Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• I played versions 1.0.1.2 and 1.0.1.3. If there is a goal I couldn't find it. I got to floor 19.
  Scrolling zooms the map in/out.

  Completeness 3
  Depositing gold from above an altar causes the gold count to flicker but seems to have no other effect.
  Enemies will sometimes disappear despite being in the light.
  If there is a goal I couldn't find it.

  Aesthetics 2
  WASD to move. I wish you could move with arrow keys as well.
  The rest command passes multiple turns. Walking into walls passes one turn, so this is not a tradeoff, just a one time gotcha.
  Tiles sometimes overlap so that what looks like a wall is actually walkable floor space.
  There is a long delay before stats get updated, a long delay before lighting gets updated, and a long delays as the map scrolls to catch up with the player character. It is visually unappealing and makes the game annoying to play.

  Fun 2
  Slow moving, especially with the game's delayed reaction to everything.
  Decisions about when to run and what altars to support.
  With no apparent goal it seems pointless.

  Innovation 3
  Different enemy factions fight each other.

  Scope 3
  A few enemy types and weapons.
  Wide open or room and corridor maps.

  Roguelikeness 4
  Turn/grid based
  Random maps
  Permafailure
  RPG stats and weapons

• Strange game... It's really hard to understand what's going on. As far as I can tell, there are enemies of different colors and coats of different colors. You can switch coats and enemies of the same color as your own are fighting for you. In theory this could be fun. But implementation... Spinning view makes me dizzy. It's often hard to see what's going on. Coats are rare. You can easily die before you even find a new coat. Monsters do not easily leave area of the altar of their color. So luring differently colored enemy to a monster of your color is very cumbersome. Line of sight calculation is very bugged. It is somehow delayed and it's easy to miss a turn because it's not immediately visible.

• On my best run of this game, I got to level 12. I decided not to keep trying after about 45 minutes of play because later levels seemed to just be more of the same, and no win condition was stated in the instructions.

  I think this is a promising concept, but I didn't feel like the factions did much for me in practice. I felt like I could only take a couple of strategies:

  1. Switch colors every time I saw a differently colored monster
  2. Fight everything to gain XP and become a badass, ignoring the faction mechanic

  Of course, #2 is why I eventually died, but #1 isn't really a fun mechanic for me. And with no goal in mind, I didn't feel motivated to optimize for making it to a certain level.

  So while this isn't a standout entry to me, I did feel like it was worth my time to try out.

  Completeness

  Polished, balanced, no bugs that I could see. 4/5.

  Aesthetics
  

  Intuitive UI, good-looking, nothing weird or out of place. Definitely one of the best UIs this year. 4/5

  Fun
  

  Difficulty was bimodal for me. Either I died on the first level, or I was good to go for a long time. The level 1 enemies seem really unbalanced.

  I never felt like I was able to predict how hard a fight would be before I had either already killed the enemy, or was in deep trouble.

  It seemed like some of the armor was better than the other armor but I wasn't able to swap it out to see if I already had full armor slots.

  So given the blandness of the melee combat, balance issues, and not feeling like the factions mechanic was fun for me, I'm going for a 3/5 here.

  Innovation
  

  A neat twist on the usual mechanics. In practice doesn't seem to have a huge effect, so 3/5.

  Scope
  

  Pretty much what you'd expect from a 7DRL. 3/5

  Roguelikeness
  

  Is clearly a roguelike. 4/5