Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• The artwork on the miniatures is professional level and the miniatures themselves are surprisingly complex. Even in black and white, the dungeons, with all their scenery and characters, resemble a high quality table top game. There's a variety of enemy types and each level is capped with a boss fight that features some interesting, but small, gameplay twist. Balance is shifted considerably in the player's favor, and understandably so. Play through of a single level might take ninety minutes. Playing with the back-to-square-one RL convention would be inconceivable. The length is a result of the player being responsible for all characters, including enemies, and processing the rules for the encounters. While the core mechanic is simple, there are a great number of layers of rules that sit on top. Where another game may have bugs, this one has only ambiguities. There are a few, although none is high impact enough to stop the game. The stock characters are very helpful, both to allow a quick start into gameplay, but also to give an idea to the player about what a character is supposed to look like. There's a variety of weapons, but their balance needs more tuning. Some character builds are obviously superior after only a few rooms. The overall impression the game leaves is less of Rogue than of a solitaire version of DnD (full circle I suppose.) One standout difference that carries over from the CRPG roots of the game is the webapp that runs levels. It doesn't go as far as to move enemies for you, but it does remember rooms after you return to them with every undefeated enemy and unopened chest right where you left them. This hybrid approach seems to have a lot of potential. I don't think it gets used to its fullest here, but it's a remarkable first draft.