Tough call. I get a small taste of what he went through. You start to question the value of the game when you get reviews like this (but 10x worse for a top free game):

>Garbage ★ by XxlCraiglxX - Version 1.6 - Jun 13, 2014

>It's so nice to have this hive-mind community full of hipsters and morons raving about the worst goddamn games. Same thing happened with Angry Birds and Flappy Birds. You people are disgusting. Horrible unwashed masses of brainless consumers. Hey morons, take a step back and really consider the piece of crap you rated 5 stars. No, really, just take a moment.

The entire experience has been a roller coaster. Every time ADR hits a top spot, I dream about a future where I don't have to work a 9-5. But then it drops, and those dreams are taken away. That being said, 50k a day would definitely bring me to that goal quickly (just not the case for me).

Regarding Reviews - you can always smile (giggle? :-) at those responses given that you have (thousands of?) people like me, who has played games on every platform for 15+ years, has a very generous budget and has a pretty good portion of the AAAs by my console, but found ADR (on the web) to be one of my top 10 games in the last couple years, probably behind Jelly Defense and Don't Starve, but definitely ahead of GTA V in terms of sheer visceral pleasure.

The Apple Bar Geniuses at the Store in Palo Alto all loved it as well.

I hope just one of our heartfelt loves can equal at least a thousand haters, who, as we all know, just gotta hate. :-)

All the nice reviews do indeed raise spirits. The most wonderful moments are when I get an email from a kid that is now inspired to get into programming and start building games. So yes, thank you for the kinds words! :fistbump:

Reading reviews must be soul-destroying. Just really crushing.

Perhaps a few indie authors could collaborate and write a blog article about it?

I imagine the "feedback" emails of large software projects must be similar.

It was definitely soul crushing the first 100 times. The UK is particularly critical. I've gotten used to seeing "dull, rubbish, pretentious, scam" from UK reviews. Still stings just a little bit though.

"Big Up" for ADR from the UK, you'd have thought a more positive response from the home of Level 9 !