I was one of the official judges this year, and now that the results have been made public, and I'm free to do so, here is my score and thoughts on this title:

Overall score: 9

Really nice 'gotta catch 'em all' style game! I loved the designs of the Capsule monsters, and the dialog was neat and snappy as well (and the little pop culture references were a nice touch as well, without being over-bearing). I wasn't a fan of the RNG, and felt it was bit too punishing. Also, it promotes a more grindy playstyle to get monsters from the pull system without any guarantee of what you'll get. I was also only able to beat the last boss by sheer luck and bugging out the AI of the game. Still, a really nice little game.

I got assigned this for round 3 of the IGMC. First, congrats on getting to round 3! 

First I should start this off by saying I've never played Pokeman in my life. Pokeman was a thing when I was a teen so I passed by on it and have never played the games. I post that as I feel like you were going for a monster collecting feel here, but as someone who did not play the games I feel some things need to be better explained. 

For instance, the entire system feels too random. You can spend $$$ to buy monsters, get 3 then go to a battle system against others. I managed to win rounds 1 and 2, then got to round 3 where they had monsters that were so fast they went like 4x to my once and one shotted me. As it is, it felt really oddly balanced to go suddenly from hey I'm managing to getting mopped with no chance in one battle. 

I feel you should have an option to slowly introduce the mechanics to the player. I think I may have done better if I had played Pokeman games and such, and kinda feel like this was designed assuming the player has played those games before. Be careful with that as you should never assume that of the audience. 

Small little detail too: The tournament is not round robin, its single elimination. Round robin you play everyone once, so round 3 can't be the final round out of 7 players. Just a side note as I teach math so it stood out to me.

Overall it is a neat idea, but needs to add more to introduce new players to these kind of games. And maybe more gradual balancing so that it doesn't go from round 2 I win to round 3 not a chance.

Music was boppin, would love to see more variation in music throughout the game. Loved the story behind the game -- dedicated to past rpg devs. <3 The sprites and the description for them were cute. Loved the simplicity of it. Needs improvement with the leveling system, we never won a game :( maybe we are bad idk. Wendy was my favorite character. The story and game play was actually entertaining and wholesome. It kept our attention throughout. It would be cool to see actual capsules like a pill, gel capsule, or like a pokemn ball? We really loved the game and can't wait to see the final product. Definitely let us know when Capsule Monsters 2 comes out lol <3

I know you've seen my playthrough on twitch but I just wanted to leave a comment here for your stats.

Loved the monster designs! Great tileset and music! Intriguing  story concept.

I just had some issues with the damage output in the first main fight, with the enemies really outshining you, and having no heal abilities.

The LadyArmor drop rate is awful, but if you know what can your monsters do, you can use even "weak" ones.....that or I broke the game staying out of range of the enemies and just using sniper tactics lol.

It's a nice story for a short game.

Hey there TheLastYuriSamurai, I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. A tactical battle system with unique monsters is a fun idea, though I almost wish there were more battles and less dialogue in the game since the battle system was the highlight of the game. The art style was a good choice and the monsters were all adorably unique.

The battle rounds were all different enough to keep things feeling fresh without leaving me confused as to what I should do, which made me play longer than planned just to see what other tactics I could use with different monsters. It was a bit difficult to judge whose monster was whose on the battlefield, it would have be nice if enemies or my monsters had an obvious marker. The colors for where you could move and attack were also hard to see on lighter backgrounds (on the white sidewalks I could barely see the squares), so it would've been nice if those had a solid darker outline. Being able to fight people before the main rounds to get more monsters is a good way to get around bad RNG, but it did make the final fight easy since I had an overpowered team. I'm not sure how you could tweak that to make the fight challenging without being unfair, but if you could find a balance then it could make the final battle really feel like a test of my monster team and strategy.

Overall, this is a fun little idea that I could see being expanded into a larger game. There are some issues, but I'm sure you can fix them with a bit more time.

I really loved this but the Lady Armor drop rate is super rude

I really enjoyed the presentation and the great use of plugins. I still need to spend more time finishing it, but I'm loving it so far. Great job!

I was very impressed with this one. I really liked the tactical battle system and for the most part the game was enjoyable. But there were a few negatives I found off-putting. I want to get those out of the way first, then I'll move on to the positives. 

- I will say that I spent a few times resetting my save file because the monsters were randomly given to you and I kept getting trash. I got that rock thing given to you at the beginning not once but twice. Spent 150G to get 3 rocks. After resetting, I realized that I couldn't save right before I accessed the machine. Ouch. I really wish I was able to do this. This is a game I would prefer to have autosave turned off.  

- At first I used the 3 rocks in the tournament and did fine. I won the first battle and finally got a new mon. I won the second battle. Then I faced Hunter and boy did I want to OWN him! Sadly, Hunter's ONE creature completely demolished my team. I did like 2 damage and then got dealt back 10 damage. At this point I reset the save file and started over. 

- This next playthrough I realized that I could trade and battle the other characters. Why was this not brought up at the beginning? I saw that if you talk to the other characters in that first map before ending the day that they mention it but I was following robot guy's instructions and I didn't dilly dally too much. I spent about another 30-45 minutes grinding to get a creature I could use to KICK HUNTER'S BUTT! Alas, I had trouble accomplishing this task. 

- I finally gave up and sadly couldn't get past Hunter.

Now I know this sounds discouraging but there are a lot of positives about this one too.

+ Good use of assets. The tiles, characters, and music flow really well.

+ The battle system was fun and easy to understand.

+ The characters and dialogue are well written and each character had different personalities. I especially liked you made a character like Hunter. I don't think I've ever wanted to punch a fictional videogame character more in my life.

+ The designs of the monsters were cute and funny.

+ I think you incorporated the theme really well. 

Overall, I did enjoy this game but do think it needs more balancing and I think given the randomness of the machine, I think it needs a way to turn off autosave. (There actually might be a way in options but I didn't think to look...) Lastly I think it needs more direction. Like I mentioned, I didn't know you could trade and battle to get gold so at first I thought I was just stuck with what I got and had to use those in the tournament.

I think you did a great job on this. You worked hard to make something unique and it shows. Thank you for making this. :D

A mix of a monster collector and a tactical game? I'm in!

I'm so happy that this creation has been appreciated by many! As I said in my video it would have been a shame not to be able to rate it, it's a really good entry. I had so much fun with both battles and NPCs interaction... and I want more monsters (for the jam 20 are more than enough, I'm the one who has a slight collecting problem XD)!

Solid game here! I made a first impression video if you want further comments: https://youtu.be/9B0oTw-x41Y?t=2060

Liked the sound effects and rich retro music/melodies. I usually don't go for tactics-like games, but using the 'capsule monsters' and sort of collecting them and adding them to your battle set was pretty cool, and had me looking forward to choosing to battle rather than not.

Bits of it reminded me of playing on my Game Boy as a kid, which was just the best feeling :)

I like the artstyle and the concept is fun.

Hi there!

As a fan tactical battles, I really liked the combat mechanic. The art concept is pretty fun and entertained all throughout. The mapping looks great and the game play feels is good. Nice work!

Hi! So I just finished playing and and I really liked it! Got me entertained all throughout. If I may, I'll leave all the things I've taken notes of while playing it.

PROS:

• Right off the bat, I like the vibe. Made me remember my "gameboy" days.
• I like the dialogues of each characters. Each of them has that depth, considering the amount of time they were introduced. Hunter stood out for me the most, I don't know why.
• The announcer is hillarious!
• Each character hit me. Sudden realizations and questions for my life. Help!?
• I thought I was killing it when I got Curl Shot, but then Deeno came. Love that monster lol!
• That ending was sooo satisfying! Too bad I was not able to collect all the monsters. I like how it has that replayability since I'm curious to see other monsters.

NITPICKS:

I considered these as nitpicks instead of cons since it didn't really bother me too much, but might help to improve the game more.

• Some typos (eg. When defeating Nina in the first round. It says "go" instead of "got")
• During battle, especially when its drawn to the bottom part of the screen, it's sometimes hard to keep track of the positions since the monster info gets in the way.

Overall, reaaally fun game. I enjoyed it a lot. Thank you for this! :D

Hahaha, I love the humour, and the concept! Lots of fun. :D

I had a lot of fun with this -- the designs are fun and the game has a fantastic sense of humor, especially considering they're all dead.

It's a little exposition-heavy and I found myself wondering when the game was going to get started about the time the bonding session happened -- maybe consider moving that until after round one instead of right at the beginning to let people get a little bit more of a taste for the game right from the start? That being said, the dialogue is good, though, so overall, still walking away after playing with a positive experience. :)

I might've missed this, during the tutorial fight, but the "E" next to the monsters on the field -- I assumed that indicated the enemy, but it seems to be any monster except the active one, which can make it challenging if there are duplicated monsters on the field to know which one you want to be targeting.

Other than that, the mapping looks good and the game play feels really solid. Nice work!

  I keep getting Lady Armor xD 

Love itttt!