Review Blog

A place to discuss things that aren't specific to any one creator or game.
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Ignosco
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Re: Review Blog

#31 Post by Ignosco »

http://visualnovelreviews.blogspot.com/ :D. I'll start reposting the existing reviews soon, sorting out categories (using the same ones as the Ren'Ai Archives), improving the aesthetics etc.

Anyone is welcome to contribute :D.
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DaFool
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Re: Review Blog

#32 Post by DaFool »

Is it possible to post also a link to the games homepage being reviewed, as well as screenshot? (I barely experimented with bloggers, so I'm not sure if you need wordpress, etc for more graphic-intensive blogs)

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Re: Review Blog

#33 Post by Ignosco »

DaFool wrote:Is it possible to post also a link to the games homepage being reviewed, as well as screenshot? (I barely experimented with bloggers, so I'm not sure if you need wordpress, etc for more graphic-intensive blogs)
Yep, both of those things are possible - I'll definitely sort the links out tomorrow for the entries tomorrow.

Off topic, the terms of service for the Picasa Web Albums (Google lmage service linked with this blog) look really... harsh :?. http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_US/web/tos.html
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mikey
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Re: Review Blog

#34 Post by mikey »

The blog looks really nice.

I'll want to do a review of Kykuit if that's okay - I'm not sure when I'll get around to do it, but if there is only one review per game, don't snatch it away from me please, I love that game so much and I'd like to do an article. :oops:

Ignosco
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Re: Review Blog

#35 Post by Ignosco »

mikey wrote:I'll want to do a review of Kykuit if that's okay - I'm not sure when I'll get around to do it, but if there is only one review per game, don't snatch it away from me please, I love that game so much and I'd like to do an article. :oops:
From what Mr. E and I have talked about, we weren't planning on limiting the reviews to one per game - although we were only planning on doubling up (or tripling etc) once all of the games have been once. It's definitely not a hard and fast rule though - if there's a game that anyone feels strongly about and wants to review, please do so, even if it's already been done :D. In particular, some of the more polarising games probably need multiple reviews.

I'm looking forward to reading your Kykuit article :D.
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absinthe
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Re: Review Blog

#36 Post by absinthe »

Looks sharp!!! You might want to assign each review a tag of the name of the game (assuming there will be multiple reviews per game, that is), even if you're not going to list all of 'em on the main page. Then you can link from the main page to a page listing all the reviews by game name for easy look-up of a particular title (instead of having to wade through all the archives).

The other thing I'd suggest is to hide the bulk of the full reviews behind a "more" link (I'm sorry, I can't remember how to do it in blogger, but I think it's pretty easy?) to declutter the main page a bit and make it easier to scroll through without accidentally reading a spoiler.
Ignosco wrote:Off topic, the terms of service for the Picasa Web Albums (Google lmage service linked with this blog) look really... harsh :?. http://picasa.google.com/intl/en_US/web/tos.html
Hmm, I glanced over it but didn't see anything too draconian... the big ones I usually watch for are weird rights grabs and extremely anti-adult content rules. Google's usually pretty good about both of those?
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Re: Review Blog

#37 Post by PyTom »

You might want to link to the game from the various synopsis posts. This way, someone who becomes interested in a game can just go download it, rather than having to guess where it's from.

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Ignosco
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Re: Review Blog

#38 Post by Ignosco »

absinthe and PyTom - thanks for the ideas :D, I'll try and add all of those to the blog today.

Edit: Pygmalion Synopsis and Review posted, Links added from the Synopsis to the Ren'Ai Archives homepage.

Just had a look at the expandable post summaries, to hide the content of the review. From what I can understand with my zero programming skills, it seems like it has to be programmed into the page template, and then added to each review. I'm surprised it wasn't directly available :?.
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Re: Review Blog

#39 Post by Ignosco »

Mr. E has added the expandable post summaries to the blog :). I've just posted the synopsis/review for Elven Relations - the next review will be of The Nettestadt Troll, which should be up by tomorrow at the latest. Hopefully the reviews are doing justice to the games...

Edit: The Nettestadt Troll synopsis/review has been posted
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Re: Review Blog

#40 Post by Anvil Factory »

I'm glad to see a review blog on RenPy games since it'll give me an idea of which games suit my tastes. I admit though that I have an ulterior motive for posting to the thread: I'm not fond of the "read more" hack. < rant > I've tried it before and it just doesn't work very well. It's pretty annoying to click on read more and to realize it just happened to be there at the end of the entry when there's no more text to read. If I may be bold, I'd suggest moving the blog to a service like wordpress since you can just import the entries. < / rant > Aside from that, I appreciate the work you guys are putting into writing reviews. :D

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Re: Review Blog

#41 Post by Ignosco »

Thanks :)

The blog has already been moved once, so I'm not sure if we'll end up shifting it again. It should be possible to delete the 'read more' from the entries where no text is 'hidden' (I think the current template puts that by default at the end of each review if it hasn't been used in the main body of text). I've got no idea how to fix it - hopefully Mr. E will be able to do it.
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Ignosco
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Re: Review Blog

#42 Post by Ignosco »

Wings Synopsis and Review posted - probably the next review will be of K*A*O*R*I :).
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Re: Review Blog

#43 Post by Ignosco »

K*A*O*R*I synopsis/review posted.
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Mr. E
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Re: Review Blog

#44 Post by Mr. E »

Shame and pressure have temporarily exorcised my lazyness long enough for me to also write a game review and synopsis, this time for the game "Winter Shards". I just posted it at the blog.

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Re: Review Blog

#45 Post by mikey »

Thanks for KAORI!

And as soon as I have my own things sorted out, I'll have that Kykuit review.

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