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[Chris Z]

While finally getting around to getting my engine working correctly on Xbox and submitting one of my games, I noticed something.  As some of you know, XBLIG has had the reputation for being the home to lower quality games.  In order to combat this, the peer review process is now more extensive requiring multiple reviews and "passes" from what is known as the "evil checklist".  While this is an incredibly good thing on paper, I feel the community is far too small to make it agile (standard approval time can take more than a month) and is starting to degrade into an "old boys club" with respect to review preference.  As for me personally, I am not allowed to review games due to my employment status so that puts me further from preference for a review.  This can also apply to people that just dont have the time to participate in this community.

So... I decided to make this thread for any TIGers that need their game peer reviewed or playtested for Creators Club but are getting radio silence from that community (or would otherwise like to speed up the process).  I'll do my very best update this first post with new games and remove approved ones.  Please feel free to reply with your game name and a link to the game details page on creators.xna.com.  Also, please dont use this thread to voice how much you hate XBLIG, etc.

Games for review:
Jamsouls

Games for playtest:

[PhilipC]

I've just released my game for review:

"Singularity"
http://catalog.xna.com/en-US/GameDetails.aspx?catalogEntryId=bac21ccb-ee4a-45d5-82b0-09325611e016&type=1

Just three games up from "Playing with Humans", actually.

[Rob Lach]

I'll review every game posted in here.

Reviewed thus far:

Playing With Humans
Singularity

Criticism:

Playing With Humans

You could definitely make it easier to understand the objectives and controls. I didn't know what I was doing or which buttons worked for a bit. Maybe you could add a sort of tutorial period at the start of each game where each player gets a hang of things and then has to hit a button to actually start the game.

The art style works but I would add some flare since the subdued palette becomes a bit boring.

Singularity

Pretty simple and easy to play. I like the mothership docking concept, but I didn't know what that ship was until I read the "How To Play" and I destroyed in my first play-throughs. I think most players would rather have the controls explained in-game instead of in a block of text in a the menu.

It'd be cool to be able to move the mothership into a slightly different orbit when you are docked to it.

[Chris Z]

Thanks for the feedback and review Pierog.

[SelfTitled]

Both the links take me to the same page :s which does not have either of the games on

[PhilipC]

Both the links take me to the same page :s which does not have either of the games on

If you're not logged in, you'll be dumped to the first page of released games, rather than the page you actually asked for.

Try logging in, then clicking the link again. You also need to be a premium XNA subscriber (ie. pay a yearly fee), otherwise you won't be able to review games at all.

[chardish]

Brilliant idea. As a new XBLIG developer, I'm glad to see a resource like this exists - especially since this community seems more focused on game quality than on "how many times can you pull and re-insert a MU in a single second before it crashes?"

[SelfTitled]

Both the links take me to the same page :s which does not have either of the games on

If you're not logged in, you'll be dumped to the first page of released games, rather than the page you actually asked for.

Try logging in, then clicking the link again. You also need to be a premium XNA subscriber (ie. pay a yearly fee), otherwise you won't be able to review games at all.

Ah shame I can't even see the games

[PhilipC]

Especially since this community seems more focused on game quality than on "how many times can you pull and re-insert a MU in a single second before it crashes?"

Well, games should be required to meet some minimum requirements - you should be able to deal with no save device selected, and check a device exists before attempting to write, as well as supporting any pad. But if people go out of their way to trigger MU problems when MS no longer even MAKES them anymore, I'm not going to be a happy bunny. 

It's worth noting that some Arcade games don't adhere to these standards properly (pads, save device, title safe area etc.). Surely they should be held to at least the same standards we are?

[chardish]

Well, games should be required to meet some minimum requirements - you should be able to deal with no save device selected, and check a device exists before attempting to write, as well as supporting any pad.

Oh, totally! I think that indies should be held to the same standards as XBLA titles. There's a bit of hypocrisy at work - basically any crash is bad, regardless of the insane circumstances you have to employ to get it to work (like I said, inserting and removing the MU at a jackhammer pace, or something else no normal user would ever do.) However, ridiculously undesirable behavior is considered okay (for example, canceling the device select screen causing it to immediately pop back up again.)

Then again, if I were in charge, "obvious lack of effort" would be a valid fail reason

[r.kachowski]

i'm pretty sure asking people to peer review is against the terms of service.

not that I care, I just wanted to bitch about XBLIG's stupid regulations some more  i think this is a great initiative, and something that's desperately needed to break out from the pedantic reviewers clique. nope, that's wrong 

Playing With Humans
I had some major problems with the safe area on my sdtv. The title "playing with humans" wouldn't fit on the screen, and "Humans" was truncated from "Hu" onwards. Also the countdown text seemed to interfere with the "press start" text upon starting a game. It's not critically important to gameplay however.

[Chris Z]

I thought the terms of service said it wasn't allowed in the XNA forums.  If it's against the TOS Ill take this thread down... Can you point me to where it might imply that?

[Spyn Doctor]

i'm pretty sure asking people to peer review is against the terms of service.

Not at all. You can ask as many people for peer reviews as you like (and as are willing to listen). The only place this is forbidden are the XNA forums themselves. And the reason for that is simply that if it weren't forbidden, the forum would soon degrade to review begging threads only, and lose all its usefulness. But outside of the XNA forums, you can ask as much as you want. Of course you should only ask for reviews, not passes. The latter would certainly be against the TOS (i.e. "conspiring" to pass a game without properly reviewing it).
So no reason to take this thread down...

Doc

[r.kachowski]

ah i see, my bad. 

I'd read it as an overall ban rather than specific to the xna forums.

[Ishi]

A cool idea this, which in the future I'll try my best to put some time into. For now though I'm just here to add this:

Newton vs The Horde

It's made by a friend of mine (Zenorf, actually, who started posting on here recently) for the Old Spice competition. I'm not keen on the whole advertising side of the competition but the game is good physicsy fun. The competition's rules are mental and require passing a peer review before a deadline, when even without a deadline it can be hard enough to get noticed amongst the other games up for review. So if you could help out and give it a try, please do.

[Rob Lach]

Newton vs The Horde


I had issues figuring out exactly what was going on at first. I got the hang of it fairly quickly, but I lost interest fairly quickly as well. I felt like I could experience the whole game in the first few levels and everything past that point would be pointless. I would have suggested making the levels ramp up with its features rather than expose them immediately.

The menus playing the theme are a neat idea. When you select something it plays the whole theme, which I would probably change since it makes the novelty of the menus have a lower impact.

I also like the level of polish.

[Zenorf]

cheers for looking at it.

The objectives start to change in Level 2-2 actually.

[Rob Lach]

cheers for looking at it.

The objectives start to change in Level 2-2 actually.

I noticed that. You might want to go the way farbs did in the original fishy fishy (and many others games probably), where instead of having levels in this order.

Style.Difficulty
1.1
1.2
1.3
2.1
2.2
2.3
etc.

do
1.1
2.1
3.1
1.2
2.2
3.2
etc.

That way your difficulty curve is constantly going up (instead of rise/collapse) and each level feels like a new experience.

[Zenorf]

I see what you mean but it is constantly going up. I'm not saying the difficulty curve is perfect. The game was made in a month after all, but 4-X levels are much much harder than 1-X levels. The 1-X levels are all just tutorials really.

[PhilipC]

Hey Zenorf, we used to work together at Atomic Planet! I played this game without realising it was yours!

I quite liked it, although I didn't seem to get the hang of setting up traps. It just seemed to be easier to hit them with Old Spice directly, most of the time.


Unfortunately, my own game failed due to a MU pulling crash , but I should be re-submitting on Friday. I've added gravity affect to the particles - they look nice being sucked into the black hole.