Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• A really nice roguelike with fitting graphics and some sounds (but no music) whose primary flaw is being too short. It can offer a challenge at first, but the six levels become easy to beat once you realize you do not need to kill all the enemies on the floor to advance to the next one - and that you can afford to take one damage per floor, since that's the amount of healing you get upon moving to the next level, along with the equivalent Grit (stamina bar) restoration. This short duration also means that grabbing items from chests is often not worth it relative to simply rushing the exit - you may sustain excessive damage or expend too much grit just to get an item with limited utility for the upcoming floors, and the items' comparative variety only increases this chance. Yet, the core gameplay itself is very good. It comes down to the principle of whoever approaches first, loses - so for all the melee enemies (cloaked red figures, armored knights with doubled HP, and pink mounts with doubled HP and damage) you must never end a turn moving into a space adjacent to them from a cardinal direction, or letting them move there, without also attacking them yourself. If you do attack, them, though, then they are either killed outright or are stunned and can be killed the next turn with no damage - unless others were able to reach you from the other directions in the meantime. Thus, you need to strategically use the titular lunge move which covers one-tile distances between you and enemies to immediately attack them, at the cost of grit, and at times move around to get trees in opponents' way to split them up. There are also the green-robed mages, which attack at a considerable range and can destroy obstacles, but also inflict friendly fire. In all, a nice entry that's worth checking out, and a promising start from this creator!
• "Lunge hero" is a tiny, but surprisingly balanced game: you have to learn the abilities of each enemy type, and carefully consider your escape items, if you want to make it out of 6 dungeons. Each level also offers you a tradeoff: escape quickly, or go for a chest that adds an item to your inventory and another enemy to the map. Content-wise, I think there is enough here to play the 6 levels, but the game is a few minutes long every time. You'd probably need more variety in levels if you wanted to expand the game / make it more replayable (I did replay it several times, but more because of the "can I win this again?" factor than because the levels were very interesting). Some terrain effects or other puzzle elements might help to extend this further.
• Lunge Hero doesn't do anything completely new, but some mechanics have an interesting twist, which I appreciate. It's interesting, for example, that lunging does not take a turn, but Sweeping Strike does. Because there is no wait key, each one of these can be used to change your positioning relative to monsters. I like that getting an item spawns a monster, though if you do it at the end of the level you can just walk away from the monster without fighting them. I also like that you can leave the level without killing everything, very Hoplite. I tested to see if you can beat the game without any upgrades, and I found it to be very doable. It's nice that information about the monsters is displayed on their sprites. Having two abilities along with other items offered some variety. The graphics are visually clean, though I wasn't sure what some of the monsters were meant to be. I like that the ranged monsters will attack their fellows. They did attack if I was in line with them even if I was out of their range, which was unexpected. The fact that monsters don't retaliate when you hit them is interesting, but it does make the game much easier. There are a number of spelling and grammar mistakes, which isn't a big deal I'm just bringing it up. The UX is a little awkward in some places-- you have to select your move and then a direction, but the sweeping move happens in all cardinal directions, so the direction that you enter is irrelevant. I would have liked to have seen one other ranged enemy, or one other enemy with an interesting attack mechanic. Overall, a solid roguelike.