Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Guild of Zany is a cross of a card game, like Slay the Spire, with monster combat. It has strong notes of slay the spire, with character classes that play differently, a shop where you can buy relics that have passive abilities, and restarting a run if you die. Gameplay consists of your character moving along a path and auto attacking enemies until it survives at the end or you are defeated. You have a hand of cards, and can place one item on each open square, such as weapons and shields to impact the fights. Gems are a currency within rounds (used for rerolling hands) and between fights to buy relics to improve your character. The aesthetics of this game are really top notch, I have paid for PC and iOS games with significantly worse graphics. The character's animations bounce in a fun way, and the graphic have a children's sticker book feels. Really the art team here did a great job. The interface was spot on, and everything acted just as I expected. The gameplay is complete and polished, though I found it to be rather random and difficult at time. Randomness mitigation techniques such as rerolling hands help, but it sometimes feels you can lose to shear RNG. I was unable to complete the game in my testing, but that could just be player skill. I am only a level 5 ascension player in Slay the Spire. The biggest sticking point is how "roguelite"ish do you consider a card game with auto combat. Apologies to returning to the comparison to slay the spire, but does a card game with random content and permadeath sufficient to be a roguelite? In the end, however, this was a lovingly crafted game with absolutely top notch graphic that I enjoyed my time with. Well done!
• Overview Polished roguelike card battler with a unique twist and some balance problems. Completeness The game has everything that I would expect from the 7DRL, is polished, has a nice and intuitive interface. The only problem is balance – the distribution of cards and obstacles is a bit too random, and sometimes a player just doesn't have the tools for the job. Aesthetics Stylish graphics, nice music, intuitive controls. All elements feel very consistent. That's so good that for some time I was thinking about requesting an exceptional score for Guild Of Zany. Finally decided against it, mostly because some audio felt like highly compressed mp3 file. Fun Despite its balance problems, I had great fun playing this game. The thing is that for Guild Of Zany, the aesthetics affect the fun factor, too. It's a quite simple idea, with an interesting twist, but very well-executed. I think that decision about keeping the levels short was the right one – it makes losses definitely less annoying. And I was losing a lot, the game's hard. Innovation This card battler indeed features an unusual twist: within one screen, player needs to plan all moves in advance, and then can only watch how the plan works in practice. Scope Good graphics, music, 7 levels with different bosses, unlockable characters – more than I expected! Traditional Roguelikeness Permadeath – check! Procgen – check! Being traditional, top down, ASCII roguelike – absent... And you know, that's fine.
• "Guild of Zany" is aesthetically stunning card-based roguelike with enough content to explore for several hours - it took me a while to really understand each ability and mechanic, but the learning process was fun and rewarding. I only got to win all 7 rounds a couple times, but almost no playthrough felt unfairly hopeless - the balance seems to be tuned quite well. The game is also highly replayable, I can see myself coming back to it again and again just for fun.