The headline is, I’m not going to be giving review scores. I’ve always hated the practice and putting scores on games has routinely been the least favourite part of my professional career.
I simply don’t accept that a 1-10 numerical scale is an appropriate way of measuring a game in 2023. I guess it was fine back in the days when the product that shipped was the game that was reviewed and then played by the public.
With early access dev cycles rampant and games routinely updated after launch, a score at release is just too reductive for my tastes.
Instead, I’ll make clear in any review which version of a game I have played. I’ll also routinely be delving back into older games that have been updated over the years.
Toplist inclusion policy
A big part of what we’re going to do here at Rogueliker is listicles, such as this one. These have become very prevalent across the Internet as they make for great SEO.
For Rogueliker to remain competitive, we’re going to have to play the game and go toe-to-toe with every brand that writes about roguelikes in any capacity. That means toplists.
I quite like writing them, and I’m going to make them fun, however, I also promise that I’m not going to include a single game that I haven’t played myself. Every recommendation on Rogueliker can be backed up by a combination of hours spent and pocket money invested.
Toplists are supposed to be fun, but they’ve become an SEO battleground full of regurgitated opinions. We’re going to take them back, one authentic permanent death at a time.
Receiving codes and gifts
I’m not at all interested in receiving PR promo packs, but if they do arrive I’ll pass them back to you, Dear Reader, via social media (we’re currently active on Facebook and X).
Codes for games, on the other hand, are welcome. I/we want to play as many as possible, so our toplists are as relevant as they can be, and so I can shout about the games that we all love.
There are things stopping me, though. The first hurdle is that I’ve got a digital collection of literally thousands of my own games vying for my attention. Talk about analysis paralysis.
The main problem is time. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to look at all the lovely roguelike and roguelite games out there.
The final challenge is quality. Not all games are good. There are lots of average to poor games out there. However, I recognise that those games weren’t intended to be that way. Something went wrong somewhere along the way.
Of course, sometimes there might be anti-consumer practices to tell you about, but those will be specific cases and not the norm.
Ultimately, I’m not interested in punching down just for clicks, so if something doesn’t gel, I’ll stop playing it pretty quickly and then not write about it.
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, as my dear old ma never once said to me.