7DRL Reviews Posted

The final review scores have been posted as of a couple of days ago!  Overall, Word Hunt got a 1.67 out of 3, which is a little low but nothing I'm surprised about.  I thought it would be nice to give some commentary on the detailed scores and my thoughts for next time.

Completeness: 3 out of 3.  I'm glad that I didn't miss any bugs or polish that stood out to anyone.  :-)

Aesthetics: 2 out of 3.  Given that I went with plain ASCII instead of anything graphical, I think this is a pretty good score.  The one negative comment was about the smallness of the font size, which is something I had already realized in development but wasn't able to adjust in with the console library I was using.  I commented on that in my devlog for Day 2.

Fun: 1 out of 3.  I'm a little disappointed by the low score here, but I think it is partly due to the fact that this is mainly aimed at pre-schoolers, and so doesn't have the depth most adults expect.  I had hoped that the Adult Mode would adjust for that, but I can say that my 5-year-old son found it very engaging, so I hope that it is fun for the target audience.  This is definitely something that I'd try to circle back to if I were to spend much more time on this project.

Innovation: 1.50 out of 3.  This one was a bit of a mixed review, with one reviewer giving a low score and another saying that it doesn't have a lack of innovation.  I had hoped that the word hunting theme would be somewhat new and interesting, but I'm OK with it not being considered super innovative.

Scope: 1 out of 3.  I was aware going in that this would be a quick and simple game, so a low score on Scope isn't unexpected.  In part, that's because I only took 5 days to write the game, instead of the full 7, so I didn't take time to add in extra depth or complexity.

Roguelikeness: 1.50 out of 3.  This is perhaps the most subjective score, and given that I didn't include many of the "classic" Roguelike features I'm not surprised that I got a low score here.

Final Score: 1.67 out of 3.  Most of the general comments boil down to a lack of scope and depth for the game, and I honestly agree with most of it.   Again, I think that is in part due to my taking a shorter time to write the game, rather than having an extra couple of days to polish the mechanics and add a bit more depth to it.

If you want to see the comments that were left with the scores for Word Hunt or any of the other games of the 7DRL this year, you can find them at https://roguetemple.com/7drl/2023/.