I am doing a 3 year games design degree at the University of Bolton, UK. I am a first-year student and I have just started my reviewing section of my Games Evaluation module. :3 It is... interesting to say the least.

The games we are playing in class are all experimental games: such as 'Ulitsa Dimitrova', 'EveryDayTheSameDream', 'Star Guard' and 'Spectre'. I have really enjoyed all of these short and sweet games, regardless of a lack of story and graphics in some of them. I have found these games to be quite inspiring,and are driving me to make my own short experimental game whilst in uni. :D I mean, the teachers are encouraging us to make our own games to get our name out there, but seeing and playing these games, as well as reviewing them, is making me want to make my own so much more now. xD

What is the minimum amount of words you think a good games review would be?
Because I have to write between 30-100 words maximum, talking about the gameplay in the experimental games we are playing. At first I thought writing 30 words was crazy, and that I would struggle to write this amount of words to express an objective view of a game. I mean, at first I did struggle to write 30 words about 'Ulitsa Dimitrova' as I felt I needed to talk about the background story of the game, but I could only fit talking about the core mechanics and the gameplay in 30 words. However, during the next lesson our lecturer took us through everyone's reviews; some crude but it made me realise that we could all get our points across in this small word limit.



Before I did this module, I thought a short review would consist of a few hundred words to get the reviewer's point across, but my lecturer believes that as long as a review covers all the objective views of the game, along with some subjective views. Which I can agree with from writing my own short reviews.

Playing these experimental games, and focusing on just writing the core facts about these games is making me understand basic metrics and mechanics more and more~ Which is also making me realise that games really don't need fancy graphics and a good narrative to make a good game. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do love the pretty graphics in games, but it isn't important. Which is also my reason for not wanting a FF7 re-make. Fancy graphics would ruin it; I love playing that game with the block-hands and all!
Anyone else agree?

But yeah, this blog was really random, I really should write them more often... I guess I just wanted to know what people's thoughts on writing tiny reviews are. :)

Thanks for reading!