Playing RPG games and writing free walkthroughs for them had been my passion.So I created this website to showcase all casual RPG games playable in PC(mainly indie RPGs)- www.overcloud9.com It was created last year december and I keep improving player's experience in using the site.Every week, newer RPG games are added to the growing list of hand picked games.There is also a beta testers section devoted exclusively for the indie developers.I had started the site originally to post game walkthroughs for players.But then,thought of adding the games as well.Now with my own game project coming up,I'm planning to earn a living from it. Please leave your feedback/suggestion/advice or anything as to how it is or can I improve or enhance it for better user experience or not.As everything is being handled by me alone,I'm left to my own imagination as to how useful,professional looking(if at all) or easy to navigate it is.Your feedbacks will give me valuable insight on making this website better.
I like your site! I think you could make some real substantial improvements via comments you get here. Here's some of mine: 1) Your header is a jpg http://www.overcloud9.com/wp-content/themes/atahualpa344/images/3rd-header.jpg and the text suffers from artifacts that make your logo look blurry and unprofessional. You should consider moving it to png or increase your jpg size. pngout is a great tool to make larger pings smaller without any fidelity loss 2) You DO realize that the "G" in RPG is game right? So you are saying "Role Playing Game Games" all over your site when you say RPG Games. 3) consider limiting the number of different colors you use for text. 4) consider reducing the number of different fonts you use. You can get the same effect with different text sizes. 5) consider removing the big W - it makes the links look cluttered. just assume if the user wants to find the walkthrough they are going to click the link Other than that I really like your site! You have a good sense of proportion with regards to the imagery, and you seem to understand that folks like images to click on
Hey thanks a lot,that was very detailed.actually I'm using wordpress to host the site,that's why I couldn't implement some better things which would have made things better like image spriting,etc.I have to stick to the limitations of the theme I'm using. 1) I'll change the header image type,thanks for the heads up. 2)actually I wanted to include the word 'game' or else some player might quit the site seeing only 'RPG' as not many are familiar with the term.Putting 'Role Playing game' would be too large for the header size.So any suggestion as to what would be better would be much appreciated. 3)I'm using only calibri for all my fonts.can you tell me which ones look different so that I can change them? 4)I highlighted the important words using green and the links are orange.So you say I should remove the green at least? 5) where? Thanks again,your feedback was much helpful.
I like the bright colors. Don't particularly care for the header (it's unmemorable). Find it odd that you repeat the term "RPG" everywhere. Just mention it once in your header and that's it. For example, this: * Action RPG games * Adventure RPG games * Highly Recommended RPG games * Most Popular RPG games * Older RPG games * Online RPG Games * Pen and Paper RPG games * Puzzle RPG games * Visual RPG games This is overkill. Take out RPG in each one of these and it would be much better imo. I also don't like how some words are emphasized in a bright, lime green color. It's a pain on the eyes especially when it's on a white background color. The orange links are fine. Not as harsh. And I found your site is slow when surfing from page to page. It's just a difference of several more seconds but people have short attention spans these days and that may be a turn off to some of your visitors.
I changed them,thanks for the heads up.But I don't know what to do about the speed as it is hosted on wordpress and speed enhancing plugins were actually slowing it down because I already have 9 important plugins loaded and can't afford to remove anyone as they are playing important roles.Any suugesstion to speed up the site it welcome (I think it's mainly because of the huge number of images I use,and unfortunately implementing image spriting for ready made themes is difficult for non-webmasters like me).Thanks again for all your feedbacks.
The banner just doesn't convey the idea of a rpg game site to me... I did a quick mock of what I would see as a more fitting banner....
@Daydream-You....you.....did it for me??!!!!!I...I...can't thank you enough.It is very creative and innovative.love it! I created the existing banner with some photoshop tutorial on the internet as I did not have enough funds to hire a professional.But I had to put up something original,so I designed it.In fact except for the game images,everything else you see in the website is my amateur dabbling at Photoshop. now I'm tensed to ask...can I use it.....for free?No problem if you don't allow me because I'm just overwhelmed by the fact that you spent your valuable time doing a mock up for my banner.A BIIIIIIIG thanks!
I don't like the banner much but then again, I haven't seen a single RPG based site using same beveled font type (esp. golden ones) against some oddly coloured background. The background is jerky when scrolling fast (maybe on Opera only but this is the first background that has done this) and the orange links are pretty much unreadable on white background on my monitor thanks to gamma calibration (2.2, windows default..). Actually, the blue text isn't any better but is somewhat readable (though why not just make it black considering everything on the site looks blue.. blue links with blue background images at top, blue clouds background.. blue world ). Reminds me more of Mario than RPG games tbh, but then again, I am not a pro website developer. Other than that, I love the site concept and have bookmarked it for regular reading. Good job with content. EDIT: DayDream's logo.. yup, that's awesome. Though it will just make the site more blue (really, black text, darker links, that will do)..
@DayDream- you are AWESOME,you rock...btw how did you know my birthday??(I'm really surprised because it WAS this month).and I went to your website yesterday and fainted seeing your logo work....you are amazing!I even downloaded your logo pdf file and was showing it my sister.I hope when I'm financially capable enough,I will be able to request you to do the title screen of my upcoming game.Please don't refuse,I can't think of anyone else doing my title screen...I like your style,simple yet gorgeous. @desmasic-the reason I didn't keep the text black was because it was posing more strain to the eye against the background.and the background is not white actually,it is a very light shade of sky blue (my blue world XD XD ).I wonder why it is not showing as blue.In fact I use opera too,but I didn't face the problem with jerky scrolling .Can you please try it in internet explorer and see whether it is happening there also?I'm going to address this issue seriously.
My only real critique would be the navigation. It could stand to be larger (font-size) and it would be nice if you could condense some of the options into sub pages. It's always best to present the user with as few choices as possible in the navigation, that way you keep it clear, quick, and easy to understand. If you condensed some of the pages down, the nav could be bigger and more embellished, and I bet you'd lower your bounce rate on the homepage in response to giving your viewers a more succinct directory.
You mean the pages which lists the games by genre?Actually I thought most people don't navigate to the next pages because they go the games shown on the top.I think I should change it then. For fonts,I normally use 14px to make things fit into place.What should be the best size so that everyone can read easily? As you mentioned bounce rate,I would be eager to know something from those who have already visited the site- 1) I tweaked the pages again to make the page loading time faster.Please let me know whether the pages are loading normally or not(this is to help me decide whether the load time causes the bounces or not). 2)Why would you leave the site on your first visit?What makes you feel to click the back button or close your browser (that will help me understand why most people bounce). 3) what could be the ideal bounce rate for a site like this?Currently mine ranges from 28 to 32 % on day to day basis according to google analytics.I'm sure many of the members here have game sites and I'd be really obliged if some of them can share as to how did they lower bounce rate and what is their current bounce rate.It will give me profound insights on managing my site efficiently as I'm the only one who has to handle everything.
No, I meant the main site navigation. You could take what you have now and condense it to something like: Home | Games | Blog | Forum | About | Contact | You've got 4 links pertaining to RPGs in the current main nav: What is an RPG? Free RPG Games Play RPGs Online Upcoming RPG games You could condense those into a single item with a dropdown for example. In response to your list: 1) I don't see any immediately apparent issues with load times. Use Firebug's Net panel and/or the YSlow plugin for Firefox to do some analysis of your speed. 2) For me, it's normally from confusion from not being able to quickly understand and process my options on the page. A lot of sites suffer from "link bloat". You have to assume (and this is probably unfortunately correct) that most people don't have the mental processing power God gave a flea, so you have to (both visually and structurally) give them quick and easy access to the important main bits. A good mantra is "Don't make me think" 3) An ideal bounce rate would be 0% But only 30% is really pretty good. My personal site and portfolio is somewhere around 60% A lower bounce rate is indicative of having a) content people want to explore and b) a clear-cut way for them to do it.
Thanks for thr details,it helps me understand better. I mainly kept it the way you see because I heard that mobiles or iphones have some problems browsing sites with drop down lists.Is it the truth?I don't know because I haven't accessed any website from my mobile.
Yes, that can be the case, but you can make the same argument on browsers with JavaScript disabled or that have really small hover areas. My point is less about the technical usability of the menu and more about the information architecture and helping your viewers more easily filter through site content.
Thanks,your help is much appreciated.Though my current wordpress theme has a problem of displaying ugly white spaces in place of the empty menubar tabs(i.e. when I remove extra menus from the main panel),I'll see what I can about it.
Here's a quick comment from someone who is really clueless when it comes to webdesign. The top menu needs to be condensed. A lot. There are way too many "buttons" in it right now, makes it look rather messy. Also, you're being a bit inconsistent with how you write RPG. Sometimes it's RPG Games (which, as mentioned earlier, sounds a bit weird) and sometimes it's RPGs. Why not stick to RPGs everywhere and both save yourself some space and also get rid of the Games Games problem? Cheers, Staffan Melin Melin Music
Thanks Melin. I'm still trying to figure out a way where by condensing the top menu would not reveal the ugly empty panel.it looks like a white space in place of the menu bars with a border which is weird. I've changed much of it,I still missed out on some I guess.Got to find them out and correct. Edit:I changed the top navigation.Had to change the genre categories also as some players were complaining. I hope it looks better now and doesn't increase the bounce rate .