Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• You take the Pac eating ghost gameplay of Pac-Attack, replace that with heads and tails, mesh it with Puyo-Puyo and you get this masterpiece. I love love the core gameplay so much, easily the most replayable entry in this jam. I do have two major qualms, however. 1. It seem the blocks (furballs?) responds to input only after they show up on the screen. This is easy enough to remember and work around however it would be a much smoother experience if after I've placed down my block (furball?), the next one is already primed to listen to the inputs I'm already pressing. 2. Heads connected together looks identical to tails apart from the ends. I'll be blunt, I don't like this. The player could easily mistake what is actually a head for a tail, try to clear it by adding another and costing them a valuable move. This is even worse when the heads clump as a 2x2, where there is no head to spot to differentiate a head clump from a tail clump. While major, they aren't dealbreakers. And to spin something positive, if there was a music rating, this deserves highest marks on that. No doubt. Other than that, I can't give perfect marks on aesthetics. Some elements seem pixelated just for the sake of pixelation, and Ase seems to be drawn with thinner outlines than the rest of the cast? It's slightly distracting. Nitpicking of course, but best to get everything out.
• At it’s heart Feliboros is a competitive puzzle game in the same vain as panel de pon and puyo puyo; in which the quality of the gameplay is largely dictated by the pace of the game and how it rewards player skill. In my opinion, Feliboros does this extremely well through a satisfying combo system where creating and clearing large Feli chains often rewards further combinations. I enjoyed the reward and spectacle of creating crazy snake like Feli and watching almost the entire screen clear with one well placed Feli head. I also commend the story mode included in Feliboros. The story invokes the same energy of recent puyo titles I have enjoyed alongside a mostly well-paced difficulty curve. I say mostly as the Final boss was incredibly hard compared to the opponent before and moved at such speeds that first victory felt like luck and it took me another attempt before I felt like my victory was due to my own skill. In addition to the story mode there is a multitude of multiplayer modes which admittedly I have not really played around with, but the ambition to include such modes and rulesets (which are also featured in the story mode) is executed well and is truly commendable. The visual and audio presentation of Feliboros is absolutely fantastic. Large charming character portraits in colourful environments really makes the story mode feel special and more than a mere puzzle game. Alongside that the Feli themselves are extremely well sprited and I love how each colour has it’s own personality. Alongside that the pitch scaling meows as they eat themselves is very satisfying when clearing a Feli. I only have a single slight nit-pick about the aesthetic and that is that the text is slightly blurry (at least on my machine) but that did not take away from my enjoyment of the game. The one category that this game will lose points from me however is on it’s theming. The link between the story mode hole and the gameplay is pretty tenuous. However, despite that you have produced game with a level of polish and amount of gameplay content that is absolutely stunning; all within a month! I do not hesitate to say that this jam entry feels like a demo for full commercial release and a huge congratulations for that.