Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Europa 7 is a real time science fiction real time roguelite where your goal is to escape from aliens who have taken over the station. This game includes two uncommon attributes: - 3D graphics - Science fiction setting. Throughout the randomly generated rooms are aliens and the occasional item. Items include health/energy and a variety of one use items. As there are much fewer items than aliens, and they are all one use, much of your time is spent rushing past the enemies and their slow attacks frantically looking for the stairs. I made it past a few levels but was unable to complete this game. In the dev blog, the author mentions some of the cut content, and I can see how it would have added to the scope and depth. While a 3d game is uncommon, and to be applauded, what made this game memorable was the theme. After playing it, I felt a bit like a scientist grabbing random chemicals, chucking them at enemies, and racing towards the exit. I could completely see a game where you mix chemicals like a mad scientist, leverage prototype wild technology to turn invisible or make single shot railguns, and all sorts of future tech fun. Well done!
• The idea of a click-to-move proc-gen game focusing on a more horror/tension based gameplay is pretty compelling. Already there's some tension when monsters are chasing you, and scavenging the desks and bins is interesting. Doing all this with 3d graphics is likewise impressive. Other than that though, there's not much going on gameplay wise. The monsters are pretty basic, and easily evadable, they effectively can't hit you if you are moving. And since they can't open doors, you can shake them off pretty reliably just by running around, then closing a door. And that's sort of it? I just do that basic loop for the 3 floors until I clear the game. I am very happy you put an end in and kept it pretty short to match the content available. The items work, flasks cover any cases when it's easier to kill a monster than evade it, and you don't get enough to just kill every monster. I didn't encounter any gameplay affecting bugs, but at one point the enemies did start sinking into the floor. No gameplay impact though, just amusing. Overall it's a good effort, and there's a lot you can do with the basic building blocks you've built out in 7 days.
• A mediocre top-down roguelite oriented around point-and-click gameplay and protagonist's inability to use conventional weapons. However, Europa 7 is a colony where flasks of dynamite precursor nitroglycerin, some highly corrosive blue acid and enough methanol to immediately combust whoever it's thrown at are present on every other table or computer desk, so it's still no horror game. While it is both possible and arguably more exciting to challenge yourself by only trying to avoid all the toothy aliens on floor 1 and rely on closing doors to keep them away from the protagonist, subsequent floors introduce laser-firing drones, which force you to rely on flasks anyway. While they always fall from just one flask, they can close the distance to the player character so quickly that her thrown flasks will overshoot, which is also nearly the only way to die in the game once you get used to its finicky controls, as melee monsters can be reliably dodged and medkits are plentiful, and food even more so. The main issue is probably not with the gameplay itself, which is average enough considering the deadline, but rather that it's stretched far too thin over a large warren of soul-crushing rooms on every level that are all completed in essentially the same way. 3D graphics, even if they appear to come from asset packs, would have likely been more impressive on smaller levels, whereas here, they just accentuate the sameness.