Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• New take on the card-based roguelike/lites which have been growing in popularity.  Game is complete, plays smoothly, easy-to-learn controls, pretty maps and environments.  Turn based except you move room-to-room instead of tile-to-tile.  I didn't make it to the end but the game world felt rather complete.  Had a few issues with text not updating (example: went downstairs to the ruin and the exits listed on the new map were the ones from the last map and did not match the current layout).  

  Gameplay needs some balancing in my opinion.  It's very easy to dilute your deck with wounds, exhaustion, and coins.  The better cards are expensive so you have to decide whether to dilute your deck with basic attack and defend cards to combat this early, which leaves you at a disadvantage later when you do get better cards (I didn't play long enough to find out if there was a card upgrade process to get around this).  Not getting a new hand at the beginning of a new fight felt like you were usually starting at a disadvantage.  This could be strategized around normally, but with all of the deck dilution you usually needed to use the useful cards in you hand to finish the last fight.  You can also start with 0 cards or new cards if you altered  your deck in town.  It seemed like you have to run back to town a lot to remove status cards, and gold accumulation felt slow since it was used to remove these cards (after playing for a while, it seems that using charges to try and get more exhausts than wounds in your deck is favorable since they are cheaper to remove).  I think the maps being re-rolled after every visit to town, and how quickly the deck dilutes normally, incentivizes tedious farming for optimal play, but perhaps that is just the min-maxer in me talking :-).  

  I didn't have a screen reader to test that part of the game unfortunately, which seems to be the factor that lead the design.

  Overall, not a bad take on the card-based roguelike/lite.  It's got a lot going for it and with a little extra polish and some balance, it could become a very good game.

• Really impressed with the dedication to making this accessible for those with screen readers. Restricting movement by room is a good idea and makes examining things of interest quick and easy.  Unfortunately I found the main gameplay loop a bit of a grind – you constantly have to go return to town to remove wound/exhaustion cards from your deck, usually bankrupting yourself in the process. Wound cards especially seem to cost too much to remove. The bad cards as HP metaphor also means your game can end early just due to an unlucky draw. 

• Completeness - 4
  Other than having to reload the page to restart the game is very complete. Controls are intuitive and work well. There are even bits of flair to bring the game to life; a thorough job has definitely been done. 

  Aesthetics - 3
  Easy to parse, simplistic design the game is effective at conveying its information and the little tweens and twitches of feedback add a nice touch. However, in places such as the map the design is a bit too simple and repetitive with the key elements not popping as they could. 

  Fun -  3
  The core loop is quite simplistic and after a few runs the game doesnt seem to vary very much. What is there is solid, and a good foundation. There are quite a few opportunities for quality of life changes, such as starting fights immediately upon entry to an appropriate room (given you have no choice but to fight) that would improve the experience.

  Innovative - 4
  Use of the screen reader is really interesting and distilling the dungeon exploration down to moving room to room with small encounters in each is also quite effective.

  Scope - 3
  The different dungeon areas and room types are OK but the enemy and card variety is very small. 

  Roguelike - 2
  It didnt feel so much like a roguelike experience, even with a board definition. The runs don't feel very impactful and the combat is very simple.