Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• One Of Us comes with an interesting mechanic. You're sent out into the world to find golden fleas escaped from the royal circus. To find these flease, you head out into the world, making friends with all variety of companions who have unique abilities and don't always play nice together. But you take on the form of one of them if your party gets too big. After several plays, I've been unable to get all the fleas--my most is 3 after some 1-2 hours--and while it's entertaining, I wish it were more explicit in conveying what it is players needed to do to win. The game isn't bug-free either, but it runs stably enough for a weeklong competition. If you want a roguelikey game that plays a bit like an advanced digital board-game, and you like the risk-mitigation and hidden-information problems that roguelikes present, you should play this. Completeness: This game is complete and runs. There's a couple of decent bugs; sometimes, the core mechanic (becoming "one of us") doesn't actually trigger as it's supposed to, and once or twice a new level did not actually come up as it was supposed to. There's a few smaller glitch-points like this, and while they're not much by themselves, they add up. Aesthetics: This game is really pretty and the pretty is functional for the most part, and gets some extra points for the intro sequence. Fun: The game is fun the first few plays; it's fun to have the party management mechanic happening the entire time and to engage in risk-management (if I open this chest, what happens? what happens if X party member or potion combines with X party member?) Having to watch an unskippable intro sequence every play did hurt this some for me, and the overall endgame still feels mysterious to me, but not in a way that feels fun. Just telegraphing slightly more obviously what, exactly, the player is supposed to do to catch the flies would go a long way towards making this a solid "4" on the fun scale. Innovative: The game is definitely not hack and slash. It feels more like a rogue-like-ish board game than anything else. In a good way. Scope: It's about on part with what one generally expects from a 7DRL; the maps make it feel a bit on the high end. Roguelike: This game has procedural generation and plays with the hidden information problem well on an immediate "tactical" level, but only really "lite" on the whole.
• Definitely finished product, yet some bugs managed to slip into the release. Unskippable, long-ish intro in unacceptable ;) The game looks definitely pleasant with that low-poly aesthetics. The font could be a bit more readable, though. I never managed to catch all the golden flies. But what I did? I died in a hilarious way many times. For me, One of Us is a game about discovery, and I had great fun learning game mechanics. There are a lot of unlockable (by transforming into specific actor during a run) characters, but they don't have much impact on the gameplay style. I think I will play this game from time to time, and definitely would like to see new versions in the future.