In the spirit of this month of horrors, EmP reanimated the rotting corpse of former RotW judge Jerec to step in and judge the first few days of Project Horror (plus one late September review). Two reviews on October 1st, and 2 more on October 3rd. Nice coordination, guys! And speaking of nice coordination, you'll need to pretend I'm Joe and his two reviews from this week have been carried over to next week's topic, which is up before this week's topic. Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey.
Third Place
A Juggler's Tale by Gary Hartley
While the game does seem like interesting subject matter, I can tell you were keeping the descriptions kinda vague apart from the introductory sequence, because it's a short game and you don't want to spoil the surprises. So you make the right call, giving us readers a good idea of what the game is like, while hinting at what it becomes. It's descriptive and well written as I'd expect from an EmP review, but I think it might be one of those rare cases where the screenshots take up more screen real estate than the text.
Second Place
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Overdrive
This seems like a very timely review given the recent release of the Castlevania GBA games for modern systems. The brief history lesson is appreciated - the GBA and other handhelds that followed really were the successors of the 16/32-bit era. Your description of the game is colourful and has a kind of casual tone that I tend to like. It feels like a friend telling me about a game they liked, and your enthusiasm for this game and the series shines through. I get a pretty good idea of what to expect from this game, and the 2D Castlevanias as a whole. Still need to play Symphony of the Night, though, which this review has reminded me I need to look into.
Review of the Week
Cave Noire by Dagoss.
I quite like the feature article approach you take here (similar to your Octopath review) where you establish some context, although it did take quite a chunk of paragraphs to even mention the game the review is about, with deviations like it not being the first handheld rogue-like being interesting but not really relevant. The review didn't really start for me until about a third of the way in, where the descriptions of gameplay, strategy, and movement patterns were interesting, with screenshots illustrating how it works. It seems like a game well worth documenting. I appreciate the info that there is a fan translation for this game, but that it isn't really necessary since the game uses pictures for most things.
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And that's it for me. This was actually a lot harder than I expected - though I only read 5 reviews, and in the end only had to rank 3, it was kinda difficult to rank them. Everyone's at a really high bar of quality that I find envious because they make it look so easy. Some of us have been honing this craft for 20 odd years, so I'd expect no less.
Third Place
A Juggler's Tale by Gary Hartley
While the game does seem like interesting subject matter, I can tell you were keeping the descriptions kinda vague apart from the introductory sequence, because it's a short game and you don't want to spoil the surprises. So you make the right call, giving us readers a good idea of what the game is like, while hinting at what it becomes. It's descriptive and well written as I'd expect from an EmP review, but I think it might be one of those rare cases where the screenshots take up more screen real estate than the text.
Second Place
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by Overdrive
This seems like a very timely review given the recent release of the Castlevania GBA games for modern systems. The brief history lesson is appreciated - the GBA and other handhelds that followed really were the successors of the 16/32-bit era. Your description of the game is colourful and has a kind of casual tone that I tend to like. It feels like a friend telling me about a game they liked, and your enthusiasm for this game and the series shines through. I get a pretty good idea of what to expect from this game, and the 2D Castlevanias as a whole. Still need to play Symphony of the Night, though, which this review has reminded me I need to look into.
Review of the Week
Cave Noire by Dagoss.
I quite like the feature article approach you take here (similar to your Octopath review) where you establish some context, although it did take quite a chunk of paragraphs to even mention the game the review is about, with deviations like it not being the first handheld rogue-like being interesting but not really relevant. The review didn't really start for me until about a third of the way in, where the descriptions of gameplay, strategy, and movement patterns were interesting, with screenshots illustrating how it works. It seems like a game well worth documenting. I appreciate the info that there is a fan translation for this game, but that it isn't really necessary since the game uses pictures for most things.
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And that's it for me. This was actually a lot harder than I expected - though I only read 5 reviews, and in the end only had to rank 3, it was kinda difficult to rank them. Everyone's at a really high bar of quality that I find envious because they make it look so easy. Some of us have been honing this craft for 20 odd years, so I'd expect no less.
I can avoid death by not having a life.
