I've seen a lot of comments under games in the likes of
Good game!
or
I liked it!
Those types of comments are common in a lot of game jams (and I used to hear them a lot in school when we would give presentations). They're nice, but except for a short ego boost such comments are basically worth nothing.
But how does one give good, constructive criticism?
At first, point out something (or all the things, that's up to you) that you liked about the game, e.g. like this!
Just played your game! The character felt great to control!
After that, point out flaws that the game has, but don't just leave it at that. Tell the developer how you would have tackled said issue or what you would have wished for to fix a specific flaw!
Lets take a game I rated in this jam as an example. The Choice is a beautiful 2.5D narrative game about how much more you appreciate what you have the less you have overall. An important aspect of a narrative game with voice acting is that you can understand the voice actors. One way to fix that is by either a) having better voice actors (duh) or b) adding subtitles, so that's what I told the developers.
If you want an overall example on how good, constructive criticism works, you can check these comments:
- https://itch.io/post/2508832
- https://itch.io/post/2504623
- https://itch.io/post/2509402
- https://itch.io/post/2497707
Those are just a few good ones that I found (or wrote lol).
Thanks for reading this post! I hope every developer that partook in this game jam gets the constructive criticism they deserve!