It's no problem. I also get what you mean about the text feeling "sterile," and I'll admit that's been my weak point for a while. I'm a compulsive proofreader and like to polish my work as much as possible (not with any AI, just manually rereading and making edits), but I have a bad habit of overdoing it. So genuinely, thanks for taking the time to talk about the article and explain your criticisms.

I’m not sure why your last comment was deleted. I honestly appreciate constructive feedback, and I can promise you this wasn’t generated by AI. It’s all flesh, blood, and bad takes on my side of the screen. With that said, I do want to address a couple things I wrote in my previous comment before the thread disappeared.

First, I wasn’t saying Maze Game came out before Pac-Man, but that it was a well-known example of what the genre looked like before Pac-Man released. You’re absolutely right about it not being an arcade game, but I wanted to give an example that more people would recognize than The Amazing Maze Game. In hindsight, it probably would have been less confusing if I used another arcade game as reference, but Maze Craze is one of the only ones I was already familiar with.

Second, I sent a message to the editorial team about the weird header issue at the end of the article. Haven’t received a response yet, but it’s definitely not supposed to be listed like that. I might have to contact them again if it doesn't get fixed.

As I mentioned in my original comment, we format the section titles using different “header types,” and I’m pretty sure that I accidentally clicked on the wrong one. That last section was meant to be a standalone paragraph to end the article on a positive note, but the formatting error caused it to appear as a list item.

I threw in Maze Craze just as a better-known example of the early (pre-Pac-Man) “Maze Game” format, especially since The Amazing Maze Game is pretty obscure by comparison. Sorry if it caused some confusion.

Also, the conclusion being listed as #1 is a formatting issue on my part. I think I accidentally used the wrong header type on the section title, which is why it’s appearing as part of the list instead of being a completely separate section. I’ll contact the editorial team and ask them to fix it. Thanks for letting me know.

That’s my bad, and thanks for letting me know. It has been a while since I played some of those games, and I forgot that they weren’t all fully turn-based (In the case of Pillars, I think I got it mixed up with the sequel).

I still recommend all the games mentioned in this article, but you’re right about those examples.