Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• It's a delightfully simple game with very intuitive controls. The game is the theme well. Explosions do indeed make it go. The game is enjoyable for what it is. The first two loops are enough to understand the game and feel satisfied that you have completed it. The lack of accessibility options makes it difficult to comment on. A simple volume slider could have gone a long way here. A fun twist on a classic base destroy archetype. Having to choose between soldiers and the base makes you think twice. Visually, the game feels rushed and unpolished. The only audio was the explosions, which sounded great. Some ambience or background music would have done wonders as well. I feel like a cranking noise when aiming the cannon would have been fun.
• It might be a simple game, but it has a gameplay loop, and even a bit of strategy - when to focus on the building vs the approaching soldiers. The lack of any volume control in a game centred around explosions was very noticeable, same with visualising the trajectory path. Had you not been so restricted on time, I feel things like animations, background music, etc would've made it in to the game, which would have improved the experience.
• Theme: While technically explosion do make cannonball go, I don't really think that alone ties this game to the presented theme. Fun to Play: It's difficult at first for two reasons: - There isn't some kind of line that traces an expected arc for the ball - The ball doesn't actually aim at the mouse, just kind of towards it This makes it pretty hard to know what to expect from the ball when you fire and really just leaves you to guess at what will happen. Having said that, the ball has really interesting physics and it's exciting to see what it will actually do. Hitting a red dude 5 times before the ball despawns feel good. Losing the game gives you a popup window saying you lost and clicking it resets everything. Winning the game gives you a popup window saying you won and clicking resets everything *except the red soldiers**. Their placement and number of hits to kill remains, which means you are on the backfoot should you decide to play another match. Accessibility: There are no accessibility features in this game. No audio controls, no variance in the explosion that plays when you fire, nothing that displays where the ball will go. The enemies red silhouette and the small black number made it impossible to read for my partner who is red/green colorblind. Originality: All in all the idea is unpolished but original. Having one big gun that you need to use to take down the enemy base while their people swarm at you, all in what is essentially a turn-based system, is pretty cool. Audio and Visual: As mentioned before, there is no way to control the audio in this game. What you get is what you get. This makes it incredibly abrupt the first time, and you probably have to adjust your audio on either your PC or your speakers to continue playing. It's the same explosion sound every time which quickly leads to audio fatigue. Visually, your game is aesthetically jumbled. Your background assets are gradients with no outline except for a big boulder behind the enemy base which does have a thin black outline. The enemy base is chunky pixel art. The enemies are shrunk down with a black outline. Visual cohesion is difficult but important when building a scene. Sometimes if you need to make pixel art stick men to keep everything looking like it all came from the same place, you make pixel art stick men lol.
• Gameplay was simple but well contained. Overall, a little too easy and short, it definitely felt more like a proof of concept than a complete game package. The bounce physics were very satisfying, especially being able to skip the cannonball off infantry before hitting the base. The audio and visual elements could use more polish. Would have liked some visual indication for adjusting the cannon as the mouse moved. It wasn't immediately clear if game over was when the infantry reached the cannon or the edge of the game screen. I think it's a solid starting idea and, with more time to add additional base elements and polish the components, it could be really fun.