Are my games really that bad. . .

[RoseGuardian 42]

Please tell me are my games I post really that bad? No one ever tries them or gives me feedback on them. I don't know what to do and I didn't know where else to post this. I feel like a failure, because ever time I post a game here no one bothers to play or give me any feed back on it and yes I am very hurt and upset. It's like why should I even bother posting my games here.  . .

[Erics 12]

Are you talking about Dragon Reign? It was posted on Christmas, let the holidays be over with. Then maybe others will try it. 

[RoseGuardian 42]

I could but even then people will not give me feedback on it because they never did with Shadow Sphere.

[Erics 12]

I read over Shadow Sphere's main story you had posted. Don't get me wrong, you have a great concept, but it seems the explanation of the story itself could use a little "humph" in it. It all sounds really cliche.

 

Example, this line here "However when she finds out that her own fiancée plans to unleash the shadow elemental in the world, she learns that she must stop him once and for all."

 

Make it sound more dramatic (I'm about to give a bad example probably, but hopefully you'll understand what I mean. Writing isn't my forte, but this is just an example of trying to get someone hooked) 

"Discovering her fiancee's malevolent scheme of using the shadow elemental, Megan is now faced with a dolorous dilemma of bringing death upon the love of her life." 

[Besus 6]

Instead of getting all emo about it, step back and ask why yourself they may not have.

 

Looking at your announcement post, it's all text. Some graphics would certainly help, or even bold/underline titles for that matter. No matter what the content inside may contain, people often do judge a book by its cover. If you just threw together a quick announcement post like that, I would personally expect that sort of effort to reflect in the game as well.

 

As Erics suggested, a lot of people have likely been busy with other things over the holiday's as well. Even if they are active on these forums in that time, that doesn't mean they have had a chance to download and/or play the game.

 

From your announcement post:

 

Not met to be rude or trying to be but please respect my story and DO NOT judge it before you play the game. I DO NOT care if its cliché.

 

Others however may. Cliché story combined with a very vanilla announcement post are a good recipe to have your game go overlooked.

 

Not trying to come across as mean, but those are the reasons I personally overlooked your game.

[Ocedic 249]

Well, it would help if you linked some of your topics here. People not trying your game doesn't necessarily mean your games are bad, but rather your topics need improving in order to get people to try them. Without seeing your topics to give specific feedback on your topics, here are some general tips:

 

1) Grammar/Spelling: This is very important because poor grammar and spelling shows a lack of professionalism or polish. If your forum topic or game screenshots have spelling errors in them, people will assume the rest of your game is rife with such errors. And everyone can agree that typos and grammatical mistakes can be very distracting when they pop up occasionally in games, let alone when they are rampant.

 

2) Genericness: If your topic looks very generic or unappealing, then people may be hard pressed to try your game. After all, time is a limited resource for everyone and playing games can be very time consuming. I'm sure you personally try games that look appealing to you rather than every game available. Though sometimes this is simply because the game itself is generic, sometimes it's just because the developer didn't do a good job on the topic. Is your synopsis flat, boring or cliche? Do you convey what makes your game unique and fun? Spend some time going over the language in your topic.

 

3) Brevity: Is your topic too long-winded? Don't try to tell us EVERYTHING about your game. Be specific and to the point, but keeps things interesting. Think of the best aspects of your game that make it stand out, and sell it on those key features.

 

4) Visuals: Your topic should look visually appealing. This doesn't mean you need a ton of fancy graphics, but at the very least your formatting should look good. For example, all of your headers should be bolded and perhaps in larger font. If you have the resources or ability, graphics for headers definitely don't hurt. Although, you shouldn't go overboard and overwhelm the viewer with too much flash that it distracts from the content you are trying to convey (remember brevity?)

 

Pick your screen shots CAREFULLY. A bad screenshot is worse than no screenshot to be honest, although not having any screenshots will not get you any interested players. If you're having trouble getting good screenshots, it's time to examine your game and consider sprucing up the mapping, cleaning up the dialogue or adding more visual flair. Avoid having areas that are too wide open, which is a common mistake for amateurs. It's better to have small, cramped maps than wide open ones. It may also mean you need to spend more time filling your maps with interesting doodads and details. In screen shots with dialogue (and you should have a couple of these,) pick lines that will pique the viewer's interest or ones that evoke questions. If you saw a screen shot that made you want to know what happens, wouldn't you say it did its job?

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

In summary, I'm not saying any of these apply to your specific case because I haven't seen your topics. But it may help you figure it out.

[RoseGuardian 42]

I actually think my Dragon Reign game is overall better than my Shadow Sphere

Here is the link:

 

 

http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/9480-dragon-reign/

 

The main problem I have is I don't know how to explain the story of my games even though I write them out as novel first to help decide what will happen and then I set the game up so the player plays through the game. I am good at translating my stories I wrote over to games. I really don't know how to explain my game's story without too many spoilers and I write excatly what I have in my story prologue. 

Edited January 2, 2013 by RoseGuardian

[Galv 1,387]

Perhaps you could try making your game posts more easily accessible (kind of like advertising). Think of it like selling a game - you won't sell many copies by putting it in one place. They advertise them.

 

- Maybe add a link to your game posts in your signature (on multiple forums even). Every post you make would increases the chance of people visiting your game page.

 

- You could post screenshots in the screenshot section asking for critique as well:

http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/9590-screenshot-critique-thread/?view=getnewpost

 

- A few tips were added for you here that you could try to put into action:

http://www.rpgmakervxace.net/topic/9564-how-do-i-make-my-game-stories-if-i-have-demo-sound-interesting/#entry74541

 

Don't let it upset you, give these things a try and see how it goes

[Erics 12]

After looking over your post for Dragon Reign, you should really consider some of the advice from Ocedic.

Use some type of bold to draw the attention of that current subject you're trying to talk about.

Also, 5/6 of your screenshots are pretty worthless to have. No offense. Like Ocedic said, you need good screenshots. I'll talk about them in order.

 

-The first one, you used a generic background and border that comes with RPG Maker, but yet you did use your own type of font for the name, kudos on that. You should remove that screenshot, because everyone here knows that the background and border is generic. BUT, the image of your title in that font could be used for your topic to give it more life.

 

-The second screenshot is easily noticed as Yanfly's save script. Yes, it gives the safe feature a nice touch, and while others may not have seen it before, you can easily tell yours is incomplete by the missing variables at the bottom. It's just a blank with 0's. If you had some variables, and make your save screenshot seem like it keeps track of progress and accomplishments, it could be a very nice screenshot to show off.

 

-The third screenshot is fine, but can be replaced with a picture of an ability going off on an actor or enemy, to spice the screenshot up a bit.

 

-The fourth and fifth screenshot, seems like they was just thrown in there. You are barely showing off your map. Get a better visual of a map, so people can be in "awe" of your mapping and want to play your game to see the rest. Both of those are rather bland sections of the map.

 

-The last screenshot, I actually enjoy, this one shows you gave creative effort for cut scenes. Great job on this one.

Edited January 2, 2013 by Erics

[RoseGuardian 42]

Thank you very much.  I am getting close to releasing another demo but first I am going to try to touch up the thread and see what happens.

[Erics 12]

No problem. I hope whenever I release a demo of my game, someone gives me helpful tips of what needs to be done.. Granted, it's hard to say when that will be I've been working on it for about 6 months now and all I've managed was a custom window skin, one custom sprite I made, one custom faceset(see my avatar of an example), and a ton of editing of Tankentai(which was a hassle, and still not finished) ! But good luck with the rest of your games and future projects.

[Fated 13]

I actually tried to download your project a few days ago, but the hosting you use doesn't seem to agree with my computer for some reason. I don't know why. It's possible others are having an issue too.

[RoseGuardian 42]

That is strange. All you really need to do is click on the name of the file I think.  Any way I am releasing anothert demo shortly as soon as I get the artwork for one the long cut scenes done.  I'll use mediafire the next if I have too.  It took forver to upload.

[Jonnie91 1,149]

Please don't make topics just to advertise your games that haven't been given any feedback. A good way of ensuring feedback is given is to start giving feedback to others, they will often then be polite and leave feedback to you also. 

Topic Closed.