Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Easily one of the most roguelike entries that I've played, which I enjoyed. The idea of customized spells in roguelikes comes up a lot, but this is a very strong execution. The game also communicates the idea of "squishy wizard" really well, both in good and bad: sometimes survival is entirely random, with you descending stairs directly into enemies. Spell crafting, the game's strength, is also its weakness: it makes gameplay incredibly slow, as well as clunky. Also, while I liked the visual style, some design choices make no sense: the textbox being read bottom-to-top is incredibly disorienting, and targeting is hard when you can't see the cursor under enemies. I listed a lot of negatives, but I'd still say the strength of the basic gameplay makes it worth trying out.
• I really like the idea here. There are so many opportunities for interesting interactions using the different combinations of elements to handle different enemies and enemy combinations. The aesthetic of the game is nice, and I like how the dungeon changes as you go down. Things like the water are a nice touch. Although I was able to get about five or six levels deep, I was not able to beat the game. The monsters are simply much, much too strong. I often die to a single enemy. The fact that each step to prepare a spell takes a turn is pretty harsh. I do like that the lichen just sit there and let you practice your spell-making. And you need a lot of practice-- the game does not communicate enough with the player. Sometimes I would make a spell and then target a monster and there would be no message-- did the spell fail? Was it out of range? Is it gone now or still active? If you imagine a new player making a spell for the first time, what information are they going to need in order to make decisions? The level generation also seems a little uneven-- I had levels that only took 4 steps to get through and others where I wandered for a good while without ever seeing an enemy. Of course, this is just a 7DRL, so some unevenness is expected. It definitely fulfills my requirements for being a traditional roguelike. I really liked the underlying structure of the game, and I gave it a high score for innovation. If the game did something interesting with every combination of elements and showed what was happening visually when the spell was used, it could be a very cool game. I can imagine an icy lightning bolt that freezes enemies and electrocutes everything in water, or a fire earth spell that does a lot of physical damage and turns water into steam. There are a lot of cool possibilities.
• I love roguelikes and I really like spell casting! I thought this entry had some good ideas, and hopefully you can spend some time adding to this one. Perhaps a few sound effects and maybe some further instructional text blocks would help. It didn't prevent me from running the game, but also noticed some Java exceptions in the console whenever I'd exit. Thanks for participating in the 7DRL! Hope you had some fun and enjoyed creating this entry!