Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• A plaftormer with limited roguelike elements but a very charming visual style and great music/sound. The room layouts are selected randomly from a pool of the stage you are on: however, it's only large enough to occasionally show same rooms in different order. A more important randomization is of what kind of animal friend boomerang you'll get to rescue from a cage: you may find ducks (?), which quickly fly straight ahead when thrown before returning; frogs, which immediately drop down and then slowly leap forwards unless you collect them/move far enough away to auto-drag them back, and jays (?), which are between the two. However, rooms with cages, rooms where you release animals to get upgrades or healing, and the boss rooms all occur in set intervals (and in strict order for boss rooms), so the game feels like it would have lost little, or perhaps even gained, as a traditional platformer. Even so, it's a very neat platformer for a jam game. Movement and jumping feel just right; if there's one issue with controls, it's that the "hitbox" for interacting with cages or upgrade stalls is too precise, forcing you to stand exactly in the centre to achieve what you want. With gameplay in general, there's often an amusing choice between jumping in front of/behind the robots and tossing faster ducks, or getting above them and dropping frogs onto them. Making trade-offs between the power of your throws or healing and paying for either with what is effectively your "ammo capacity" is also an unusual mechanic. Ultimately, the best approach appears to consist of staying balanced and never upgrading so much you are down to a single animal, but also making sure you regularly improve damage while not letting HP get too low. (There are also speed upgrades, but those appear much less useful in comparison.) All in all, this is a very nice game and I am glad it exists, even if I am unsure if the best future for consists of becoming a deeper roguelite, or a more extensive traditional platformer.
• This is an action platformer. It's fun to play, and for a first game in Unity it is really well done, but this is not a roguelike in any way, shape or form.