Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• I have read the description for this, and it looks REALLY interesting. I have launched the game and graphically it looks good - from the title screen only. However, I cannot comment on gameplay as clearly this game has an entry barrier which should not be there in the first place: it can only be played with a controller and not via keyboard. For me, that is a no. Please address this next time, so to give users of any kind access to it - sorry about this.

• No Documentation

  Playthough

  • Cute ideas and visual style.
  • Good tutorial, although first thing i did was press A to test the ability and then skipped to the game. Maybe 'destiny' style hold button commit would be useful here OR let the player test out the abilities in the tutorial screen. Maybe 'start' to begin.
  • Character animations - pretty cool. Not many people building up the character like that. Gives the game personality.
  • Nice spell effects. All sync pretty well. Readable, understandable.
  • Impacts of bombs are good. Funny when people fly off screen. Reminds me of Smash.
  • Cool growing land mechanic. Building on original level structure.
  • Despite looking good. Gameplay feels like its missing something. The elements are all there but lacks excitement and doesn't flow.
  • Gaps in the islands look like that shouldn't be crossed. No jump mechanic BUT looks like i should be able to jump gaps (because games&reasons) otherwise there is no point in level 1 or 2 islands only fully built islands are useful. Maybe try islands that don't change size but get cracks in them or something else to symbolise level.
  • Another resistance issue is being able to break up an island once you are on it can get you stuck in the middle. I think that is very punishing.

  Overall

  • Visuals are quite polished.
  • Tutorial is clear, but some UX issues.
  • More in game UI could help get around this. Hard to do in a jam, better to keep it simple if you want to focus on in game visuals.
  • I would work on trying to find the fun more before getting the visuals up to standard, before implementing polish for spells and characters. Its a hard thing to do in a jam and have to pick your battles BUT the soul of the game is more important than the visuals or technical elements IMO.
  • I see some potential in this game. It has developed ideas away from the starting project and focused on a good set of features BUT failed to grab me. Brawler games are very hard to do because so much depends on the feel of the combat mechanics... and so much of that is when everything comes together.

• The overall idea of the game is really nice, kind of like an improvement on Bomberman. What I would improve for a future version would be control precision (be it when you try to build a platform or when you throw a bomb): it can be very frustrating for a player not to know precisely what their action will be before executing it.

• Feedback

  The concept for this game appears to be nice and simple, however upon playing the game there was no option for me to change the resolution or the quality settings in the Unity settings window before actually starting the game itself.  While this is good practice for a game to start without this window appearing, it must be replaced with having these settings shown in the game itself.  The player may want to change the quality settings or the resolution of the game, also choosing to play the game in a window and not full screen.  Although you do have a short instruction page showing how to play the game there is no option to quit the game or return to the beginning page.

  The mechanics of the game appear to work well, I am able to build the ground items and other functions well, the animations also appear to also run smoothly and the use of music and sound effects is very engaging which encourages the players to play more.  The attacks used to knock the enemy are impressive and multiple functionally with how strong the attack can be adds that extra bit of realism.

  However there did not seem to be a final goal to the game and the players continued to gain points with no end game.  When knocking the other player over with a full power attack this resulted in catapulting the opponent at such velocity they ended up getting stuck somewhere off map and they did not hit the water.

  Sadly I was unable to find documentation to your games development so I am not able to see more specific details in how you built the game, this should always be added whenever making a game to back up your game development process.

  
  

  Summary

  The concept and core gameplay mechanics appear to be sound and works well, however there are some smaller features mentioned above the should be implemented to make this game feel a bit more complete.  There is certainly room for improvement but then again there always will be in game development.  As a YouTuber and game developer myself we consider it a pleasure to try your games and I am pleased to have had the opportunity to try your game.

  
  

  Thank you.
  LCripps.
  Website: http://fellowplayerstudios.com/
  YouTuber – FellowPlayer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXzcduiD99hcDMhhCzByRiA 

  

• Unable to play - no rating given. Not everyone has a controller to hand when judging student game entries on the weekend :) Also an accessibility fail.