Judge feedback

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• Metaprogression-based roguelite with a surprising amount of content and great aesthetics, but not enough testing to make it feel good. Right now, it has zero qualms about spawning you right next to one or several monsters, whether when you start, or when going through the portals - it is even possible to enter the portal in a wounded state, and hear a death sound before the next island has even finished generating, as your character was spawned that close to a monster. Since, you can never heal, death is inevitable, and the goal is to instead kill enough monsters of each type (or take photos of them, but that may be a joke option, since it does not appear to have any advantages even for data collection) to fill out an encyclopedia, a task that is meant to be completed over multiple runs. However, one of the monster types, Elf Toad, appears bugged, as neither shooting them nor taking photos of them ever increases their count in the encyclopedia from 0/10, thus rendering the game impossible to beat. Even if it was beatable, there are still substantial issues with balance in the game's current state. There's a considerable variety of guns, but most of them are rather weak, taking multiple mags to kill the monsters. You can carry up to three guns + camera and switch between them, but unlike most other twin-stick roguelites, the process of switching is not instantaneous, as it forces you to reload the gun you are swapping to before you can use it: even if it had a full mag before you switched to a different weapon. In fact, for some weapons, NOT having a full mag is what avoids the need to reload immediately after swapping, although this obviously does not work for single-shot weapons. Often, you should just let current weapon reload instead of bothering to swap. Even picking up weapons is finicky - after you open their chests, the game just tells you to press E, but in practice, you need to press E while pointing and clicking at that gun. Meanwhile, the creatures are not just spongy but are also deadly, possessing either speed that rivals or exceeds yours, the ability to fire in large bursts or concentric patterns, or both - the two slime types will first start chasing you, but then generate a ring of projectiles on the move, without even breaking a sweat. The Firebal monster is not a fast chaser, but it does fire spreads of five in two consecutive bursts - which THEN explode after travelling a set distance. On the other hand, you can at least cancel out projectiles with your own bullets - this does not work for pure melee like Minitors, the dark, red-eyed humanoids that move faster than you, possess the largest amount of HP, inflict a full heart of damage per hit and are obviously not staggered by your weapons at all. Altogether, the most effective way to play the game is to locate Rocket Tosser, and enjoy its ability to blow up all monsters (besides Minitors) in one hit - a power not even offset by its slow reload time, since it also lacks friendly fire. Uzi and AK expies + the other explosive weapon that has 3 weaker explosives per mag are also good choices, while some of the other automatic weapons feel worse than the default pistol - and the sniper rifle is bafflingly weak relative to its enormous reload time. It may still be worth playing this game for the sake of inspiration, and as an example of what can be created in 7 days, but it requires substantial balancing to reach its true potential.
• A Nimrod and Monsters is real time roguelike in the same family of games as games like Nuclear Throne and Enter the Gungeon. You are dropped onto a random map with a camera and weak weapon and told to survive 10 levels. The first thing that stands out here are the aesthetics - for a 7DRL they were polished and were the best part of the game. The player has animations, there are screen fades and death shakes, and each monster stands out. It all looks great. The game doesn't take itself too seriously, with humorous gun names and an "encyclopedia of monsters" with Polaroid photos of each enemy. The help text is also playful. For a real time shooting roguelike the controls were rather solid, and each enemy in general felt different with bullet patterns and colors. There is almost a bullet hell component of gameplay for sure. The game, for me at least, is on the difficult side. Enemies spray bullets, you only have 5 hearts, and I never found a way to increase that. That is, until I found the rocket launcher. It broke the game just a bit. Yes, it has a slow reload time and only one bullet, but it one shots almost everything in the game and can shoot outside of most enemies aggro range. If this game was extended, I'd suggest having chests drop additional items such as hearts, as once you have your gun of choice they are completely skip able. I found that 10 levels was too long, specially given the single map graphics, same layout, and enemies. I was not able to complete it after raging dying on level 9 twice, because I'm weak. While really not innovating in any particular area, it was polished, pleasant to play and made me enjoy multiple runs. Nice work!
• A decent bullet hell shooter game. But NOT a Roguelike. Or even a Roguelike-like. The map is procedurally generated but that's about it as far as Roguelike-ness goes. Not sure if it can be won as a bug prevented me from gathering points on Elf Toads. It was some fun but often frustrating in that you couldn't outrun a lot of enemies without relying on bullet knockback. Became repetitive pretty fast. Some of the gun were also awful and worse than the starting pistol. Looking at you, sniper rifle. Why have that as a gun when the map size is so small?