Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• Hi there and thank you for submitting Gold Roller to the Below the Stone Community Jam 2019. Great take on a well known mechanic! The execution is done in an excellent way, especially given the fact, that this is your first game. Controls feel nice and the wagon has just the right amount of inertia so that it isn't too easy but also not uncontrollable. The graphics are well done. The background as well as the "flickering light effect" and the pixel art animations create a really nice mood. The sounds also add nicely to that. I could definitely imagine playing this game on mobile devices, as the controls would fit very well to that. It is awesome what you imagined in the little time of the jam and would love to see and play an improved version of Gold Roller. If you want to improve on the game afterwards, an easy trick to make the player feel more stressed is to spawn a dynamite at the current wagon position, every few seconds, which forces the player to move. I also have the feeling that the linear falling speed of objects could be improved, e.g. by having the objects start with a minimum velocity and accelerate to a maximum velocity during their time of falling. Some power ups (like invulnerability, additional "light"/heart, point multipliers, inversed controls, flip screen vertically, ...) could improve the gameplay experience quite alog. However, I know that this is hard to implement in the short timeframe of a gamejam. I didn't notice any bugs, but controlling the wagon is only possible via the arrpw keys. For A and D keys only D works (which was a bit confusing when I first played it). To increase the mood even further, I suggest to add some sort of long cave reverb to the sounds and to add a soundtrack (could be in the direction of a mario cave track). Please keep us posted about updates to the game e.g. via the game page or through the discord.