Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• FallingCarefully is an elegant, arcadey game of space travel that appears to be largely built on accurate Newtonian laws of gravitation. The game felt complete, well-polished, and had no noticeable bugs. There may be some mild balance concerns but it's more likely that I lack skill at the game. The game looks beautiful. There's a minimalistic simplicity to the color palette and visual portrayal of the levels, coupled with the feeling of just floating through space, allowing the forces of nature and the universe to guide you, that creates a certain tranquility and calmness for the player... until half the system explodes and you are forced to watch as you are pulled uncontrollably into a vast explosion, unheard in the silence of space. The movement is natural and organic; the player is only along for the ride, making minor adjustments to the trajectory but never truly in control.
• Besides a randomly-generated asteroid field, there isn't too much very Roguelike about the gameplay of Falling Carefully, which if anything traces its lineage even further back to Spacewar and Asteroids. Graphics are a visually appealing mix of ASCII and simple polygons, although the use of ASCII is actually not particularly appropriate here since the characters do not seem to directly correspond to hit-box sizes, making it difficult to judge when you're going to hit something. Controls are easy to pick up, despite not being fully explained. The main problem with the game is that it is very, very difficult, often to the point of being unfair or even impossible. Your momentum very rapidly builds up to Ridiculous Speed, and while you can arrest this a little by turning this will rapidly deplete your fuel and leave you going in the wrong direction. Your ship could use some reverse thrusters to enable breaking. However, the main issue is not so much the speed but the fact that - while you *can* zoom - you can't zoom out far enough to see what's coming with sufficient time to react to it. Enemies, however, can see you from well off-screen and send a hail of missiles your way (which is a tactic you yourself shouldn't use, because chain-explosions of missiles are a thing). Very frequently, the game started me off either headed directly into an asteroid or with an enemy turret already firing at me, leading to a fiery death with nothing I could do about it. Taking a little more inspiration from Roguelikes and allowing you to pause or even slow down time to give you a chance to plan your next steps would be a big improvement.
• That game is hard. By design, probably, but it could use more balance. It's easy to fly off the cluster and avoid risky maneuvers next to the rocks. Except that, I didn't encounter bugs or unfinished features. I like the aesthetics. There is elegance in simplicity. Game is fun, but in the same way that proofs of concepts are fun - due to learning new, interesting mechanics. Physics is nice, maneuvering around the rocks is satisfying, but FallingCarefully is just too hard. It punished player's mistakes, shooting things down is problematic from the distance, but in the close range there is high risk of being consumed by an explosion, and the explosions itself remain active too long. That said, I had fun, definitely. It definitely brings something new to the table, even if that's more roguelite than roguelike...