Nexus Feature Spotlight: Game Reviews

You love games, we love games, your audience loves games — but WHY do we all love the games that we do? For some, it might be a killer plot filled with twists and turns and all that good suspense. For others, it might be about the crunch; that nitty-gritty, down n’ dirty min-maxing or micromanaging an army’s worth of units. Whatever it may be, we all have opinions of the games we love, and your audience respects yours — that’s why they’re members of your community!

While we were developing Nexus, we recognized the importance of allowing creators to explain why each game has been curated to be part of their Nexus, so we figured we’d take a second to explain why game reviews in your store are important and how to go about writing one if you encounter writer’s block.

Hit ’em with some insight

Content creators are in a unique position to provide specific insight into what makes a game great. Creators spend countless hours playing and producing content on their favorite games, so naturally, they become the most familiar with all the ins and outs of a game; niche little easter eggs, bizarre one-off bugs, subtle changes in sound design or methods of storytelling…they’re the ones who catch it all.

The hours of gameplay and subsequent insight are particularly helpful to an audience because it’s very likely that they turn to your content for an opinion they trust. There’s nothing worse than buying a game, and then investing a couple of hours into it, only to find out it’s no bueno.

Distilling your thoughts on a game down to a few sentences is incredibly helpful to audience members as they weigh their options on what game(s) to buy from your Nexus. Now, we know writing isn’t everyone’s forte and that’s okay! Fortunately for you, writing a straightforward review is, well, pretty straightforward. Here are our tips on whipping out reviews for each game in your Nexus.

Boss Battle: Writer’s Block

Staring at a blank page for anything longer than a minute is frustrating. So, here are a few prompts that’ll hopefully make it easier to crank some reviews out.

Gameplay — This seems a bit obvious, but talk about the feel of the game! What kind of game is it, what’s its unique spin on mechanics, and why does all of this specifically appeal to you?

Storyline — We all love a good story (so don’t ruin it by giving any spoilers!), but if there’s a specific attribute about the storyline of the game that you think your community will appreciate then be sure to mention it in your review!

Replayability — Is it a sort of game that needs multiple plays to completely understand everything that’s going on? Or can you run through it in a few sessions?

Sound Design — The theme, the music, the sounds of the environment, little bleeps, and bloops that are made when you navigate menus. All of it’s important, so spill the beans on your favorite sounds.

The You Factor — What stood out to you? Was there some odd bit that you know you noticed/appreciated that other people might’ve missed? What little things made the difference for you, or alternatively, why are you sharing a favorite thing with so many other people?

Here are some examples of the more concise reviews that we ❤

• “Onward is hands down the most immersive tactical VR Experience available. This unique First Person Shooter places players in intense firefights that will leave you sweating and your heart pounding. I can highly recommend Onward to players looking to reach the next level of immersion and stress for milsim gaming.” — Karmakut on Onward
• “It’s casual, it’s beautiful, it’s educational. It sets you up for amazement, and it rips you apart with RNG. It has some of the complexity of a strategy game, for those that want to race, and the charm of interesting, but not too difficult puzzles in a beautifully crafted space game about managing your own space program.” — Charlie Pryor on Mars Horizon
• “When Binding of Isaac appeared, no one believed that other games would be able to compete with it, but Enter the Gungeon arrived. With different characters, countless weapons, tons of secrets, several endings and a difficulty curve measured with the edge of a blade. Enter the Gungeon is magical and wonderful and if you like the genre you need this game now. No, not later. NOW.” — Pazos64 on Enter the Gungeon
• “My favourite deck-building card game / roguelite by far. Summon creatures and cast spells to defend against waves of enemies and bosses as you ride a train to hell. Tons of depth thanks to multiple factions you can pair up and multiple heroes for each faction alongside some very well executed deckbuilding.” — ZiggyD on Monster Train

It only takes a few sentences to give a substantive review for your followers and knowing why you specifically love a game is going to make a world of difference to someone checking out your Nexus.

Adding Reviews to your Nexus

Now that the hard part of writing the reviews is out of the way, now you just have to add them to your Nexus! And good news — this part is very simple. Just add in a blurb (within the character count — currently a 512-character maximum) as you add a game to your dashboard:

You can make the review even more custom and add in your own video gameplay, too. Check out where it shows up in the store by scrolling over the home page and in the individual game page if you want to preview it before you push it live.

And voila! With detailed reviews, you are well on your way to providing a customized game store experience for your community to support you in your content creation journey.