Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• Gameplay: The gameplay is a little on the rough side due to what appear to be base balancing issues (projectile and movement speed's primarily), that are mostly an issue due to your UI. This further compounded by the controls not being intuitive due to your merging of single stick ( Vampire Survivors) style gameplay and core loop with twin stick controls (WASD + Mouse). That said, great job with removal of bugs. Creativity & Innovation: I don't have a lot of comments here. I don't feel the gameplay or mechanics are particularly creative, and the theme alignment falls flat due to the power-ups/upgrades not representing the rescued friends. (Which I assume is due to scope creep, so good on you as a team for making that decision!) Theme Adherence: I can see the attempt to incorporate the theme of building connections through aspects of the narrative and mechanics that were cut due to scope creep, but this is more of a rescue instead of build connections. This stands out strongly due to there being an evil force you are defeating, instead of trying to develop relationships with them. (I.E. same gameplay, but different approach to narrative, and enemies turn into friends or something). Playability & User Experience: Controls worked great and responded consistently. Really fantastic job on that front. That said, the UI and control set are lacking. I couldn't see the "+" sign in my game window clearly, and as a result assumed that leveling just restored your life. It's important to guide users organically to parts of the core game loop. And as I mentioned earlier having the mouse as a pointer is an additional complexity layer that is not intuitive for the rest of the base design decisions you chose for this game. I don't have a way to express this concisely, but I'd encourage taking a look at how modern Twin Stick shooters differ from Single Stick Shooters. This is also more critical as you don't instruct players on HOW to play, or have a tutorial/controls button on your landing window, which could/would have resolved these as points I'm being more direct about. Basically, people need to know how to play your game, and if you are deviating -at all- from immediately recognizable expectations, you have to be explicit about how players are supposed to interact with your game. Art and Design: Fun art style, and I think it works well with the theming concepts overall. Kudos for having movement animation for the player character as well. Overall Fun Factor: For reasons I mentioned above, the game is missing it's "fun factor" that makes me want to keep playing. That said, I don't think this is offering a unique draw for a gameplay component, and the base systems can be found elsewhere. And to be clear, this is an issue that the games industry as a whole is struggling with right now. Its important to figure out what tweak you make to have your game be differentiated from others with similar systems or themes. As an overall comment: Plays really smooth, art in in line with theme, hindered by UI and gap in knowledge of how to play, and lack of unique mechanics/systems. Overall, really solid beginners submission!