Small Islands - Mobile support & approval

[Draasill]

The game seems great, and is nice to play.

I think it's almost ready for beta, this bug is still outstanding : https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=19953


So, it's impossible to "approve" the game (as we cannot validate the mobile play).

Should I ... lie, to approve it ?

[Een]

So, it's impossible to "approve" the game (as we cannot validate the mobile play).

Should I ... lie, to approve it ?

Definitely not!

We actually need to remind reviewers not to approve too fast. Some games have a lot of approbations while they are not ready yet for one reason or another. We'll add a "reviewer's guide" to help reviewers with some better guildelines when we can find the time to write it.

[Draasill]

The difficulty here is that the bug is "rejected", and the reason is kind of "authoritative" : "according to the editor and the designer, this is not a priority to play this game on mobile".

So, it's a dead-end situation.

That would be kind of sad if the game can't go out of alpha.

I'm eager to, even, help coding for mobile support, but i don't want to bypass the developer, who has done a good work

[fafa-fr]

The difficulty here is that the bug is "rejected", and the reason is kind of "authoritative" : "according to the editor and the designer, this is not a priority to play this game on mobile".

So, it's a dead-end situation.

I don't think it's authoritative, because it conflicts with BGA's "policy": they clearly state that they support playing on mobile phone (in the FAQ).
So if they don't want to lie to players, if a game is not good on mobile phone, it should be clearly stated to players (I mean, not in a forum or on the game page that almost no one read). But the general rule is that all games should be playable (in a reasonably convenient way) on mobile phones.
But this is my opinion about the editor and designer's general position about mobile, not my opinion about this specific suggestion and if it should block approvals. Because it's not the same thing if a game is very difficult to play on mobiles, or just not very convenient, but still quite playable. I didn't test it myself, so I don't know, and I saw that this suggestion has 3 votes, but I don't know the number of players that played it on mobile without feeling it was not good.

By the way, my game is not ready yet for alpha, but since you're talking about this:

We actually need to remind reviewers not to approve too fast. Some games have a lot of approbations while they are not ready yet for one reason or another. We'll add a "reviewer's guide" to help reviewers with some better guildelines when we can find the time to write it.

Is it possible somehow for a dev to prevent their alpha game to go in beta? I would not like my game to go in beta because of 5 approvals if there still are bugs that I want to fix before beta. A manual checkbox somewhere?

[Draasill]

I think you have to request the beta stage by email

[Een]

Going from alpha to beta is indeed requested by the developer, once the game has received enough approvals (so the developer can definitely wait if he still things some improvements are needed before beta).

About the initial question, as a reviewer, you approve the game if you feel it's ready, on all accounts requested in the approval popup. If you don't feel it's ready, then you don't give your approval. It's not a deadlock: other reviewers may find the situation satisfactory, or the developer may improve this point after a while to get more approvals.

The process of moving from alpha to beta is not instantaneous, and it's quite as expected: the objective is quality.

[fafa-fr]

Ok nice, thanks Draasill and Een for your answers.