Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Overview Really nice take on the niche "wyrm simulator" genre. Finally, you can feel all that huge body! Completeness The game feels complete feature-wise. Didn't encounter any serious problems, and it is polished. Disclaimer: I played the post-7DRL release. Aesthetics Nice graphics and simple UI. Hex-based maps and keyboard movement is not the most intuitive combo, but I got accustomed quite fast. I'm not a big fan of the music used in the game – while itself pleasant, doesn't really fit the game setting. Fun Wyrm is fun to navigate thanks to simple mechanics twist: you need to rotate, you can't take a sharp turn just like that. The problem with the game is that you have to keep an eye on too many things at once. You can attack things by bumping them, use cards, navigate the wyrm itself through the tiles that can heal or poison you, need to watch the always decreasing energy counter, hp pool, and at the same time enemies are shooting at you. That's just... a bit too much at once for me. Innovation Top-down roguelike deck builder with classic feel. Plus uncommon movement mechanics. Nice. Scope Big and small. There is a lot of mechanics throws at this game, and it delivers a complete package with the music included, and there is a variety of cards, and there is several level layouts... But at the same time, some cards are bland, and the procgen (e.g. comparing the City and the Lair) doesn't feel truly different. Traditional Roguelikeness Decently traditional roguelike.
• This has a strong aesthetic, a great gameloop, and a nice concept. I'm a fan of card-based roguelikes, and being able to harvest abilities from your foes is a neat way to go about getting new powers. The movement was initially confusing but I don't play many hexagon-grid roguelikes. I do like that it acts like Snake in that you can't turn back on yourself (well, without a special card to do so). Sometimes I'd like to turn sharply more often for an enemy that's snuck up on me, but that's just a case of planning better for enemy movement. This definitely forces you to slow down and think a bit more but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The music sets the atmosphere nicely, the style is solid, and it's definitely one I'll return to after the judging.
• I absolutely loved "Wyrm's Wrath". It reverses the traditional roguelike roles and casts you as the Wyrmling that tries to reclaim the artifact stolen by the Rogue - not a completely novel idea, but something unusual nonetheless. It's also a deck-building game, and I felt like there was a lot of interesting challenges and tradeoffs in building the deck in this game. It also has 5 varied dungeons, each of which comes with a unique original musical theme - and oh my god, these themes are gorgeous! So are the graphics, which are also originally made for this specific game. Aesthetic beauty aside, this game (at least in my books) strikes the right amount of balance between learning by trial and difficulty. I could feel like I'm continuously improving as I played more, by understanding some tradeoffs and mechanics better. The whole process just felt... fun. Sadly, the King Rogue refused to give me the chalice after I ate his corpse, so I never witnessed the winning screen - which kinda finished my final run on the sour note. So if you want ideas for improvement, I think that having defeating the final boss actually win the game is a pretty solid suggestion :D