awesome! The Broken Sandbox (Test and get feedback on your LPs here!)

Want to start an LP? Consider posting your opening post and first update here for some constructive criticism! Of course, if you've already started an LP but still have questions and concerns, feel free to ask for feedback here as well. (Don't forget to leave a link so we can find your LP.)

Ground Rules

1. The purpose of this thread is to make LPs a better experience for everybody. Critics, be blunt and honest with your feedback, but refrain from engaging in assholery. Also, focus on critiquing the LP instead of the gameplay - start a discussion thread elsewhere if something really bothers you.
2. Ignore this thread if it's getting in the way of your fun. Testing and getting feedback on your LP is not mandatory in any way.
3. LPers, be clear on the purpose of your LP and if possible, what kind of critique you're looking for. Asking specific questions about elements you're concerned about is a good way of getting feedback that's actually helpful.
4. Use the "Preview" function to make sure your updates look presentable before posting them. This is a thread where you get your LP critiqued, not proofread.
5. Read the only rule this LP subforum currently has before posting anything.

Helpful Resources

Let Us Play, Consolidated and Indexed
After you post your LP, leave a link to it in this thread for indexing. To make the esteemed indexer's job easier, format your links like this:

Full Thread Title Linked to Your LP Thread (Your Username)
Optional Witty Subtitle in Italics

After that, note which category your LP belongs in.

IMPORTANT! Please remove the title of your thread from the link to reduce character usage. For example, this:

http://brokenforum.com/index.php?th...-thread-format-length-replies-et-cetera.4370/

should be shortened to this:

brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/4370

Let's Play Discussion Thread - Format, Replies, Length, Et Cetera
A thread where people discuss how to make good LPs. Might be a good idea to read this thread first before starting your LP.

I'd love some feedback on my Princess Maker 5 LP :3
Grammar/translation tips would be great, if possible, because one of the reasons I'm doing this LP is to work on my English and translating skills...

Could this include LPs already completed?

I think your English and your LP is great, but it would be a bit easier to read if you put your own comments in italics or bold. Because right now it's not really visually apparent what's you and what's the translation, and it makes the LP updates as a whole look a bit wall-of-texty. Just a small suggestion :)

If anyone has any feedback to give me on any of my LPs, ongoing or finished, that'd be great. I'm curious as to whether the more image-heavy ones are difficult to load? I've already spoiler-tagged Analogue and was wondering if Castle Chase needed it as well.

I don't see why not? :D

Jacquelle, your Castle Chase LP loads fine to me. Since the images are on the small side, I don't think spoiler-tagging is necessary.

Excellent. :D Requesting critique for Tyrian 2000. The purpose was two-fold: show-off a game that is both awesome and completely silly, and to provide additional information about it that someone may or may not have known about. Of course, I chose to be a complete goober myself in a few posts, but what's a game if you're not having fun?

The one thing I noticed after re-reading the first page was that a few of the images were borked, and I'm worried that's gonna have a big impact on anyone who reads it now.

I'd like some feedback on my Heartache 101 LP. It doesn't seem to be getting much attention and I'm not sure why. Are the images too big or are there too many of them? Not enough comments? Is the commentary not good? Too many or too few Sailor Moon gifs? Am I overselling my own writing too much? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, so I'd love to know if there's anything I can do to make it better.

Fontaine: Just a note that I'm not usually into top-down shooters. So how I view the game and how you view the game may differ.

At first I felt a bit overwhelmed by all the weapons and ship information, but then I realized how heavily the LP depended on audience participation. Still, a way to condense that information might be good (for example, making one comparison shot combining all the different weapon screenshots rather than showing them one-by-one)?

You're right, a few of the images aren't loading, but it's a mix of screenshots and commentary, so it may not be absolutely essential to fix. But once the gameplay started, I found it a lot easier to follow your LP. :)

So I just skimmed it and the first thing I noticed was that the images are loading too slowly because they're .pngs. Typically if an LP loads slowly I'm less inclined to follow it, so convert all the images to .jpegs before uploading them. Another thing that might help to grab people's attention is a better, more informative OP. Put up a pretty picture of the title screen or the characters or whatever, and give us a little information about the game to hook us. A little pitch summary of what the story's about, for example, might help people to decide if they're interested or not - when you get into an LP and most of it is just votes on character names, people might not bother scrolling down to the first update to find out.

So tell me about http://brokenforum.com/index.php?threads/watch-me-fail-at-european-escalation.2620/

I don't really have much of a problem telling the difference between your commentary and that of the games, Jvii, but I think in your Dandelion LP you italicized your comments? Not entirely sure, but that might help a bit. Unless you're trying to work other characters into the commentary (such as when the class rep was introduced, that little snippet with cube). If that's the case, then I'd agree with what's been suggested inthread, which is getting McNinja her own avatar. As for the grammar and translations, I haven't read anything yet that doesn't look fine. All in all, I don't think I noticed any errors.

On the other hand, I did have a little trouble at first with the commentary in Nekochi's LP until I realized that the dialogue from the name had everyone's name in front of it. Even so, I'd recommend you italicize your comments, too, just to make it a bit easier. I'd also second Ana's recommendation and suggest you move the first screenshot of the second post (the title screen) to the opening post, just so people don't have to scroll past the voting. And about selling your own writing: as a rule I prefer humility over confidence, since the line between confident and arrogant can be pretty thin. That said, you might want to refrain from praising the route too much (that's really more something for the readers to decide anyway). Most important is not to put down any of the other characters to favor your own (if you're hating on a character just because you don't like that specific character, that's another matter altogether). I haven't read the entire LP (just took a look at a few posts from the first and last pages) so I can't really say much, but I did have some trouble waiting for the images to load. This is a problem with a lot of LPs for me, not just yours. I don't know if my internet connection just sucks or what.

Also, Nekochi, I'd prefer if you used a few less screenshots and summarized a bit more. The page loads pretty slowly for me and my browser lags because there are so many images, and I have a pretty good internet connection.

EDIT: My fault for skimming. The 2nd page isn't bad but still loads slowly. So maybe it actually is the png thing.

I've started to change the images to .jpgs and I finished doing so on the first page. I still used fairly high image qualities because I like images to look nice, but each one is about 1/4 the data size of when it was a .png. Still, I want to make sure that I have gotten the image size down enough before I continue doing so for the next two pages, so would you mind looking again and seeing how it loads for you now? Keep in mind that I've only done the first page, so there will be no difference in the way the second and third pages load as of yet.

I know you crossed this comment out, but there may still be some merit to it because I think that summarizing is something I'm not very good at. The way I did it was a little more inconsistent on the first page, but I've tried to retain the full text for most of the Junko events by typing a lot of it up and only posting another image when one of the characters changes their expression. Now that the loading time should be down (at least on the first page), I'd love to hear if you think this approach works.

Duly noted. I was sick and miserable when I wrote the opening post, so I didn't put as much effort into it as I should have. When I'm done switching out the images, I'll work on sprucing up the first post.

I don't know if I want to italicize, just because it sort of makes it seem like you're emphasizing everything, but I'll decide on and implement a way to more clearly differentiate between my comments and the game's text once I've dealt with the above two issues.

I've been trying to keep from praising it too much, though sometimes I do purposefully over dramatize my reactions for comedy's sake. I'll say I love my characters and I'll talk about the writing process and the reasoning behind why I wrote scenes the way I did or what I was trying to go for, but most actual "praise" of my writing has been intended as a joke (such as when I said that people were free to praise my writing anytime.) My main concern would be as to whether or not these come across as jokes or if they just seem like I'm trying to sell my work and I should tone it done and any critique as to how I'm doing in that area would be appreciated.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to look at and give me feedback on my LP. ^-^ It's a big help.

It's loading much faster for me now. :)

The loading is much better for me too.

As for the summarizing, posting images when their expressions change is good, but you don't need to show all the changes and dialogue (unless that's what you're going for). A couple of screenshots here and there could be cut by saying "turns out they're here for a playdate" or "Junko is not impressed", but that's my personal preference. I'd rather you avoid posts like this where there was minimal commentary because it gets a bit too close to just throwing the game at us, but it seems to be a one-time thing so I wouldn't worry too much.

1) I have only skimmed it, but it looks great.
2) Appreciate that unit screenies are thumbnailed for easier loading.
3) Appreciate that you're doing this, as I have been curious about the game. It seems like a good primer.
4) Appreciate that you're doing this, as we need more strategery LPs!

Hope to find time to read it thoroughly soon.

Any thoughts on my Distant Worlds LP?

Can I get a few critiques on my lps?

Can we date a star without a scandal? LP: Pure Love ~My boyfriend's a Star~
Adventures in Dream World: Let's Play East Tower- Akio
Let's play Love Academy because we need a dose of school love! - Mostly this one and I know there's nothing much right now but a few critiques on it should be fine.

I know there things I already know about so please be blunt as possible!

The images in the first one won't load for me and the second crashed my browser. Maybe spoiler them? Live academy loaded fine but it might need it in the future if you're going to have lots of images per page.

I think you're doing fine. :D You provide enough detail for the reader to understand your in-game priorities and follow the action; at the same time, you're not providing so much detail that you swamp the reader. You also have a knack for ending each update on a note that leaves the reader wanting more -- with the last couple being a case in point!

I'd very much like to get some feedback on my Jade Empire LP, if anyone has any thoughts.

First things first, you might wanna link to the LP's. That way people don't have to hunt around the Consolidated and Indexed thread in order to leave a review. As for the actual LP, I like how you're including you're own narrative in addition to that of the game's, but I'd suggest adding the key to the top of every update, possibly in a spoiler tag titled "LP Key" or something. There were a few times at first where I forgot what it meant when something was bolded or italicized, but after seeing the key a few times and reading some updates I got used to it. Still, it might be good to have a reminder in case people happen to forget.

So far I'm really enjoying your LP. I like how you've started putting the updates in spoiler tags (means I can scroll down and read comments while the images load). I really appreciate the amount of effort you put into updates (arranging events to make for a smooth narrative and whatnot). Another thing I really like is your narrative. Especially things like what's spoilered below, since you incorporated a memorable but irrelevant side character in a way that wasn't out of place in the least. Sorry I can't really think of any real constructive criticism.

In general I'd like to recommend the spoiler tags to everyone LP'ing very image heavy games doing 20 image posts. It's such a huge help in a slow browser because half the time when a page loads either all images go blank or I end up at the top of the page instead of at the latest post as intended. It IS a problem if you're looking for a specific update, but it does bring down crash rates.

Just my... general... *skitters way*

The LPs are actually linked to in that post, but for some reason she turned the font black.

Maybe labelling each spoiler with the number of the update or a short title summarizing the contents would help? For example:

That's an excellent idea! Unlike the tags themselves I am not going back to retroactively applying them to all 50 pages of DA2 (I really want to strangle myself when I re-read my old stuff and the tags was mostly because I was told it crashed people browsers which I didn't want on my head), but I'll definitely do it when I pick up the next game.

Oh gosh, I've finally taken the plunge and made one myself, and I'm REALLY nervous. I'm playing The Roy Orbison in Clingfilm Adventure Game (Hey, I said the title was pretty long.)

Is there anything in particular about your LP that you'd like help with? Or do you just want feedback in general?

Well, this is a very nerve-wracking thing to do, but I would like some feedback on my ongoing Lp of Odin Sphere.
I'm still not sure of the balance between explaining things/showing stuff and showing/explaining too much, so I would like some opinions on that.
Same with comments, too little, too much?
Any other general feedback you have would be great.

Also, I have no idea how it looks in a slow browser, but I do have quite a few images so would spoiler-tagging be a good idea?

I'm halfway logged off, but on the glance scrolling my browser was fine. I think it helps you're using relatively small images.

Thank you! I'm glad that you're enjoying it. :D

Since I've already played the game myself, I'm not really in the best position to comment on the parts of your LP where you explain game mechanics and such, but I think overall you have a pretty good balance going. I wouldn't mind seeing more commentary on the plot and characters, but if such comments don't suggest themselves then there's no need to force them. I like what you did in the most recent update with putting the recipes and such at the end, and I also like how you've been posting relevant artwork at the end of each update.

Ho ho ho!

I'd like some feedback about my Hegemony: Gold LP. I admit it is a rather daunting read involving lots of Greek geography and the long hiatus' in the middle diminished the amount of readers I had. Still I hope I struck the right note between gameplay explanations, discussions about the interplay between geography and game systems, and informative historical pictures.

Everyone's so excited about updates in spoiler tags; am I the only one who finds text inside spoiler tags really hard to read? It's in italics, which I find difficult in large chunks anyway, and then it's smaller than regular text. I'm afraid I haven't been keeping up with your Dragon Age LP, Davian Korran, because reading it kind of strains my eyes.

Some of your text in the first post and this post changes color. Highlighting and clicking "remove formatting" (the eraser at the top left) after you cut and paste something will make sure text shows up right for different forum themes.

I like how you included source links for some of your images, but either always including them or always removing them would be more consistent.

Other than that, I think you added the right amount of stuff to just let the crazy of the game shine through!

The all-italics is somewhat annoying, because it means if you were using italics for emphasis in the first place that's kind of lost.

We could all just bump up our font size for updates in spoilers.

All italics is annoying. I didn't use it for emphasis since I, at least, can't write in italics in handwriting, so if Joyce needed emphasis she'd caps it out, but Nerys is right, it's a lot harder to read that way. I just wasn't aware it was that much of a problem.

... Thank you, alerts, for not letting me know about this post. :|

Anyway, I just kind of wanted feedback in general.

Dang it! It didn't show up on my side, so I didn't know! :( Not sure how to fix this, since I can't see if I've actually fixed it or not, but I'll find a way!

Sources it is, then, because the ones I did sources for I knew I had to in order to not get in trouble. So... time to find the source for all my pictures! /s-sob.

Nerys, tell you what; you read this far. If you tell me where you're at, approximately, I'd be glad to disable the tags temporarily so you can finish.

Nerys, sorry to pester you, but on the second update of my Analogue LP (the one with the "pissed-off Hyun-ae inside" spoiler) I bumped the text size up one. Is that easier to read, or are the spoiler tags still a problem?

You don't have to do anything that drastic! I could always just hit "reply" and read the quoted text in the reply box.

That's so much better! Unless font that big is annoying for other people to read; I don't want to get all "change your LPs just for meeeee..."

*goes to change all her LPs just for you*

If you're sure! I really don't mind, though. Anyone brave enough to suffer through 50 pages of my rambling pretty much deserves the special treatment.