Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• There was something compelling about Streetcar Rogue Designer that made my doomed attempts to pick up my girlfriend all the more entertaining despite the suicidal pedestrians, homicidal cops, and a car trip that seemed so prone to interruption that it was hardly faster than walking. But walking alone won't get you to the girlfriend in time (believe me, I tried) and so our wild roguelike car trip begins. Completeness (4/5): Playing the V.02 released before the deadline, I find this to be a reasonably complete game. Sure, I have to start it over by re-launching the game when the run fails, and I was unable to get far enough to verify the girlfriend is actually there to pick up, but what I have seen is a pretty solid effort for a 7-day project. It's free of crashes (car crashes excepting) and sporting a remarkable amount of polish. Perfect scores are rare in the 7DRL Jam, and here I can cite a few balance issues and missing features. Given how it was usually a game-ender, I would have liked some kind of way to determine how close I was to becoming wanted by the cops. Aesthetics (3/5): Sporting a traditional ASCII look, much of a roguelike games' aesthetic appeal comes from sheer user functionality, and along those lines I found this game to be easy to pick up thanks in part to the integrated help and tip system. However, some of the part icons were a bit confusing, such as differentiating a door (double-pipe symbol) with a heavy structure (equal sign) and there was not enough contrast to clearly notice brighter bluish elements such as a cooler or telephone booth against the light grey background of the road (which is extra problematic because the telephone booths are something the car can crash into). Fun (4/5): This game is compelling in the way good roguelike games should be! Something about the uncertain path and the distribution of parts and obstacles you'll face leads to an urge to take to the road one more time. Sure, the pedestrians' tendency to cross in front of you is a little frustrating, as is the cops' lack of patience, and the girlfriends' scorn is a hunger clock with no solution, only delays (as in real life). But all that is par for the course for a roguelike experience. Innovation (3/5): Roguelikes that include working cars are relatively few and far between, but the ones I played (mainly Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead) have a very similar implementation. The setting is certainly novel: no mere dungeon but rather a wandering road through a maddening world of death prone pedestrians and raining car parts. A fairly one-trick pony in that it was focused entirely on this car trip, but it was still reasonably innovative where it matters. Scope (3/5): A very solid showing for 7 days of effort, it stuck to one mechanic (the building of the car) and did it well. The level of polish is considerable but that's really more under the category of completeness. I would say that the general dearth of content (just a few parts, terrains, and NPCs) sets the scope score at about an average for this jam. Roguelikeness (4/5): I don't really like scoring inside the realm of fundamentalist definition, but there's a very fine line between that and defining something's roguelikeness. This game sports a fairly average number of similar features for this jam: tile-based, turn-based, procedural, has an inventory, hunger clock of sorts, and even an ASCII presentation for you purists out there. Of course, a purist would also say that a Roguelike ought to play more like Rogue, and the central focus of the game, the car customization grid, is an entirely different form of progression and alien game mechanic to the genre. However, based on the fact that it feels fun in the way good roguelike games do, I've decided to skew the roguelikeness score to a 4/5. Overall, I think A Streetcar Rogue Designer turned out rather well, I certainly had more fun with it than most of the entries I judged, great job!
• This game is an attempt to introduce grid and turn-based gameplay to race car simulator genre. While the idea is crazy, I really like how it was approached and explained for the player. Physics are reliable, learning curve is accurate and sense of speed gives some dose of adrenaline. I liked how open and easy to pick up the car design system is.