Review

What's the point of a review?
The point of a review is to give people a clue on whether they are going to like the game or not. A review that says: "This game is stupid!", has no point; it tells other people how you felt about the game, but they don't know why you didn't like it, so they can't know if they are going to appreciate the game.

Opinions and tastes on games will always differ, facts don't; even if you do not appreciate a certain genre (i.e. Arcade games) you cannot show that as being a negative, because it is purely your own opinion. You have to present the facts: e.g. the sprites were too basic, there was no background, there were a lot of levels, while also throwing in your own views when needed: e.g. I thought the music was too loud and the levels were too many in number.

Title:
The title should describe the game, or the feeling you have about it.

Star-system:
The first item of a review is the star-system. You give a rating to certain aspects of the game:
 * Graphics: What did you think about the backgrounds, the sprites, the menu's, the animation and the intro?
 * Sound: Was there music? Was the music any good? Did it have sounds? Did they sound real or funny?
 * Gameplay: How was the movement? Did the enemies move smoothly, were they smart enough? Was the game hard enough/too hard? Were there many levels? Did the game take long to finish? If so, were there savegames? Was the gameplay disturbed by too many text-boxes?
 * Story: Was there a story? Did it continue throughout the game, or was it only an introduction? Was it original, funny, cool or too long?
 * Interface: How were the controls? Were there (too) many buttons? Was it easy to master them? Were they in the help-file?
 * Overall Score: Was the game awful, bad, acceptable, good, very good, excellent?

Pros and cons:
Make sure you don't just repeat here what you made clear already in the star-ratings. Be short and specific. What were the most important good an bad things about the game? You can always clarify in the Review-part, keep it brief in this section and mention the utter most important things first, because only two lines are displayed in the game-page, so most people only read these first two lines. Make sure they have the right first impression on the game and never just type "everything/nothing". That doesn't help anyone. Examples of subjects:
 * difficulty
 * duration
 * changement throughout the game (more weapons, different enemies)
 * originality

Review:
This is where you are totally free to tell people everything you want about the game. There is no restriction on the amount of characters and only people who clicked the "read more"-button will be able read this. These people want to know more, so give them more!

You can explain your star-ratings. Why did you give a '2' for graphics? Because the sprites were beautiful, but stolen from Nintendo. What was so great about the interface? You could choose between WASD and the arrow-buttons! You can also clarify your pros and cons here, because you had to be brief in that section. Tell people what type of game it is, what they can expect when they download it. But you shouldn't tell secret locations and reveal codes. If there are, refer to the right location in the forum-section "Cheats, Hints, and Walkthroughs", http://forums.yoyogames.com/forums/3.

Don't ...
Use foul language (or images) to insult the creator.

You must keep in mind that many Game Makers are very young and even the age in their profile may be wrong. If you really think this is such a bad game and you can't say anything good about it, tell the creator how he could improve the game. Violent messages only induce violent responses. Stay cool and treat everyone with respect; that will get you furthest!

Give bad ratings without saying why.

It's very encouraging to get good ratings on your games, it tells you you're doing all right. It's very frustrating to get bad ratings if you don't know why, because you can't improve!

Spam or promote your game.

It's very generous to make a review, but don't do it to promote your own game. If you really think the creator should respond by making a review on your game, PM him. But PLAY FAIR, don't trade in positive reviews, like "I'll give you a great review, if you give me one!". If your game is good, it will get a good review, if it is bad and people download it because of the encouraging review, they will be disappointed in the game and they will no longer trust the reviewer.