Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• PRESENTATION
  

  The graphics are a mix of custom, RTP and other assets. The mapping is simplistic due to the game being set inside of a train, so there's really not much to see. What is there is plain and simple. Not bad but not great either.

  The writing is quite well done with no errors that I could see. The characterisation is quite good, for those characters who actually talk, but even those who don't talk have some interaction which helps make them seem interesting. The plot is also interesting - you wake on a train after sleeping through your stop and now you're on the way to hell. It works as a framing device for the game pretty well.

  The music is good and fits quite well with the area. You don't get many different tunes but what is there isn't jarring. It suits the scenarios it's showcased in well enough.

  The sound effects are basic stuff. There's some atmospheric sounds such as the train, but otherwise it's minimal. It fits though and doesn't stand out in a bad way.

  The menus are nice and simple, easy to read. There is an issue with the level up screen where if you learn more than one skill in a battle there's a fair amount of overlap with the words. It's a little messy.

  GAMEPLAY
  Gameplay consists of waking around and battling, as well as managing skills/items/etc.

  You gain a few companions after beating them in battles. They can equip an amount of skills to use in battle and as they level up they can equip more - both active and passive abilities. The skills are all tailored towards the character themselves - what they are (since they're all monsters).

  The hero learns skills differently. Enemies drop crystals that she can spend to learn skills from an NPC. Like the others, she can equip a set amount of skills for battle.

  Battles are mainly well balanced, but skewed a little to the harder side. There's a definite challenge of picking the right skills for the job and learning what the enemy does that allows you to beat them. For example, a Necromancer will spend some life to summon a minion but if their life gets low they will absorb the minion for a full heal, so killing the minion and then focussing attacks on him works where just beating on him won't.

  In battle you can switch out your allies at any time that it's their turn. You can only take one ally at a time into battle with you.

  Crystals are also used to purchase equipment for three slots that only the hero can equip. There's a LOT of choices to make but they tend to cost a fair amount of crystals to purchase so you have to choose between picking equipment or expanding your skill flexibility.

  The game got very laggy about half an hour in. I think it might be an optimisation issue that causes the game not to dump files properly. A restart sorted it out but it's something to look at.

  ENGAGEMENT
  This game was engaging - some of the battles were frustrating (goddamn vampire battle having to beat him over and over again grrr with no save between either! double grrr) and depending on your skillsets they could go by fast or slow.

  I'll have to play more of the game to get to the end but what I did play was fun. There's a mystery to be solved and while it's subtle, it does grab your interest.

  THEME
  The game is about battling your way to the front of the train and dealing with what comes your way. It does a good job in setting out what you can do, but it could do with a little more instruction for battles (took me a little while to realise I could switch allies in and out, as well as that allies learned new skills).

  63/80
  

• Theme 

  Somehow you are being transported to hell and dang what an adventure it was.

  Gameplay

  The gameplay is easily the best part of this game. There's a lot of strategy and depth to it. Some of the good core gameplay aspects of it:

  • Switching party members is a must and has some pretty serious advantages. For example, the ghost's Astral Plane (I forget the name) is one of the best spells as you are impervious to physical attacks but disables your "attack" command for a certain amount of turns and seem to double up on the magical damage. It's the perfect strategy against physical opponents. 
  • What makes the first part noticeable is that the one of the bosses teaches you this without saying it to your face. You just realize its advantage, play around with skillsets of your party members and obliterate the quite easy boss.  I think that's a very good way of doing tutorials.
  • Once the shops are unlocked, the amount of builds/playstyle you can do expands. There's also that one strong weapon that disables all your skills but dish out a lot of damage and it's interesting to build a playstyle from that.
  • At a certain point, the game allows you to fight previous bosses. This is the perfect time to optimize your build and find ways to kill bosses as fast as possible. It is also a good way to remove the tedium of grinding as it's interesting to test out different units and see their core strengths and weaknesses.
  • The boss designs are great. The hide and seek part surprised me and was a good way to break up the battles.
  • From what I noticed going as a magic build is the best way because you can take advantage of being in Astral Plane. It's a very broken ability for the most part.

  There is an issue that you have to remove a skill before putting a new one if you maxed out the slots. It's a minor inconvenience when you just want to swap it out with another skill.
  

  One thing I would suggest tho is saving "builds" as each boss is specialized on a field and it would be nice to just have a faster way to swap out gear/weapon/skills.

  Presentation

  Needs a little bit more work and the hell/cars aspect could’ve been done better but it really is inoffensive for the most part. The sprites could've been better. However, I must praise it for the Battle GUI is very efficient and nice. The sound effects as you change party members was a very nice touch. I definitely feel like I'm somehow playing a Japanese game or a persona game.

  Engagement 

  One of the strongest entries, if not the strongest. I bought everything from the shops and destroyed the bosses on a 1 turn basis. It's great. Also I knew that girl was suspicious. Will it be explained why she's obsessed with the main protagonist?

  Total – 75/80

• 61/80

  Killing hellhound with explode glitches the game, ignoring the condition that automatically kills it. Explode seems to glitch several events. Staff of Resurrection is near useless ability-wise due to only really working on the last ally to die. Haste passive seems to have reversed effect? Spelling is not consistent. The end doesn't fully hide the player so part of them is visible. The final battles can be frustrating if you don't have certain setups.
  

  The Banish state looks more like a reflect state since it looks like a mirror. Temptation event works through sleep/charm? The two succubi battle can end up with temptation spam and resisting can still result in being 'tempted'. Banish does not affect status effects so status effects can still go through even if attached to a physical skill.

  If you try to play with the fairy after unlocking repeatable fights, the events in the train never return, breaking your game if saved. The fairy does disappear though and doesn't seem to reappear due to certain events within the game. Some armor that give special effects such as counter and reflect seem to rarely, if ever, work.

  Explosion seems to be the key skill here. Everything seems to die easily to explosion. Only a few bosses have anything to make explosion less useful and those bosses are easily taken care of without making any major changes by changing order or using alternative skills. 

  The vampire boss can be rather frustrating to deal with due to the movement patterns of the bats and the fairy boss can be difficult due to the rapid movement.

  The final boss is the hardest boss to cheese with explosion, but falls fairly quickly to stunlocks.

• This was a pretty fun game with a small scale that’s appropriate for a contest like this. Must have been pretty easy on you guys mapping-wise. You could tell there was a lot of thought put into the battles, the variety of skills available and the strategies you could use by swapping in different characters were very engaging. There were a few times where I felt things got a little obnoxious - the vampire fight in particular, but in general it was very well-balanced and enjoyable. The premise was interesting although the bit with the fairy struck a different tone than everything else. Cool idea, would be easy to expand it into a longer game if you wanted.

  Score: 57/80