Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Autorogue is a game about upgrading and leveling your character between rounds of automated battle arena-style combat. The game is simple overall but feels complete and polished. Skills probably need some balancing; the Wait & Heal ability in particular felt essential, especially with no guarantee of a healing option between rounds. The game looks good and has simple controls, but getting the ability descriptions to appear and reading the descriptions was difficult. The game could also potentially use some UI to help the player understand what it going on during the round. Autorogue is clearly inspired by roguelikes but does not play like a classic one. My main gripe is that it felt like the player did not have a lot of control over what occurred during the rounds (I realize this is the point, but it felt more random than I would have liked; i.e. I would have preferred that the "between-rounds" actions had a more noticeable impact on the rounds themselves), and it was difficult to determine the net effects of ability ordering.
• On an aesthetic level, this game feels really unique and wonderful. The dynamic soundtrack really works for it - those earthy synth tones and glitches and clicks are extraordinarily tactile, and watching the battles is a hypnotic pleasure. I thought the visual design was also something I’d never quite seen before, at once warm and weird, and the icons, characters and pops and flashes of the battles themselves sync perfectly with the music itself. I particularly enjoyed the ‘double down’ mechanic and how the music switched up a notch with it. It’s a rare treat when a game makes clicking a mouse feel quite so satisfying. The gameplay itself felt a little less rich - I found the game too easy to break and become OP with just about every character. That said, I don’t think it’d take too much tuning to amp up the difficulty a bit to ensure the decisions you make matter a little more. A little more depth on that front would go a long way to distinguishing this from the mainstream autobattlers out there right now.
• Fun game with fun audio.