Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Glad to see broughlikes getting entered as part of the jam! I also love the charming visuals and sound of this entry. It was easy to pick up on and get playing, and everything was intuitive. The core chaos magic idea is interesting & compelling, it's easy to get a sense of how to use it, but I can see it being fleshed out for a lot of depth. I think you paired that well with the magic cubes, points for enemy kills, and the enemy AI you chose. You manage to bring some of the fun of the broughlike formula and I did enjoy the discovery of all the abilities, but beyond that you haven't yet hit on making a deep system. The spells end up being relatively basic, essentially they feel like just 3 types: the stuns, confusion which is pretty close to the stuns, and the damage spells. Beyond that the stun spells are only really useful when on a 1 distance so you can get a free hit (casting already inherently adjusts parity), and confusion even less so. There's also maybe not just enough to control, it's good gameplay to figure out exactly how to match your spell loadout to the current floor, but if there's a mismatch or power imbalance there isn't really any mechanic to relieve that pressure besides just descending. Similarly the range that enemies are possibly to manipulate to is pretty limited short of burning casts to adjust parity. So often there's just not a great solution to an enemy pattern to figure out. The game doesn't punish this, you've done well to give leeway and the ability to just descend floors, but it also stretches the time between interesting decisions a fair bit. Likewise there's no real incentive or structure to hit multiple enemies with a spell, only the reward of a saved cast. So mostly I didn't engage any planning on that level and just worked my way through enemies one at a time. Structure wise, there's not much fleshed out. Not the worst for this type of game in a Jam setting, but the low difficulty (a benefit if anything) + seemingly infinite depth lets you mostly disengage from the broader systems, and if there's any real danger you can just fish for easy levels to restore health. Overall it's fun to engage the puzzle-y nature of a broughlike, and the cute packaging makes that work on some level. It's not currently deep or strategic, but with the features in place it's a great base to flesh out the game mechanics and establish more.
• Completeness: 4 The main idea is well represented here. We have several types of spells that are randomized each level. The game achieves a wonderful sense of balance. The player must choose when to pick up a magic cube, when to move on, and when to stay and clear a level for more health. It would be great to have a description of the spells in game. Aesthetics: 3 Movement animation has a nice bounce to it. The sprites are awesome and the soundtrack is peppy. The environment tiles and spell animations don't quite match the vibe. Swapping out the level tiles and a few animations would really bring the everything together. Fun: 3 If you're into puzzles, you'll enjoy this one for sure. Innovative: 2 Nothing outstandingly new here, but that's no knock on the game. Scope: 3 This game is simple and can be fully discovered within 30 minutes of playing. That's just right for a 7drl. More monster types and variations in player movement would be great. Roguelike: 2 It's definitely more of a puzzle game but has some features of a traditional RL such as random levels and permadeath.
• Completeness 3 No bugs were encountered during the course of play. It did feel like there were a few features missing though, for instance escalating difficulty, and an ending. It was quite easy to go infinite because of this, which negatively affected the experience significantly. Aesthetics 4 Each enemy type was visually distinct, and each spell was easily recognisable from every other. The clear display of each arrow with each spell was very easy to understand, and left no room for confusion. Fun 3 There was plenty of room for tactical planning and interesting decision making here. The combination of the wait and spell keys was a cool bit of design, making waiting cost a resource was particularly significant given the player attacks first nature of the combat. The game did get quite repetitive after a while though, as there didn't seem to be much in the nature of progressive difficulty. Innovative 3 The randomised abilities were cool, and definitely quite an innovation on your more traditional roguelike. Similar things are relatively common in broughlikes though, and it would have been cool to see some really crazy ideas experimented with. Scope 3 Quite reasonably scoped, a good broad range of enemies and spells. Roguelike 4 While definitely more of a broughlike, I feel like they're definitely closely aligned with roguelikes enough to count here.