Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• The game have quite interesting premise and settings, but unfortunately not as fun to play as at seems at first. There are two problems with the combat system. First - second ability, time pause, is way too powerful. And become more powerful with levels, as it increases amount of turns you can spend in paused state. More costly abilities are quite powerful, but they leave you without energy after use, and as a result defenseless. Second problem is the way energy is accumulated. The fact that it is spent on move forces you to alternate move and wait to keep energy at max to ensure you are ready for an enemy encounter. Twist with XP is interesting. Bosses are somewhat creative, but relatively easy. The game looks quite nice, but very important visuals depends on settings of the engine and controls could be better. There is no way to scroll the map (which makes players with lower resolution at disadvantage) and there is no minimap. Abilities cannot be activated with mouse, so while mouse controls are supported, it cannot be played with mouse only. Unfortunately there are many technical and other problems with the game. Serious memory leak in7drl windows version, problems with UI on window resize, unpassable levels. And I couldn't call it a true roguelike. Character development is extremely linear without any variations and as a result gameplay is very samey on each run since level generator produces levels without any noticable features.

• An excellent game!

  Completeness: 3. Definitely feels feature complete. I couldn't progress any further than the third level, because the game always crashed, on both windows and mac.

  Aesthetics: 4. Graphics are beautiful, the sprites feel consistent in theme. This is one of the few games whose sprites I actually enjoy.

  Fun: 3. This game definitely had its moments. I love the twins that can only be killed within the same turn, that's absolute brilliance, and really makes you use the time stop ability. The fact that you could only gain experience by killing multiple enemies also added a wonderful layer of strategy to the game, and makes normally mundane situations into strategic ones. I feel conflicted about how movement uses up energy though. Specifically, simply walking would drain your energy, so you must alternate between walking and resting, which really felt like a chore, more than a fun mechanic. I felt like I was constantly pushing against this particular mechanic. It did have its benefits (namely making it so you can't as easily escape enemies), and I wonder if there's another way to achieve those without the chore of waiting so often.
  

  Innovation: 4. The enemies were amazing. You can only kill the twins in the same turn, you have to stop time to kill the reflector, and you can only gain experience by killing multiple enemies in the same turn. More roguelikes should do something like this!

  Scope: 4. All the above, plus bullets that travel, plus hexagonal tiling, means to me that this is a large scope.

  Roguelike: 4. Meets all my criteria for roguelikes!
  

• Wait For It is a lot of fun. It looks and sounds great, and there is a nice variety of enemy types, each with uniquely fiendish ways of screwing you over. Many of them have attacks that require you to respond with strategic positioning while balancing your energy stocks. As a result it's rather difficult, and doesn't leave much room for error. It would have been interesting to have some kind of blink or warp skill to make up for how hard it is to successfully retreat from an encounter. Levelling up is vitally important for gaining the skills and stats you'll need to progress, but experience can only be gained by destroying multiple enemies on the same turn, which introduces a nice risk/reward element.