Scoring criteria for "Programmer Reviews Programming Games"

These are the basic scoring criteria used. Note that these may evolve based on your feedback or as I review more games.

Fun

This judges whether the game is fun as a game. This means that a game scoring low on fun is less interesting to those who aren't necessarily big "programming nerds". A game scoring high on fun is something you might enjoy playing even if you didn't care of the programming aspect so much.

Fun is a somewhat subjective metric. In general it falls between the two values below:

• 0 fun: You might as well go read a programming book. The game isn't very interesting.
• 5 fun: You would play this even if it had nothing to do with programming because it's just very fun

Practicality

This judges how practical the programming aspects depicted in the game are. In other words, a higher practicality score means the game is more real to life in programming and thus can help you get better at programming more easily.

Practicality is a more objective metric. I try to gauge the game on the more specific criteria below:

• 0 practicality: This game has nothing to do with programming. I'm not sure why I'm even reviewing this (I don't think a lot of games reviewed in this series are going to get a 0)
• 1 practicality: Basic kinda-sorta programming aspects. Put commands in sequence to make something happen
• 2 practicality: Some "authentic" programming aspects. Command repetition or conditionals at least
• 3 practicality: Programs built in a somewhat similar fashion as real programs. Sequential logic, branching logic, repeating logic
• 4 practicality: Closely applicable realistic concepts. Might not use a real programming language, but uses similar practical concepts (such as functions or reusable pieces of code or such)
• 5 practicality: Directly applicable to real world programming. Uses a real or very close to real programming language. You actually write code or do something which is very close to writing code

You can leave feedback for these criterias on YouTube or via twitter to @therealzomg