Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Equipmentris is an incredibly fun take on turn-based party combat, a la Darkest Dungeon or classic JRPGs. The core mechanic of fitting tetris-style equipment pieces into varying grid patterns of equipment slots creates a very interesting system of equipment and stat diversity, while allowing player level and enemy difficulty to scale up in a satisfying and organic manner. In its current state, the game is quite simple but remains engaging due to its strong base mechanics. The game has a few noticeable bugs which do not diminish the game experience but do have a significant impact on balance ("infinite" item slots and other screwy item-to-slot fits). Unfortunately there were somewhat frequent crashes experienced in both the browser and the executable, but at least in browser the game remembered the last game state on restart so no progress was lost. The game's art takes on its own signature style, and the music was welcomed and somehow never got old; and all these elements came together to create an aesthetic experience greater than the sum of its parts, and which was a significant compliment to the player's experience. Unfortunately I could not give a max aesthetics score due to some clunkiness with the controls (particularly during the "Equip" phase), some annoyances with menu display (sometimes it's difficult to hover over one item while the characters bounce, and sometimes it wants to keep switching between the left and right sides of the screen), and to a lesser extent a UI issue where you can select certain items when the enemies are large enough to overlap. Equipmentris is not a true traditional roguelike but incorporates turn-based combat, permadeath, and procedural generation. I really adore this game :-)
• This game, at least the version that's imbedded on the page at the moment, is a rollercoaster. First I go, wow, this music is cool. This art is cool. This character building is cool. Then I lose right on Level 1. On my second attempt, the weapons offered deal twice the amount of damage (like, 10 instead of 6 or something), so I breeze through the first two levels, and lose on level 3. For a while I thought I'm doing something wrong, but after seeing a mage with 18 fire damage on level 2, who is also faster than me, I realized the fault is not mine. All is that is to say that visuals, audio, concept are all great, but the balancing is way off and just frustrated the shit out of me. I read in the comments that someone streamed it for a while, but couldn't easily find the recording to see what was different - did I just keep getting unlucky? Is this a updated imbalanced version? Am I dumb, and missed some obvious way to avoid my downfall? I don't know. One feature I could suggest in addition to balancing is to scout the upcoming enemies to decide on optimal equipment. It doesn't have to be full info, but some advance knowledge could improve strategizing. In terms of bugs / improvements, equipment fitting in weird spots has been called out, but I also want to add that when the player tries to equip something into a wrong slot, the item should go back to the inventory, rather than disappear and then reappear when I enter this screen again,