thon reviews
  • $500 raised! :tada: :tada: :tada:
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Secondary update! I’ve just noticed that three new games have been added to the Review-a-thon IFDB poll, so I’ll get those added to the spreadsheet. Now that we’re over halfway through the event, though, I’m going to lock the poll so that the list doesn’t change any more.

For next time, I’m planning to lock in the list at the start of the event in order to simplify things for everyone. With that in mind, I’ve created a poll for the 2025 Review-a-thon—feel free to start adding games now! (If the three recently-added games don’t end up getting many reviews due to coming in late, their authors are free to submit them for 2025.)

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A hearty thank you @sophia , added to my thread! Deep in laptop withdrawal, this was a welcome and needed despair reverser for me. I retroactively withdraw my The Room gif! :star_struck:

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