For those of you that frequent Steam, you might have notice something a little different today.

Sure, it gets tweaked every now and then with minor and almost daily updates, but sometimes we get treats like this.

 

Let me get this out first though…

C’MON! I can CLEARLY see I have more than 93 reviews! :<

It is even written underneath it…

 

But well, even if this change seems a little weird to some, it is actually VERY good addition to the Steam platform and I’m here to tell you why.

The change can be seen highlighted on the image above, with the newly displayed icons next to every game review, and the new ways to search through categories.

 

Cool, I can now see how many people that reviewed a game, got said game with a game key… so what’s the big deal?

Well, as I displayed on my little rant a while ago, the key activations are there but do not count towards the game % review rate.

 

Meaning that many developers who actually used this as a way to improve their overall game score have to now stick with the reviews given by the platform purchasers.

Believe it or not there are a couple hundreds of games now that have a greater positive review rate (nearly perfect in some cases) coming from key redeemers. Keys that sure, could’ve come from early backers from a Kickstarter, a bundle campaign, review copies, or like in my case, from purchases from a personal website or third party store. But that doesn’t stop developers from actually “auto-liking” their content by giving away free keys, or giving away “positive review copies”. (Which no joke, I have been actually asked for.)

 

So essentially, before purchasing a game on Steam you can now see:

• The like / dislike ratio of a game, according to the reviews of the platform buyers.
• A verbal score based on said ratio, going from Overwhelmingly Negative (20%- ish on 500+ reviews) to Overwhelmingly Positive. (95%+ on 500+ reviews)
• A separate ratio with verbal score based on the last 30 days reviews.
• The ability to filter reviews by most recent, most helpful, most funny and an overall summary of the reviews contents.
• Not to mention the ability to ACTUALLY READ the reviews. (A given of course.)

 

Itself these little additions will help filter the bad games and content from the good stuff, hopefully allowing other games to be bumped and get the attention they deserve. And of course, it will empower the customer to know what they are getting into, before actually purchasing the game they want. (Although, refunding is still an option there.)

 

My guess is that this review system will keep changing possibly including additional information, such as how much someone paid for a game, or what machine setup they have. Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, these changes are for the best. I do know another thing though…

 

That I’m thankful to you, for reading my blog. ;3

It has been a while, hasn’t it?

Some troubling things happened, but it should all go uphill from here. So time to get dirty with work again.~

 

I know it was said KNIGHTS posts would be over unless something relevant happened with the game. But guess what? It happened:

 

HOLY COW! Those are the only words I could come up with in this situation.

Over a hundred people liked the game enough to review it, and on top of that… just look at that like/dislike ratio…

 

I understand there are games with hundreds of thousands of positive reviews. But you should also know that there can easily also be thousands of games with less than a dozen positive reviews for each of those “successful games”. So truly, it is something to be grateful for.

Next milestone:

• Overwhelmingly Positive: 500+ reviews with a 95%+ positive score. (I know we can.)

 

Thank you.

 

One can only get so far alone. So I thank you, I mean it.

The game is selling very well even without any sort of discount or big updates, and that is a huge incentive to keep working.

 

A big shout-out to everyone that also sent e-mails just to wish the best for the game and future projects.

 

And as I said it to those that cleared the game:

So, one final time.

Thank you for giving me this chance.

Some time ago I went with some friends to a well-known restaurant for the first time, Cracker Barrel. It was a very pleasant experience, the combination of the dishes and the overall aesthetics of the place do really make a click, definitely recommended.

However, what interested me the most, and well, to my friends too, were these little games that were spread on the tables. You got all you need to play chess, checkers, all sorts of classics. And I saw for the first time a game they called PEG.

 

Basically you have these cylindrical pieces that cover a hole filled grid, and the objective is to leave only one of them by “jumping” on top of adjacent  pieces and landing on the immediate next free spot and eliminating them from the board.

We literally spent our entire meal trying to beat the game instead of eating, it was interesting. I ended buying one of them as a souvenir and I play it from time to time.

 

After finishing KNIGHTS I wondered what to do next (now I have several ideas to work on), and as you might be guessing, I ended up wondering if it was possible to make puzzles out of PEG.

 

I first attempted a KNIGHTS-esque puzzle game where you had to put colored pieces on colored spots without removing pieces when “jumping”, the puzzles were far to easy.

Then I tried the same concept while removing them, and they ended up being very hard to enjoy.

And then I wondered “what if I had traditional PEG, with pieces with one of two colors, and the only way to remove pieces was to jump on the same color?” A very specific thing to think, but it was actually the answer I was looking for. And so I present to you the next (almost functionally finished) project:

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(Placeholder title screen)

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(This is concept art, not a level)

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(Concept level pack screen)

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I’m aware that viewing the still images doesn’t look as appealing or make a great deal of sense but trust me here, I wanted to try something. Namely see if I could make the experience I wanted to get with KNIGHTS, a wordless one. With the help of animations, camera movements and level design I wish to make something that can be universally understandable.

But it would spoil the fun (and make this post unnecesarily long) if I were to tell everything about the project here and now, so let’s leave it until here for now. Information will be available soon enough.

Anyway, as always, thank you very much for reading my blog~ 😉