Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Enjoyed trying for better hi-scores and finding the text files in the chests. Game looks great and plays fluidly, with the energy system making it about where you move, and the score top right (I think) was based on how quickly the level is finished. Faster play means higher score but more likely to have YASD.   

• A traditional RL implementation enhanced with animated pixel art. Items are sparse, but abundant health keeps difficulty balanced. Strategic play is limited by requiring all enemies to be killed before going to the next level. The game leans into an energy mechanic, implementing consumables and showing an actual energy number in the UI. The mechanic adds another expendable resource, but the overall effect on gameplay is minimal. The pixel graphics give the traditional RL formula a clean, bright look. Sprites are animated and the tiling is sophisticated, with multiple layers and psuedo 3d shadows. The recasting of dungeon rooms and corridors to islands and bridges is clever and goes a long way to differentiating the game from a basic tutorial implementation.

• A nice little 7DRL, well-scoped! Rogue Island is based around an interesting rest mechanic whereby doing any action other than resting, even walking, draws down the hero's stamina, but attack power is purely dependent on current stamina, so there are items to help with stamina and hit points, lots of them, in fact. That said, the game seems fairly balanced, the main issue being the sheer amount of times it's necessary to pound the 'r' key to keep resting back to full stamina, and also continue doing that intermittently while exploring every inch of the map to kill all enemies before being allowed to the next floor. Hard to play for long stretches! It would help if key hold repeating was allowed, preferably set at a high rate, but it's not, so every bit of stamina requires yet another key press. The font is a little hard to read when used at smaller sizes, just a bit too lo-fi, but there isn't too much text anyway so that wasn't a huge hurdle. It does suit the graphics, though, which are pretty neat. (I did have one instance where what popped out of a chest was hidden behind a tree and I couldn't see what it was, and my inventory slots were full at the time so I couldn't pick it up, but it was probably another consumable I didn't really need anyway.)