Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Once I passed the first test of actually hitting space on the intro screen, I encountered a lovely little artifact in Slumber. It took me about four attempts to put down the Arch-Gloop, although my minions apparently found it before I did. The minion's pathing was clever, probably a dijkstra map extended out from the placement of the rallying beacon that extended out a surprisingly long range, though I had to shove them through some crevices they refused to transverse themselves. Completeness - 3/5: For the most part, a very stable game with good graphics and even a musical score! It contains a working game loop with a complete procedurally-generated cave to explore and a victory and defeat condition that resets that loop. However, one of the major functions of the game, the ability for the players' avatar to attack, was either not working for me or working very unreliably or in an unclear manner (I managed to get a dagger animation to work once) so the whole hitpoints/attack/defense thing that was the whole point of collecting the chests was not working. Aesthetics - 4/5: It's hard to complain about such nice pixel graphics on a novel theme. The walls, characters, and avatar were nice pixel sprites, and I liked how the enemy blobs were made up of individual animated parts as well. The UI was minimalist but effective, complete with working text boxes and floating damage numbers, and the music added a lot to the sense of place. Fun - 3/5: There was not much to do other than lead my minions around, shove them into enemies, avoid the enemies myself, and collect chests that did not actually much for me. However, it was still a reasonably satisfying spelunk thanks in part to the reasonable variety of its parts. Innovation - 3/5: Trying to make a roguelike that incorporates predominantly minion-based fighting is a mildly unusual mechanic for the genre. The theme struck me as fairly uncommon, as did the related enemies, minions, and hero. Scope - 3/5: This fell far short of the original planned scope of, "a base-building survival roguelike about distinct parts archaeology and seeing the past in your dreams," and mostly ended up being, "a roguelite about exploring a cave system, recruiting minions, and slaying procedurally generated bug-eyes horror." However, for a 7.5DRL it was not a bad showing at all. Roguelikeness - 2/5: Though we could attempt to qualify this as a "roguelite" on the basis that it integrates procedural cave generation, enemy placement, chest placement, and treasure chest content, I am inclined to feel that the gameplay itself is more reminiscent of Pikmin than Rogue. It's a pausable real-time game of leading around minions, not particularly grid-based, no inventory management, no usable items, and most of the tactics revolve around manipulating hitboxes. Though you did not accomplish creating your base-building survival game inside of seven days, I have little doubt that your team would be capable of creating one if they wanted to continue.
• The game looks nice, but that's all it can be praised for. Your minions is basically your only fighting force, but pathfinding is very wonky. That's killing the last little bit of fun. Combat could have more visual feedback. Now it looks strange. In it's current state there is nothing new or exciting in this game. I'm expecting more from a solid 7drl. In it's current state the game doesn't even qualify as roguelite. Random terrain doesn't magically turn the game into roguelike/lite.