Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Going to mix up my format a bit, for in case the person reading this has read any previous reviews. Short snippet followed by the "The Good" and "What could've been Better":

  Summary: This was a surprisingly wonderful little game with a well thought-out set of mechanics, pleasant art and a song that both fit AND didn't get irritating. The player inches their way through a turn-based SHMUP (Shoot 'Em Up) style game where the action plays out in little "real-time" snippets, thought the player doesn't have any actual control during the real-time moments. The game DOES have an end, though it doesn't come in any sort of climactic form, the game just kind of ends after cycling through the same area a few times.
  

  The Good

  • Excellent and innovative gameplay. I just picked up a game on steam that does a turn-based SHMUP style, but haven't tried it yet so this game was my first experience with it.
  • Great art and catchy, non-irritating tune.
  • Fun upgrades that had a meaningful impact on gameplay. Never tried "slow" engines, though, seems like faster would always be better
  • Good variety of enemies, no feel of same-ness among them

  What Could've Been Better

  • The controls were a bit wonky. You got used to it eventually, and perhaps it was meant as a skill component, but the player always needed to adjust where they actually clicked to account for the screen's forceful march forward. This resulted in many unintentional and unwanted collisions early on while the muscle memory developed
  • Enemies would semi-frequently just disappear in a bit of a buggy way.
  • The ending was a bit confusing. I just saw the rocks that spelled "End" 3 times and then the game just closed (or crashed?)

• Great mashup of a shmup and a roguelike. Tricky to get the hang of at first but once you do, the quasi-turn based nature comes very naturally. A lot of content for a 7DRL. Graphics and controls mesh seemlessly - an all around amazing effort. The gameplay can feel a little choppy at times, but I think that is an artifact of the main concept - with a little more smoothness around the edges this is definitely a concept worth expanding. 

• A great idea and reasonably good implementation. I've always wanted a way to turn an action game into a turn based game by automatically pausing at intervals, and this game gives me precisely that. I would buy this game if it had more depth/content.

• An interesting experiment in combining turn-based roguelike gameplay with a side-scrolling shoot-em-up, but an awkward control system and a failure to exploit the turn-based mechanics for any new gameplay mean that it ends up being a not entirely successful blend.

  COMPLETENESS
  Seems to be reasonably complete, but not a great deal of polish (no title or game over screen, slightly weird formatting on menus).  No bugs encountered.

  AESTHETICS
  Nice graphics (although its fairly difficult to tell what many things are supposed to be) and music, but really suffers on its control scheme, which is clunky and painful to use, requiring you to either use an awkward number-keys and mouse combo or select from a menu every single move.

  FUN
  There is potential for a fun experience here, but in implementation the combination of side-scrolling shooter and roguelike ends up stripping all of the enjoyment out of both of them.  The chief culprit is the control scheme, which turns even simple movement into a repetitive slog and - because the point you click isn't the point you'll move to, it's the point on the screen you will be at after scrolling - makes evading obstacles far more irritatingly difficult than it needs to be.  Ultimately making the game turn-based adds nothing and I ended up wishing it were just a straightforward real-time shooter!

  INNOVATION
  Shoot-em-up Roguelikes have been done before, but are still fairly rare and the precise implementation details here are quite novel.

  SCOPE
  About what I'd expect from a 7DRL - a reasonable variety of enemies and upgrades.

  ROGUELIKE
  Takes some limited roguelike elements, but is really more of a straightforward shooter made turn-based.  Even the procedural generation is quite limited, recycling the same pre-built chunks of level over and over again.