Firstly a huge thanks to everyone and anyone who has read any of my first 50 reviews, emailed me, interacted with me on Twitter or even played a game with me, I appreciate all of the support with this tiny site.
I thought I’d do a little deep dive into the stats from my 50 reviews and see what games still stand up, what’s changed since I launched the site, how much work I’ve put in and how you guys have been finding me. But first I thought I’d just scratch the surface with a basic review overview:
As you can see, Through the Ages features often when you look at the ranking, it’s my highest rated game, the most enjoyable and the best gameplay. It’s also longest review I wrote coming in at 1902 words a mere 8 words more than second place which was Charterstone.
Speaking of Charterstone, you may not believe it but it’s actually my 3rd most read review on the site meaning that Stonemaier Games have 2 of the top 3 most read reviews on the site (the other being the most read review Viticulture). Funnily enough another article on Viticulture sits in the top 3 most viewed pages on the site excluding reviews; ‘Why is the Viticulture AI so challenging‘ has been a huge success having only been released a few weeks ago and now sits only behind the Review Database and the Top 10 iOS Board Game Apps in the most read non review pages on the site.
On average the length of my reviews is sitting at around 1005 words, in fact I’ve written a total of 50,273 words, that’s about the length of The Great Gatsby, although far worse written.
The average length of review has gone up by about 400 words since I started and is hovering around 1100 words over the last few months, perhaps I have more to say or more likely I’m just getting better at waffling on about board game apps.
The shortest review you ask? Well that would be Cat Lady coming in at a measly 495 words, that doesn’t mean it’s the review that people have read the least though, that goes to either Harald which has the least number of page views or 7 Wonders Duel, which is the page where people spend the least amount of time, only 57 seconds on average per view ( compare that to Colt Express which people are spending 4 minutes 50 seconds on average)
While I try to avoid going negative it wouldn’t be an overview if I didn’t look a little at the lower rated games, the lowest of which was Exploding Kittens with a rating of 2.7, ironically it’s the app my sister, brother and Dad play the most so clearly taste is not hereditary.
How are people finding this tiny nichest of the niche site you may ask? Well they’re coming mostly from Twitter and Facebook and then the rest shared evenly between Google and people coming directly to my site to see what’s new. 8bitmeeple.com has appeared in Google searches 58,000 times with the average position being 30 so all the way back on page 3 of the results, the thing people search for the most when they find us… Catan Classic vs Catan Universe, which just goes to show the power of the classic Catan still.
Most of you guys are from either the United States or the UK, however I want to shout out the lone person in Uruguay who found me. The city who reads the site the most, London of course but closely followed by Neuilly-sur-Seine (who’s based there??), it just goes to show board game app players are worldwide.
So there’s a bit of a breakdown of the first 50 reviews, a bit more about the site and a tiny bit about you lot. Thanks for reading and supporting the website, I hope it’s been useful in helping you decide which games to buy and if you need me to review something for you then don’t be afraid to drop me a message on Twitter and I’ll see if the game’s in my collect. I’m excited for the games to come this year and the next and even more excited about the next 50 reviews. I’ll see you at the 100 review overview and we can see what’s changed.
Thanks again – Matt – 8bitMeeple