Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• This game was interesting and I think could be built into something that is really !Fun!. Here are a few of my notes: - The only mechanics were a dash? Would be interesting to see what else can be done to make this more challenging. - Not clear if the shards were "consumable" or just collected? - No way to dodge aerial damage? With some better UI elements and descriptions, this could be a huge hit!
• * Very ambitious game! * Seemed rather too generous with flasks, which made it fairly easy * Map would be helpful! As would some more lighting. * Would like some more challenging / varied monsters
• An extremely awkward attempt at making a Soulslike. All it has is one attack with your sword, stamina, dash, healing flask, three enemy types, one boss, one environmental prop (!) and 4 slots for procedurally generated crystals of variable power that buff HP/stamina/damage/flasks or some combination of thereof. Even those are borrowed from Diablo: the one unusual idea is that absorbing souls of different enemy types buffs different stats. There's not even actual permadeath, in favor of Souls-style revival with some progression. Altogether, very little about the game is fun, or appears to work as intended. Giants are very rare, yet are the easiest enemy, as you can hit them once and step away before they react, not even needing to run or dash. On the other hand, the basic "goblins" are much more likely to inflict damage: up until you find damage upgrade crystals, a single attack from your sword leaves them with a trace HP without slowing them down, and letting them get a hit in unless you turn and run right after your first strike. Finally, mages are straight-up impossible to kill without sustaining at least some damage: their projectiles are homing, and while they can be easily outrun, they cast them faster than you can swing your sword, cannot be interrupted and always require 2 attacks to kill. Luckily, the actual damage is low and you get extra flasks every few kills, so that damage is soon trivialized. Same goes for the actual boss, the Reaper: it's near-impossible to simultaneously attack it and avoid the spin of its scythe, so it quickly kills unupgraded characters: if you have found four reasonably strong crystals, however, you can just tank its attacks and swing at it until you get an abrupt "Thanks for playing!" After you find the right upgrades, the real challenges is finding the boss: you need to find a destroy a specific statue that can spawn anywhere in an invariably very large level, every single part of which looks exactly the same. In all, this game is not even the best Souls-like submitted to this jam. There's very little to see here.