Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• PRESENTATION
  

  Visually the game is very stand out. The graphics are all custom and really set a scene of post apocalyptic war. Every visual aspect of the game reflects this, being gritty and dark. Maps are a bit hard to figure out sometimes where to go due to there being edge issues (sometimes the pathing is directed by walls surrounding all the areas but the way to go, other times there are empty edges and you have to run into the 'walls' to see which one teleports you to the next area.)

  It's hard to tell what, exactly, some of the graphics are meant to represent. There were a few times I talked to an enemy or avoided an NPC because I thought they were each other.

  Sound fit in well. Atmosphere was built from it, but it would have been nice to have more sounds to build even more atmosphere as it is a game that would really benefit from more small touches like that.

  Writing was stilted and hard to understand. You weren't given much information about the character and expected to just know stuff that happened with no real information (for example, the mask things that talked to you had no introduction until the first boss so their inclusion in the scene just made you feel excluded from a big part of the story and characterisation of the main character.) The game aimed for a very edgy and dark feel with the writing but it fell flat since there really wasn't a lot of detail put into presenting it.

  GAMEPLAY
  Gameplay consisted of walking, interacting and battling.

  The main component of the game was the battles as the rest of the gameplay was pretty light. What puzzles there were consisted of basically pressing a button and moving through a now-open area.

  Enemies would drop equipable items sometimes which didn't really seem to do much in the way of protecting, which was a pity. Even new weapons didn't do much for you, damage-wise, making it so that you didn't want to bother with getting them.

  Items didn't work in or out of battle, which was a huge issue as you needed them a lot. This is a pretty painful bug. Only the main healing items work and you don't get many of those.

  Battles were interesting in that you had different body parts to play as and each had different skill types to use. If the Head died, however, that was game over, and considering that the normal attack for Head could knock you out (and that it happened a LOT), once Head ran out of Stamina (which you couldn't refill unless you used a specific skill on the Torso and only filled small amounts of Stamina over time), this meant that Head was, once out of Stamina, left to defending only.

  The other skills had limited uses - some were useful, some weren't useful. Head got a revive ability (which was needed since revive items didn't work) but it used up a lot of Stamina, and Head's other skills were very useful. Having all the really useful skills on one body part, especially one that couldn't attack and had to rely on another to allow skills to return, wasn't a great idea.

  Enemies were on map but also random encounters. Either/or would have been much, much better, I think.

  
  

  ENGAGEMENT
  It started out engaging but slowly dwindled over time due to various reasons: items not working, equipment not feeling rewarding to get and use, skills usually being an either/or scenario (it would not have broken the game to allow some of the Torso skills to overlap, especially with how little you gained from them) and just the amount of enemies you had to deal with.

  That could have been forgiven if the story was compelling or the characters interesting but it ended up being a pretty but bland experience because while I could see that the game was trying to be something along the lines of This War is Mine or games of the like.

  The story would have made a bit more sense if we'd actually had some sort of interaction with the masks before the boss battle. They came out of nowhere and seemed really random, too. We don't get much characterisation from August and even a few small scenes of him talking with the masks before that point would have helped set the scenario a bit better.

  THEME
  The theme of the game is revenge, pure and simple, and parts of it sold that ideal very well. The first boss battle where you get the information out of the boss and then shoot him was really well done in that aspect, and the dark edginess of the game visuals helped to build up an atmosphere of human desolation.

  Other parts (NPC dialogue, for example) just seemed like they were being edgy for the sake of edgy, though, and felt flat, unfortunately.

  44/80