[Erkki]

Why don't you have grades or pros/cons and a bottom line in underground reviews?

[AGA]

The pros and cons of each game are pretty much discussed in the body of the review. And as for why we don't allocate a score, it's because we want people to play more Underground games, and not get put off by seeing a game has only gotten a 3 star or 2 1/2 star rating

[Marek]

Another factor is that it's more unfair (and harder!) to grade amateur games with stars. I mean, how are you going to judge the graphics? Sure, Ignac looks amazingly better than Rob Blanc, but would it be fair to give Rob Blanc a significantly lower score just because its creator chose to do MS Paint style graphics? How should we rate auteur created games vs. team created games? What about the length of the game? A lot of amateur games are short but offer a lot of quality for 5 hours of gameplay. The stars work fine for commercial games, but they don't work well for amateur games, simply because there are no 'golden standards' we can hold them against.

[DaveGilbert]

Also, amateur games are usually created by one single person, and it's not fair to expect that person to be a great artist, programmer, musician, designer and writer all rolled into one. Therefore we don't give these individual aspects a specific rating, but merely evaluate them in the body of the review.

[Zygomaticus]

It's really unfair (and discouraging) to a developer when his (free!!) game is thrown aside with a couple of numbers and when his work (that likely took *many* hours of work for which he won't even be paid) is condensed into a couple of pros and cons. It's only fair that they be looked upon kindly and appreciated because it never harmed anybody (like buying a commercial game would deplete your account for numerous dollars).

The latter, AG does, and for that, I commend ye

[Stinger]

Another reason is that we've always tried to incorporate the price and dollar-value of a game into its score. A pretty unremarkable game listing for $20 may get a 2.5-3; the same mediocre game listing for $50 is more deserving of a 1.5-2.

Since Underground games are all freeware by definition, this comparison just can't be made. In the twisted scoring formula floating around in my head, every Underground game gets a divide by zero error. Plus, I have lots of respect for the fact that UG developers are doing this 100% for pleasure, not at all for monetary benefit.

- Evan