Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Most adorable game I've ever seen! It was a lot of fun running around with this duck. I don't think I was able to get to the actual gameplay though, because I was always blocked by some invincible enemy. I think the duck can't actually hurt anyone in the beginning, and I can never find 10 ducklings to buy an attack upgrade before I get walled off by an enemy.
• This game is just ducky in terms of writing and aesthetics, but the balance had me crying fowl. Completeness - 3/5: On the upside, lovely tile graphics, UI, working item accumulation, stat upgrades, and even a humorously written intro cutscene with fun character names. On the downside, wonky tile collision (the fence on the outside can be moved right through), unbalanced encounters, and the game lacked the ability to properly restart itself. I could not test the victory condition since the difficulty was so high. Aesthetics - 4/5: The overall presentation seems like you have a talent for visual design. The intro screen and UI elements in-game look good, and the Time Fantasy series was a pretty tileset to employ. Many good details were communicated in the on-screen stats. Though I suspect the water isn't intended to animate quite that way, and there were no extra-special features that would be needed to rate a 5/5. Fun - 2/5: While the roguelike fundamentals were solidly represented here, even adding an upgrade system, I found the balance to be quite unforgiving. Even on "I prefer romances" difficulty, enemies will take zero damage from Duck Norris's feeble pre-upgrade pecks. If the player encounters a snake too early in the run then it's pretty much over because they are impossible to circumvent even after stunning them with a quack. Neither can the player plan for the random placement of the all-too-essential bread crumbs and mumma-duck upgrade elements (chicks, eggs, the mumma ducks themselves). These balance issues frustrate the player (at least this one) and make Holy Duck! hard to recommend despite its pleasing aesthetics and writing. Innovation - 3/5: For the most part, this duck tale doesn't reinvent the wheel, but I did like the inclusion of cutscenes, the unique theme, and writing. How many roguelikes do you know star a flock of action hero parodies? Scope - 4/5: Holy Duck! was boldly executed with extra features (such as cutscenes and detailed UI elements) showing additional attention to detail that goes beyond an average scope. Though important missing features like being able to walk past the outer fence boundaries detract from this accomplishment somewhat. Roguelike - 4/5: Turn-based, grid-based, bumping to attack, item use, procedural map, procedurally placed enemies, even a fairly traditional-feeling food clock mechanic. Yup, it's a roguelike alright, albeit a fairly streamlined example. As proof, it runs into typical roguelike design challenges, such as what happens when characters move in lockstep, pathing issues, and the difficulty in balancing a food clock. Though this did not influence the scoring, something important to bear in mind for Unity Player Windows exports is that the end user's resolution options might not be suitable for the default full screen setting. I have an ultrawide monitor, and this non-standard aspect ratio did some weird things to the UI.
• Funny little game. Waterfowl have been on the rise lately. The cute aesthetic with 80's action movie 'tude is a nice contrast. I found it difficult at times to predict which cells I could move through. The initiative stat is interesting, I found it quite annoying that enemies could cut me off from moving, so I'm sure investing into this stat would have really helped my chances. It's very difficult, I'm unsure if its winnable.