Talk:Puzzlejuice/GA1

Latest comment: 9 years ago by J Milburn in topic GA Review

GA Review edit

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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 13:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply


Looks relatively uncontroversial. Happy to offer a review. J Milburn (talk) 13:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

  • Should board games (Boggle) have their names italicised? There's an inconsistency between this article and the Boggle article.
  • "If the three rows are converted at once, they can be turned into letters by tap." I don't understand what this means. You haven't mentioned "the three rows" yet, and what's a conversion by "tap"? How's it different from a normal conversion?
  • "tetrominos do not fall, but there is a 90 second time limit" Again, I'm not sure I understand. If they're not falling, how does the game advance?
  • Presumably (but this isn't specified) players chase high-scores?
  • "Scores are uploaded to Game Center, and on the iPhone version, a magnified version of the tile obscured by the player's finger is displayed near the finger.[3]" I don't see what these two facts have to do with each other?
  • "communicated nonverbally through" Verbal refers to words, not spoken words. Unless they communicated in emojis and interpretative dance, this isn't true
  • "The title was inspired by the 1990s "EXTREME", as exemplified by the Crossfire board game and juice-filled Gushers fruit snacks." What is the 1990s EXTREME?
  • "The developers were not sure how to handle Spelltower" Again, I'm not sure I follow- do you mean the developers weren't sure whether to change/drop Puzzlejuice in response to Spelltower? Also, is Spelltower worth linking? Don't be scared of redlinks!
  • "Vollmer expressed an interest in bringing the game to Steam Greenlight in August 2012." But it's not there yet?
  • "Edge called it", "Edge suggested", "Edge called"; Undue personification; someone writing for Edge did this.
  • "Vollmer's "magpie" design" What does this mean?
  • "Mark Brown struggled with registering the right input on the small screen, and found himself inadvertently making words from letters instead of moving color blocks" So coloured blocks can be moved from place to place once the tetrominos have landed? This could be made clearer in the gameplay section.
  • I'm not sure the utility of a dead link in the external links section. Perhaps you could find an archived version?

Sources seem appropriate (we disagree about italics, but that's a side point). Pictures seem OK (I haven't checked the ticket, but I'm happy to trust). As an aside, I'm a big fan of this current trend of indie game articles with freely licensed screenshots! The only thing I would say is that the page comes across as a little crowded. Great little article, but I think the gameplay section could be a bit clearer. J Milburn (talk) 13:49, 10 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Glad you're a big fan. I try to prioritize the articles where I am able to secure freely licensed content. I'll get to the rest of your points later today (thanks for the review), but on italics: I don't feel strongly one way or another—I just noticed that many of the other major board games were italicized. I opened a thread at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Titles#Board_games, if you're interested. czar  17:04, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
  • I believe I've addressed your points—can you take a look? As for the other stuff, NOAD defines verbal as "spoken rather than written; oral", which is a common usage. No update on Greenlight, at least in the current RS. Edge doesn't use author bylines for reviews, so the review comes from the magazine as a whole. "Magpie" could mean a bunch of things, which is why I quoted instead of paraphrasing it (either referring to the raucousness of the bird or the secondary definition of a person who collects things of little value. Dead link must have been recent—I've addressed it czar  22:20, 13 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@J Milburn, ping czar  15:31, 15 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
Apologies, noted- I'll try to get to this soon. J Milburn (talk) 15:54, 15 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

Ok, I've done some more copyediting. I'm still not quite sure I'm clear on the gameplay section. If I am incorrect, I think this needs clarifying: Tetris blocks fall, and lines are eliminated if completed. If they are not completed, sections are eliminated by tapping areas with several blocks of the same colour, and these become letters. Once letters are created, words can be found which eliminate the squares and those around them. All the while, more Tetris blocks fall. Here are the parts I'm not clear on: once the blocks have fallen, can parts be moved? Once words are cleared, do squares above them fall, or is it only if whole Tetris blocks can fall that anything falls? And when creating words, must the letters be a line (like a wordsearch) or can you create words in a Z shape, N shape and other crazy shapes? The article is very strong, but, in some ways, the most important part of an article on a puzzle game is explaining the nature of the puzzle. J Milburn (talk) 14:05, 16 August 2014 (UTC)Reply

If I don't seem completely clear, it's because the reviews did not get more precise and because I haven't actually played the game myself to fudge the details. This said, I can correct for the above. As mentioned on your talk page, I'm in the middle of a trip and a move, so would it be all right if this stayed on hold for a little over a week until I have time to fix it? czar  12:30, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
As long as you need- ping me when you want me to take another look. J Milburn (talk) 17:52, 23 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@J Milburn, I rewrote the first ¶. Better? czar  04:17, 30 August 2014 (UTC)Reply
@J Milburn, ping czar  00:00, 2 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
This is on my to-do list- I'll get to it this evening, hopefully. J Milburn (talk) 07:51, 2 September 2014 (UTC)Reply
Ok, looking again, I think it's now clearer how the game works, so I'm going to go ahead and promote at this time. Good work- keep it up! J Milburn (talk) 16:33, 2 September 2014 (UTC)Reply