Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• A submission actually designed to run on Gameboys, so its retro appearance and sound is impeccable, but it is cumbersome everywhere else. If you play the web version, you should know that while directional movement and menu selections are still bound to arrows, like you would expect, the "Confirm/main action" button is not Space, or Enter, or anything else reasonable, but J, while the other, B button is K (used for entering the inventory). That aside, Weldon has some other notable technical flaws. In particular, if your character gets killed and you try playing again, the game will most likely freeze right as you enter the second area, and this only appears fixable by reloading the page. On the other hand, if you do beat the game, and choose to loop it, then entering the inventory and trying to use an item there (a choice between guaranteed damage to the enemy with Fireball, Time Warp and healing) no longer works and tends to throw you back to the start of the level for whatever reason. The game has real-time movement and modal combat which is triggered upon running into on-map enemies and is about hitting the slider at the right time, and you only take damage if you strike and miss. There are technically two enemy types (werewolf-like monsters and their seemingly human leader at the end) but both behave exactly the same both on-map and on the combat screen, and you only need to enter the totem at the end to win. The game is supposed to be procedurally generated, but having played multiple runs, this is barely apparent: out of the five screens a run will consist of (intro screen with your car, first, second and third maps with enemies, and the final screen with the "boss" and the totem), only maps 3 and 4 appear to occasionally get replaced with different ones, and this only slightly complicates the overall goal (avoid the enemies you can, hit with the slider to death those you cannot.) Altogether, it's an amusing novelty, but not a very good game.
• Graphics are nice, and GameBoy games have a lot of nostalgia for me. I like the bitcrunchy music as well. The combat works well enough, and I did get better at it over time. I'd like to see more contrast on the health bars, so that you can follow them in your peripheral vision. I wanted to attempt a full-clear run, but there are a number of bugs, many of them associated with the item menus which made it impossible. I would like to see procedural generation and even a grid-based movement, making it more strategic. It's pretty awesome that this runs on a Gameboy, very neat and very impressive.
• There seemed to be a lot of neat ideas here, the push mechanic and the weird timing combat mechanic, but the controls weren't intuitive, the combat seemed very random and inconsistent, and I often got stuck on the movement screen and had to restart the game. With more time and care this could have been an interesting game.