Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• I want to start with the fact that I love your concept. From the GDD it is clear you put a TON of thought, love, and effort into this idea and that you have a lot of passion for it. The concepts and ideas and mechanics are clearly very thought-out and thorough. Unfortunately the game falls flat in the execution. There is simply too much game here to not only build up, bug test, and polish, all within two weeks. The UI is very bare-bones and difficult to navigate, seeming more like walls of straight text than an interactive and well-shaped system. The mechanics of the game are very poorly explained during gameplay, so you would have had to have read and memorized the GDD in order to have any idea what is going on beyond the surface level. In the future, it would be a good idea to add a tutorial where you walk the player through the game mechanics to integrate the rules naturally, rather than having to either figure it out on the fly or read the game bible to understand how to really play. The gameplay itself also feels pretty lackluster. While the mechanic of having to get lines and patterns in order to activate attacks and abilities is a neat concept, in execution it just turns into hitting the reroll button a bunch of times until you get an okay pattern then clicking attack (I also kept getting more money the more I rerolled attacks and I have no idea if that was intended or not). This makes the game into more of slog than an exciting party-based battler. instead of having the gambling slot system as the primary mechanic, you could have it as a side-mechanic that can swing battles one way or another, allowing players to instead strategize abilities and attacks normally, while still having an exciting X-factor to potentially flip the board at any moment, giving a good mix of tactical planning and unpredictable excitement. Finally, your GDD is very lopsided in terms of details. you go into incredible detail with the game mechanics, which is great, but also very overwhelming. Conversely, I know almost nothing about details surrounding the game, for example: what games you were inspired by, how you made/acquired the art and assets, what your planning process and development milestones were, or who even was on your team or if you worked alone, etc etc. Also I have no idea if or how you incorporated the theme of the jam into your game. Okay, now that we're past the criticism, I want to reiterate that I really do like this concept, and I can see how much passion and love went into it! It just seems like you fell victim to one of the classic blunders, outscoping. You tried to pack too much game into two weeks of development, leading to an unpolished bag of mechanics that is hard to parse. I can absolutely see this game being a BANGER that sweeps people off their feet if just given more time in the oven to cook. It is a good idea to try to condense these grand visions into manageable bites for jams. Perhaps just make one or two levels, and really focus on making what you DO have shine, as that makes a far larger impact! I hope to see you again in future jams and I genuinely can't wait to see what you bring forward next!