Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Wizard Chess 7DRL is a turn-based game focusing on army management and combat. The game feels complete but through my playthroughs I felt that there were some minor balance improvements that could be made with the terrain combat bonuses and treasure distribution/generation. The army management and detailed combat system feel very original to the roguelike genere, but I'm not familiar with the games which inspired it so I can't comment on how much Wizard Chess 7DRL builds on that half of its influence. The completed scope felt about what I'd expect from a game made in seven days, but looks like a great groundwork to build a much more expansive and ambitious project. Wizard Chess 7DRL shares many facets of a traditional roguelike but plays as more of a hybrid of genres due to the style of overworld exploration and loot acquisition, army resource and time management, and tactical instanced combat. There's a relatively large learning curve for a 7DRL (which I do not penalize the game for), but this is a unique game and is worth at least learning the basics and giving it a shot. This seems like a game where the target player could really become obsessed with and sink a lot of time into.
• A lot of mechanics are offered, but all are fairly well supported by the efficient UI. There's a lot of information necessary to the player, but it's all communicated with an excellent balance of density and open space. A diversity of units keeps replay early games fresh. The battles feature may tactical options to use, but the overall strategy of the game seems tilted towards grinding.
• Wizard's Chess is a fun "rogue-lite" tactical game with lots of good ol' permadeath and procedural generation. There are a couple of glitches or asethetic oversights, but this is a solid experience. Completeness: The game is pretty darn complete. A couple of UI items are overlooked that result in not being able to check exactly where you're supposed to go if you have a large army (unless you've memorized it from the intro text). But for the most part it's complete. Aesthetics: The author chose a pre-existing sprite set that really blends well with the game style and substance. Not every element works equally well, perhaps just because the game has so much information to communicate, but things are generally intuitive once you learn what they are. Fun: I did not actually enjoy this game at first, but it grew on me to the point of rating a "3/3" to use 7DRL terms or "4/5" for itch.io purposes. The mechanics were a little overwhelming. But at some point after discovering one could literally farm resources, it got a lot more sustainable and easier to survive more fun, some of the most fun I've had with a 7DRL this year so far, in fact. One thing that I might have liked would have been a better notion of how to use ranged units; it's not clear if or why they can't move and attack in one turn, and it might be even more fun to play if players had slightly more control over that positioning element in general. I wanted to give hardcore mode a quick run after beating the main, but something keeps it from running on my computer in the 0.3 update. (The main game is complete enough that I'm not particularly counting that against completeness.) Innovation: It's Might and Magic + procedural generation and permadeath, a solid middle-of-the-road on this front. Scope: This is beyond what I normally expect to see in a 7DRL. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of units, but lots of detail was clearly put into giving them stats and trying to get things vaguely balanced. Roguelikeness: Tactics? Check? Permadeath? Check. Procedural generation? Check. But something keeps this back from being a classic roguelike; I suspect it's the lack of feeling of being in a dungeon crawl, but more something between the classic style and a wargame.