Feedback from Bohemia Gamejam 2026 mentor:
Yes please. More. Repeat. Experiment. AGAIN!
When the team started to have this idea, I started to want to play that game already, as it quite hit the spot for me. Game that alters the gameplay based on the decisions, and that's different every time you play it? Gorgeous.
Seeing the art come to life was unbelievable to me, and I was blown away by what can be produced in such a short time with skills like that. I remember seeing the bar first, and my thought was "That's it, that clicks, it fits"
As for the game related feedback, the game has so many upsides:
- It's fun, and people were already very motivated to try again, to beat the score.
- Facing boss with random debuffs is quite opposed to classic strengthening by buffs, but fits the theme of gamejam ("What could go wrong?") nicely.
- Comparing to other projects this felt closest to a complete product that could be published, since the team created also things like credits, narrator voiceacting and scoring of the result.
- Brilliant "health" system. 10/10 idea
And now onto the negatives (even the absolute winner of course has some)
- You've though about how to show player what some of the potions do by having them jump or destroy things between pubs, but some potions (self damage) couldnt be explained that way and were confusing to people since they just in some cases clicked and got F.
-It's a bit questionable (but that's mainly based on the experience of people AFTER the gamejam ended and they played it) if it's a good design choice to not tell players what the potion does.
-There were some cases where combinatons of powerups lead to softlocking people from game.
The design as a whole is very nicely thought through, since it leaves you ways to potentially expand the game if you ever want to, by adding second, third etc levels so the first boss may not be final. Expanding the range of drinks, maybe even add more buildings and make them optional with various effects, who knows, but generally designs like that are amazing for short-time-pressure projects, as you see if the core idea work, and then you can expand upon it.
Teamwork:
I was suprised by how efficient the team was, given that some of them didnt know each other before the gamejam, yet they naturally organized the project and finished majority of what they planned without any team-mood issues, at least from what I could observe. I was also needed way less than I thought I will be as mentor, only being asked to provide advices few times. I think that I was pretty much able to see which person from the team has quite nice natural predispositions to lead the team, but I wont say who ;)
Presentation:
The presentation was quite on point. In this gamejam presentation was not a small aspect of rating, as it's point was for participants to try what it might be to eventually present their game to potential publishing or investor. And the Hex Happens team was able to deliver onto that quite efficiently. Bringing not only descriptions of what the game currently is and what are its strong points, but also pointing out possible way how to make the game bigger and better is appreciated in such presentations, and the professional and on point presentation speech sealed the deal.
And if Sterak reads this comment by any chance: I dare you to score A on the stream, sir.