Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Completeness:

  I think this game's design was tight and accomplished exactly what was described in the description for it. Especially for a 7drl there wasn't much in it that felt unfinished, each enemy had it's place and (almost) every ingredient had a real, meaningful use in a playthrough

  Aesthetics:
  

  The color choices and presentation for me was totally fine here. I only had 2 major issues that would've been massive improvements for me. 

  1. While learning the game, I had to constantly open the encyclopedia to reference and cross-reference ingredients. I wonder if there was a way that could've just been open on the screen at all times for the player to view.
  2. The message log only included things that the player did, I found that I had to deduce that monsters were finding and quaffing potions around the map, which was fine, but I didn't know what they were actually doing, which led to a few confusing turns where a "g" would just disappear off the map and I would have no clear idea why. Outside of the confusion, it would've added a "fun" factor to understand the craziness of these monsters just picking up random potions and drinking them if the game were to tell me what was happening.

  Fun:

  This game is definitely fun and unique, pure and simple. I opted only for 3 stars because, despite the awesomeness of brewing potions, I wish I had a bit more control over what went into the potions. Sometimes you'd get a "Tears of Grace" and "Venomlasher Fang" in your reagents list and I would be sad because those are oppositional reagents in my mind, and it would've been much more satisfying to create 2 useful potions instead of one that felt like a waste.

  Innovation:
  

  Even though crafting and alchemy aren't new concepts, this particular approach was very new and innovative to me. Having potion-brewing as the centerpiece of the game was an awesome design decision and using the mechanic was certainly satisfying!

  Scope:
  

  I think this game did an excellent job of maintaining a tight focus on theme and it's central mechanic. It didn't try to accomplish too much, and it didn't seem too basic either. Right in the goldilocks zone

  Roguelike:
  

  It's definitely a roguelike :)

• Completeness

  The encyclopedia is very buggy and this had a huge impact on how much I was able to enjoy the game. I had to physically resize my browser window every time I opened it, or it wouldn't show at all. The rest of the UI is OK, but I did rate this a 2/5 for having obvious, game-breaking bugs.

  Aesthetics
  

  It's very green, there is no visual feedback to show cause-and-effect, and I have to keep cross-referencing 12pt text. Mouseovers on the ingredients would have made this game twice as fun to play. I gave you a 2/5 here for a generally confusing UI and general look.

  Fun
  

  UI issues aside, this is a pretty interesting concept with lots of meaningful choices. I never got past level 5 in an hour of play, which made me think it was too difficult for a 7DRL, especially when combined with the opaqueness of enemy abilities (again, I'm not going to keep re-reading tiny text on a separate web page every time I see a "p") and the deadliness of getting poisoned.

  I liked the walls. Walls are good, I wish more people would do walls like this. Good walls.

  3/5 worth my time playing!

  Innovative
  

  The scoring rubric calls 3/5 "a neat twist on the usual mechanics," which I think exactly fits this game. I will say, though, that Cinco Paus treads a lot of the same ground with a lot more variety and polish. For the sake of generosity I'll assume you've never heard of Cinco Paus, and if not, please check it out because you'd like it!

  Roguelikeness
  

  Yep, it's a roguelike. 4/5

• Did not enjoyed it, maybe because I died to easy and was a lot of text. If that was your intent good work.

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