Reviewer guides

[Karima]

If you have ever written a reviewer guide, could you please post a link to the guide.

I want to write such a guide, but I would like to take a look at some other reviewer guides before writing one myself.

Thanks!

[RinkuHero]

What is a reviewer guide?

[Karima]

A reviewer's guide is a document you send to people who are going to review your product. It usually includes a basic tutorial and some cheat codes. The goal is to enable the reviewer to play different parts of the game without actually having to play to spend hours and hours clicking his way through hundreds of levels.

There are some reviewer guides on the net, but the ones I found were for applications, not games.

[RinkuHero]

Ah, makes sense. I've reviewed a few games for http://www.indiegames.com/blog/ and have never gotten a review guide -- so I'm not sure how common they are.

[OremLK]

I don't think there's much point in sending a reviewer guide with a game.

[ChrisP]

Let the game itself be the "reviewer guide". If it's not putting its best foot forward in the early part of the game, your conversion rate is going to plummet anyway. You might as well get feedback based on what the players actually experience.

I can see a reviewer guide being useful for games that are sold only in the retail space; they can get away with longer games where "the good bits" are buried a bit more deeply, because by the time anyone plays it they've already bought it. Therefore players have the motivation to dig a bit deeper to find "the good bits". This is a luxury that try-and-buy games cannot afford.

[jpoag]

Perhaps instead you should consider a sell sheet, as suggested by this book (http://www.indiegameguide.com/).

The easiest example is the back of a box at a retail store. Another example is the Big Fish Games page for the games, like this one (http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/2885/haunted-hotel/index.html), although that format has been around for years.

Be sure to include bullet points. Most people read bullet points before paragraph descriptions.


In any event, you want the reviewer to be excited to play your game. Also, like Chris pointed out, most try-before you buy games sell themselves in the first hour. (Unfortunately, some also trail off after you buy the game).

[cyrus_zuo]

I formerly was a big proponent of Reviewer's guides...and they still serve some purpose, but as someone who has both reviewed games and now works to get games reviewed, I have to say that your time is better spent getting reviewers and getting to know reviewers than it is writing a guide.

However, if you think about the goal of a reviewer's guide, I think you should definitely do something in that regard. The goal is to make the review better! There are lots of ways to do that, from including cheat codes to help the reviewer quickly move through the game, to providing some basic information that is story worthy about either the game or the game maker. You can include that in an email when you send the game out for review and accomplish what a guide would do.

BTW, a guide I did is in the .zip file here: http://www.reflexive-inc.com/media%20kits/Mosaic_art_screenshots.zip
Incase it is useful or interesting...it is short...but the download is big as it is a small media pack in addition to the reviewer's guide.

[lennard]

A good sell sheet is something that you should make up when getting ready for release and a lot of the text from my sell sheets ends up in reviews... So, killing 2 birds with one stone - make a good sell sheet and include that with the media pack you send a reviewer along with a note to let you know if there is anything else that they need.

[Artinum]

I seldom see anything like this at Bytten, though for some longer games we may get unlock codes for later parts. As a rule, my reviews is based on how the game feels to me as a player - so yes, let the game be your review guide. After all, telling the reviewer what to look for is a bit cheeky as you aren't doing this for the people who are going to buy your game!