Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Completeness (4): I personally don't quite dig the games without a goal (achieving a high score doesn't count), and to me all the wandering felt a bit pointless. However, the game feels polished and feature-complete, so I assume that you achieved exactly what you set out to do. I'd rate this 3.5, but since it has to be an integer, rounding this up and will round down Aesthetics. Aesthetics (3): There isn't much to pick on here: the controls are super simple as they should be, and the game has the intended old-school look. I think sprites could look a bit better though, and with Completeness rounded up, I'll round this down to 3. Fun (3): The game presents an interesting puzzle-ish challenge, and I enjoyed playing it for a bit. If it had levels, or other goals, I'd likely try to finish it. Innovation (3): On one hand, this is an unusual roguelike. On another, it borrows from other genres like platformers in a way that doesn't make the game feel truly unique. Roguelikeness (3): I think the game plays a bit more like a puzzle than a roguelike, even though it checks the marks of turn-based, grid-based, etc.
• Cardinal Gun Prospector first "clicked" for me the moment I sidled into a second weapon and it attached itself. So I can have 4 weapons, one pointing in each cardinal direction? Now we are getting somewhere. The game has a terrific aesthetic, beyond just the lovely 8-bit visuals and sound -- it really feels intentional in a way you rarely see. There's an elegance to the game play, which is challenging but fair; in the tradition of the best roguelikes, when you die, it's usually because of your own carelessness. It has a really pleasing learning curve as well, as you don't really know what's going on at first, but the game starts to reveal itself to you, and you learn the mechanics, the enemy abilities and patterns, and the capabilities of the weapons. Cardinal Gun Prospector is something like an ideal 7DRL game, to my mind. It takes a simple , elegant concept and executes it well, with suitable polish. It feels decidedly roguelike, but it pushes the genre in new directions. And it's really rather fun. My only nits would be that it would be nice if there were some sort of level goal. (If there is one, I never achieved it.) And as some commenters mentioned, there's not much to orient you, and you're mostly left to explore blindly. The hints like "shot gun nearby x:7 y:-3" are meant to ameliorate that somewhat, but it feels half-finished, and like there could be a more elegant solution there. Also not sure the gold and light are needed, as they didn't add anything useful or fun as far as I could tell, but maybe I'm missing something there. All in all, a highly recommended entry. I'm certainly going to spend some time perusing the creators extensive back-catalog, too.