Just to comment (I am the reviewer; if anyone doubts this, I sent Steve some emails discussing the review, prior to publication. from the address I use for my professional work, and he can always write to that address and get a confirmation I'm me. Or something.), I'm glad the review was received favorably here, because I really like Aurora -- witness how many posts I've made long after the review was turned in. Aurora is a "keeper" for me.
![Smiley :)](http://aurora2.pentarch.org/Smileys/classic/smiley.gif)
Reviewing is tricky business, because it's not just "I like this!" but "Does this meet the goals it sets for itself?", "How does it compare to similar games, including not just genre but budget and design goals?", and "Will the target audience like it, whether or not I do?" and so on. A good reviewer is both personal AND objective, a very interesting balance to try to keep. As "this guy playing the game", I can overlook the bugs and errors, but as a reviewer, I have to factor them in, especially when they're not just things like "Terraforming on planets orbiting G2 stars produces only half as much gas as it's supposed to during the second week of each month ending in 'R'", but database errors, "Invalid Use Of Null", and a lot of fairly basic things like trying to access elements of empty arrays if there's no items selected in a list (I get this all the time in the missile/launcher setup screens). As a programmer, I appreciate how hard it is to dot every t and cross every i, and VB doesn't have a strong enough object model that you can easily create logic to dim out buttons if there's no valid selection without having to hand-code it in all the time, so I want to be clear I am in awe, awe I say, of what Aurora does and that it works AT ALL, never mind if it works WELL. Nonetheless, my editor would rip me a new one if I didn't put some emphasis on very in-your-face bugs and she started getting hatemail from people asking if "those so-called reviewers ever used the software". We do.
I'm a little surprised that people are surprised PCWorld covered Aurora -- I've done reviews of Dwarf Fortress, ADOM, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and other smaller/indie games with dedicated communities and deep gameplay. Reading comments in this thread, I'm getting the impression it's assumed "mainstream" sites don't cover games like that (or try to compare them to this week's triple-A title that was advertised on the Superbowl, and whine that there's not enough 3D explosions), so I'd like to do something I almost NEVER do and make a request. I get paid a flat rate per review, I don't get any kind of per-click revenue, but, of course, PCWorld does make their money off of ad views and the like, and they have to make decisions about what reviews to assign based on what's popular. So, if you want to, please spread links to this review to forums where people might not even think to check PCWorld. The more people show interest in a review, the more likely it is I can get assigned to review similar products, as opposed to yet another disk defragmenter utility. (And I want to be perfectly clear... I'm only asking that if you're an active member of a community or forum that might be interested in these kinds of reviews, and you genuinely think linking to them would be valuable or entertaining to your fellow gamers, that you let people know they're out there. I despise any kind of shills; it's instantly obvious when Captain Post Count=0 shows up in a forum and writes something like 'hey i no u lik gamez i found this game its cool go chek it out".)