Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• I enjoyed my time with this! The core gameplay loop has a good level of polish and refinement, and you have demonstrated understanding of a number of key areas in game development, such as the importance of responsive and satisfying player input and feedback, and clear and concise presentation of information. Your supporting documentation shows that you have taken great care in considering how the design and implementation of your core gameplay systems will directly affect the quality of the gameplay loop. You may wish to consider additional ways to introduce the gameplay mechanics to the player as they start playing. The introduction of movement outside of the first level of the game was a nice touch as the player has to understand that mechanic to progress, so perhaps you could do something similar with the combat and deck building mechanics to make sure that the player begins to fully comprehend what's expected of them, what they can do and when they can do it, and how their strategic decisions will affect their deck in the next phase of battle. One thing I would be careful of is not making your levels larger than they need to be in relation to the gameplay content that's inside them. The smooth and intuitive movement mechanics make traversing the maps easy and enjoyable, but you need to make sure that the player isn't spending too much time just moving through the game world without any further interactivity to keep them fully engaged in your game. You might also want to think about how you could introduce new ideas into the movement mechanics themselves to provide additional player challenges and / or rewards for fully engaging in everything your game has to offer. I'm also pleased to see that you've thought about and planned for increasing the scope of the project beyond the prototype phase, for example with the scriptable objects. Unexpected and sudden design changes often occur, and it's a valuable skill to be able to design and implement your systems to be able to react to those changes quickly and efficiently. Darren Ferrie Senior Programmer Supermassive Games
• This game contains the core loop of a 2D tactical rpg. It is well executed and fun to play. Music, sounds and options are all there and the UI is clean and animated. I get the slay the spire / tactical rpg mix but a tutorial might be good for people not used to playing these types of games. Good experiment of mixing tactical with deck building. I enjoyed this game a alot.
• Seeing the start project and where you brought it was impressing. The mechanics where fun and the progression system as well as the combat system were understandable easily. UI was a bit busy on the level maps and a small zoom out or reducing the size of some elements would have been better. Thanks a lot for your hard work !
• This was good, and something you should be proud of, just some general notes: 1. Think about a "How to Play" or "Controls" to the game, so that people know what their goal is and how to play the game. 2. Balancing is a very difficult thing to do in games. I'd recommend setting up levers which are then controlled by an Easy/Medium/Hard switch. That way you don't need to balance 1 game for all skill levels. 3. It was great that you had saving in the game, but then you had Permadeath with no checkpoints. Think about either adding checkpoints or making the Permadeath clearer (i.e. explaining it on the death screen, change "Summon" to "New Game"). 4. I like how you had different worlds, but keep the first couple smaller and gradually build up so that the player doesn't feel lost/overwhelmed by the size of the world. Like I said though, great game and something you should be happy with!