The Great Pharaoh comments:

By: kitty coleman

kitty coleman — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:05:22 -0400

I was ok, not very original. not real impressed with the construction. All in all game was good

By: JerryB

JerryB — Tue, 08 May 2012 02:30:33 -0400

I tried changing resolution and using the window view to fix the problem I was having with some graphics. The window was too tall for my 1920 x 1080 monitor and the buttons appeared (or rather didn't appear) below the bottom of the screen. I was unable to move the window high enough to get at the buttons so I couldn't change the settings back. Closing and restarting made no difference. The game is now deleted. ...........................Moderator comment..................................... Thanks for feedback.

By: Kheldar

Kheldar — Sun, 06 May 2012 19:44:55 -0400

Nice game but boring. Try making us put the key puzzle together or add something in between levels.

By: IsItBroke

IsItBroke — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:56:47 -0400

Thank You GGOTD , WR and Stars Ashes for this game. W7 x64 extracted fine and ran fine I played through to the Construction of the City gates without any issue. Again not in a VM but directly on my main PC. Will test this on an x86 tomorrow. Can't understand why others are having issues. My host and VMs have very little installed (its all portable), I clean my registry regularly and rarely have a issue with anything. Found the game a bit boring maybe just not my kind of game. Graphics were good , game worked well and I had no issues. 7/10 Lacks languages and more variation. But fine for those that enjoy this style of game play. .........................Moderator comment.................................. Thank you for your feedback IsItBroke, you ht it right on the nail. ;-) I wish I was so fastidious with my computers. I've got around 14 Terabytes of disc space on my desktops not including externals, most of it backed up files, images, games and music plus another 8 or so Terabytes of external hard drives and innumerable DVD's and CD,s with backed up data. The though of purging a lot of it is just too much, though I reckon about half of the files are just taking up space. The kleptomaniac in me just can't be helped, :lol:

By: phatkhat

phatkhat — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:29:53 -0400

I like the play, the art is beautiful, and the music is great. BUT. The timer is NOT great. I hate it when developers fail to think about how people play. We play for fun, and we all have our own style. I like to play at my own pace, and when I get a game like this one, where I can't get past about level 6... Well. I uninstall. There are plenty of match 3's out there that have untimed mode that I would never pay for one that doesn't. .........................Moderator comment.................................. Thank you for your feedback I agree with you about the un-timed mode. I too like to take my time as I've always seen games as a relaxant and not a competitive thing. (don't get me wrong, I did win at some sports usually athletics and running :) )

By: Swan

Swan — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:10:51 -0400

Nice to know I haven't been forgotten :P I no longer have a website reviewing professional software for a fee. I became very ill and couldn't keep up with the necessary marketing, research and reviews. I still provide occasional journalism to Now Public, but even that is sketchy for me these days. My email is my real email, so feel free to write there anytime. xx ~ Swan ............................Moderator Comment........................... I'm really sorry to hear about your ill health. That must have been really upsetting considering the amount of work you put in. I'll email you soon and we can catch up. I hope to see you around more often. We could do with someone with a good writing style and a different opinion to my own (though I don't tend to write as much about the actual game as i used to; more often than not including other information such as fault finding and alternatives; plus of course my request to the community for more feedback. I still hold that if we received more high quality feedback about the games given away here the game giveaway reputation for useful feedback would grow and we'd get more developers coming to the site.

By: Tamsharleycat

Tamsharleycat — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:59:45 -0400

Found out they put it under c:/games. So for those who don't know where to look try there first. Hope it helps. Thanks again. ..........................Moderator comment.............................. Hi Tamsharleycat; you must be relatively new to the game giveaway project? Most game giveaways are the same w.r.t. no shortcut. I always post details of the installation at the beginning of my review which normally will be found at the beginning of the comments section. I've been posting a potted review since about 2007. The following was posted today:

Installation The Great Pharaoh downloads to a 44.5MB zip file that unpacks to a wrapped setup and activation module plus a read me that contains details of the installation and the terms and conditions. Once installed the game uses 81.8Mb of disc space. I’ve tested the game on all my installations and it works on XP Pro 32 bit, Vista Home Basic 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 64 bit, Win 7 Pro 64 bit and Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit installations. There’s no shortcut installed so make a note of where the game is installed to so that you can manually create a desktop shortcut. By default it installs to the following path: C:\Games\TheGreatPharaoh Registration Registration is automatically done when you install the game. You will require an active internet connection to complete activation. If you have any problems see the section above the review.

You'll notice that I mention where the game is installed to and why you should make a note of where it is installed to. Generally games are either installed to C:\Games or C:\Program files (x86)\ depending who the publisher is. Two of our bigger contributors Alawar and Playrix entertainment always place the games in their own folders as well i.e. C:\Program files (x86)\Alawar\ & C:\Program files (x86)\Playrix Entertainment\. You'll get the hang of it the more you visit this site. The project owners used to post games every day until the recession hit back in 2008 when it went to weekends only following a brief stint in the main giveaway section where it originated from back in October 2006. The game giveaway project was born on the 2nd Dec 2006 and the daily offerings stopped at the end of March 2008; since then we've received games on a Saturday & Sunday; though occasionally contributions from the various developers who support the project dry up. A lot of the games we get now are repeats, but on average I'd say we get never before given away games 50% of the time. We've actually had a really good run of excellent games over the last several weeks, and there hasn't been a drought since about April last year apart from the odd weekend and a few days. There's a whole range of games given away from all genres of arcade games. We don't get the large sized triple a games though as these would bottleneck the giveaway servers. On average depending upon what game is given away, there can be up to 100 games being downloaded at any one time from the project, so you can imagine the bandwidth involved. Depending on the game we've seen download numbers vary from a low of around 5 thousand to over 25 thousand games on any one day. p.s. the above is just a friendly introduction to this project. Happy gaming. ;-)

By: Tamsharleycat

Tamsharleycat — Sun, 06 May 2012 16:55:37 -0400

Ok, installation supposedly is ok. Problem it doesn't let you create a desktop icon while installing like most programs do. So where do I find it on my computer to create one? Otherwise seems like a nice game. Just hope I can find it to play it and see. Thanks. .........................Moderator comment.................................. See my comment in your next post below. :D

By: Swan

Swan — Sun, 06 May 2012 14:49:40 -0400

Installed and activated easily enough on my Win 7 machine but that's where the good news ends. Bad sound file and continuous flickering screen which I had to close down manually via task manager and even then I had to use the "kill process tree" option. What a mess! I don't usually have any problems with the games - software on the GaotD site sometimes, but never the games. All my drivers etc are automatically updated but I did double check to make sure and all is well there, same with my audio. Microsoft also popped up wanting me to send the file to them,(which I did). I've also never heard of the publisher, which in itself is not damning but they *do call themselves experts. Following quote taken from their website: "We use new ideas in old-school arcade games! Innovation 3D game engines, opens new capabilities and visual quality. STAR ASHES has professional designer, programmer and software developer. Our experts have participated in many projects and have vast skills and experience in the game industry." Since they have publicly stated their credentials, it would be nice if the developers themselves would answer all the problems here - which would be the courteous thing do, instead of leaving everyone hanging, wondering whether or not they will get an answer within the remaining 8 hours. I'm a match 3 junkie (as well as many other games including all those games from the *excellent game company - EA Games [paid for]) and must have at least 4 or 5 dozen games, so I'm disappointed not to be able to give this a whirl. Thank you for the tips on "My Play City" ... free games as many as you want all day, every day! Excellent! As previously warned though, make sure you unclick the option to make them your home page when you launch the game. Unfortunately this shows up every time you want to play, but it's no biggie. Just know that it's there. To close, I'm surprised with the problems stated by myself and others with today's game, which is clearly at odds with the thumbs up. P.S. Hello to my dear friend White Wabbit <3 ........................Moderator comment......................... Oh my god, I've often wondered about how you were doing. It's been a long time since you me and Merril used to write game reviews. As you can see i'm still here. In fact, never gone away. Life is still stuck with the legal battle for compensation. Almost 7 years now. Thankfully I've finally got a court date next March. Yeah! Do you still review software? I seem to remember you were doing alright with your web site, but I've not visited it in a long time simply because I have since upgraded all of my computers and didn't save my favorites so lost the link. I'll email you (assuming the email you've used for your account isn't a disposable one)??? :) w.r.t. the developers answering queries, I agree; it would certainly increase the respect the community has for them and I reckon would increase sales as they do have a couple of decent games.

By: MercuryPDX

MercuryPDX — Sun, 06 May 2012 12:52:16 -0400

I have this from a previous giveaway (v 1.0.3). I like the music, but the gameplay is kind of ho-hum. It doesn't look like much has changed.