Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• What a lovley game, I thought it was really pretty, the story was great, the theme tie in with the double meaning was fantastic. I really enjoyed playing this, my only critique would be the fact that the leaf jumping puzzles were a little frustrating at times but besides that I was in awe of what this team achieved in 72 hours, great job.
• Wow, what an incredible entry! It's incredible that the quality high for only a 72 hour jam! The art work and animation is beautiful. The characters and world really come to life, and you've completely surpassed the often rigid looking style that game jam entries take due to a lack of time to develop any dynamism. The game is incredibly emotional, with myself trying not to cry whilst at the office! The emotional moments are interlaced with the gameplay very well, so it feels like I'm leading the grasshopper to the next part of their journey. The music was incredible, and the changes to the score when entering dreams and running from the frog really tied the whole game together. It would be great to see some sound effects implemented, as this would be another cherry on top of an already amazing game! If you were to develop this game further, it would be good to see what more you could add to the platforming mechanics. For the game jam entry the gameplay you had was great, so it would just require more content and depth if you were to develop the game further. Overall, an absolutely spectacular entry. Great job to all the team, and I look forward to seeing your future work!
• Beautiful game - the painterly visuals are stunning, great use of colour and form. A real "Watership Down" feeling, loved the symbols in the background. The main character is very cute, and the world is wonderfully realised and consistent. The music fits really well - sound effects might have detracted. The story is touching, very accessible and understandable. Controls a little frustrating; our hero not as responsive as could be. The collision detection is the worst part, especially colliding with the underside of floating leaves and avoiding the orange blobs. Checkpointing a little harsh. However there was a good level design progression and new concepts were introduced well. Very impressive overall and an excellent link to the theme for the jumping gameplay and leaping into dreams. Well done.
• Very cute game, the music and the art gave me some feels. This game was entertaining to play but could possibly benefit from some more mechanics to make it more engaging for players, however I'm fully aware that this is mainly a story game and may not need them to thrive. I felt connected to the little grasshopper and was determined to see what happened, the music adds a great mood to the game, however some sound effects could have been applied to give it a fuller feel. The art is amazing, it reminds me of childrens books and could definitely be a main selling point to investors. Overall its not incredibly innovative, but it doesn't need to be, as long as you focus on building the connection between the player and the grasshopper this game could be very successful. The movement and physics could use some work but all in all it's a very charming game.
• The team did a great job in fitting a game around the 'leap' theme whilst also adding a nice story. Leaping formed most of the base game mechanics and the implementation of this leaping was good, the ability to have different powered jumps was intuitive and made navigating jumping sections quite fun. The commercial potential of this game is quite high as there are many commercial example of similar games doing very well. Games like Limbo and Ori and the blind forest have done really well in the past and have pointed at a fairly large commercial opportunity in the mechanic-light/narrative-heavy experiences and this game could be a strong entry in that category. I had quite a lot of fun playing this game but it would benefit from the ability to respot the character (maybe I missed this) as I once started travelling to the left and fell out of the map. I also experienced a little frustration in some of the jumping sections as some leaves had fairly large collision boxes and the player collides when jumping up to them (hitting their head). This may be intended as it added a layer of challenge however the height between different layers of moving leaves meant it was sometimes hard to jump to a leaf to the left or right without colliding with a leaf above and falling a bit of a distance. I think this game was also quite innovative in its use of travelling between unique game areas using sleeping/dreams in a similar way to the green pipes in a super mario game. The constant change in level design and challenges was very engaging. The audio and visuals in this game were amazing. As soon as I launched the game, saw the clean menu and heard the music I felt a strong unique style and this was kept consistent throughout the whole experience. The presentation of the tutorial was light and great with the overlaid controls like cuphead or other side scrollers. One thing I would add is a little more transparency with the feedback of failure/success would be useful. I once failed a section then succeeded and each time it felt like the same thing happened but on the successful attempt I was teleported to a new location and inferred I was successful. Overall I was very impressed with this entry! The audio and visuals were very pleasing and the story engaging. Really well done, a great experience all round