Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• The Jarl's Heritage is the first roguelike I've played that felt like  an NES game. The graphics and music are low-fi, but delightfully reminiscent of Final Fantasy I. The music in particularly is very charming.

  It's cool that there are a lot of items in this game and 5 slots in which they can be equipped. Any unused items can be transmuted and the gold can buy consumables. The inventory and buy menus look good. There's a little strategy around when to use certain abilities, but it's an odd choice to force the player to use an ability to get the equivalent of a bump attack. The balance is a little crazy too.  The early game is filled with lots of unavoidable deaths but once you get certain items, you can barely be touched.

  Unfortunately, TJH has a few technical issues. Every time I opened the game in any browser, my entire computer locked up for some time. The game doesn't do full screen very well and  it's easy to get into a state where the game becomes unresponsive.  The game page claims this is not an issue on desktop, but I didn't see a download link.

  The Jarl's Heritage is a charming game overall, but could use a little polish and some more content (as there only appears to be 3 enemy types).

• Get a high score (involves getting exp and gold). My best was 10067.

  Completeness 3
  I didn't find an end goal.
  Equipment comparison shows same the info for both items.
  I found no way to cancel the item use/transmute UI other than by moving.
  Item UI sometimes shows up over shop UI.
  Restarting unmutes the music.

  Aesthetics 3
  Tiles are OK.
  Arrow keys for movement, numbers for abilities, mouse to deal with items.
  Every attack require you to first select a skill and then a direction.
  Font is slightly hard to read.
  The song quickly gets annoying, but is easily muted.

  Fun 2
  I didn't find an end goal (if there is one, it shows up long after the game stops being interesting).
  Huge and uninteresting levels.
  Movement is slow, and there is no key repeat.
  Has infinite gold loops.
  Once you can one-shot enemies it gets really simple. If you keep going to the next level the enemies eventually get tougher.
  Once I got far enough that enemies posed a threat it was fun trying to avoid enemies where possible and get to the next level.

  Innovation 2
  Use abilities rather than having one standard attack.

  Scope 3
  A few enemies/abilities/items/stats.

  Roguelikeness 4
  Turn/grid based
  Randomness
  Permafailure
  A little tactics/strategy
  RPG stats and items
  Recharging abilities and consumables

• This is a neat little game! It's bigger than I would expect for a 7DRL. There are a variety of weapons, armor, rings, potions, cloaks, etc. Some atmospheric music and nice graphics. The combat is a bit on the easy side, most of the time.

  There is a bug with the equip screen. I think it's supposed to be comparing the stats of the new item with the one you have equipped, but it seems to print the new item's stats in both columns. You can equip both items and compare the resulting stats so it isn't the end of the world.

  I'm glad I played this, and I can see myself coming back to it again.