Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Completeness 4 Didn't run into any bugs, and very feature complete. The only missing feature that I would have liked was the ability to examine my party members while they're in my party, so that I can see what their abilities do. Aesthetics 3 Standard ascii, not much more to say than that. The portal effect though was extremely nice. Fun 4 The party mechanics add a lot to the traditional roguelike formula. Having different characters all specialised in their own little thing was really enjoyable, and I can easily see this being expanded into a larger roguelike. The only concern with a system like that is that having to manage four characters could be tedious, but that's not a problem at all here, as character management isn't super complex. Other than that, I really liked the finite health resource, and the monster types were varied enough to create different interesting tactical situations for each one. Innovative 4 As above, the party mechanics were fantastic, but there were some other really interesting innovations as well. Merging items together to level them up was a fantastic way to make every item valuable, and to get around the problem of everything being trash. The elemental vulnerabilities was cool, but since switching characters was so expensive I never really used them. Perhaps if there was some way to use another party members abilities, maybe through a consumable item. Scope 3 While there were a lot of interesting features, some party of the game were a little bareboned. Most noticably, there are only three different enemies, two of which with elemental variations. Most other aspects of the game were quite fleshed out, however the lack of enemy variety really hurts, since most of your time is spent fighting them. Roguelike 4 This is most assuredly a roguelike.
• A solid roguelike. The party swapping works well, and it's fun to find new characters. I do wish you had some kind of choice when it came to the wish stones, though. It seems random whether you'll get a new character or imbue an existing one with a revive. Allowing a choice for making a character more powerful, or receiving a new character might be more interesting/engaging. Aesthetics work well (the glowing effect on stones is a nice touch), and the UI/UX in general is well done. Context menus are simple but clear, and easy to use. Being able to see where your spells will land before casting them would be nice, but the time constraint makes that understandable. The lack of food timer is welcome, even if it allows for a bit of cheese (waiting for spells to recharge), but your powerful spells do require kills to recharge. I didn't quite understand how "fusing" worked, and just continually fused items into the most powerful weapon available. I didn't understand how corpse eating worked either; I am thinking they can give you resistances if you eat enough of one type, but couldn't get that to happen.
• There is a lot to this game. The party system is neat and makes you balance the risk vs reward of switching to get different attacks. Even just the turn it takes to switch is an interesting choice. The leveling system helps support the party-based setup. Each character felt fairly differentiated. Controls were simple and intuitive. I wish more games had this mechanic of sliding past walls-- it's the opposite of the harsh corners of Brogue. It makes the movement feel buttery smooth. I did wish for a shift-move, since you end up pressing direction keys over and over. I liked having different items, though the melee weapons felt similar. The directional combat was interesting. It was nice to have varied level generation, especially the challenge of occasional open levels. I think the combat might have been even more interesting if there were more, weaker enemies so that you have to make more positioning decisions. I beat the game and then went through one new game plus without ever switching my rings since I find ring swapping to be tedious. I found the starting area to be nice, though a little confusing at first since the important bits are just laying around and not telegraphed visually from afar. I also wish that there was more to do in the starting area. The reason that I wish that there was more to do in the starting area is because I really enjoyed using the portal stones, and I wish that there was more reason to use them more often. The first time I threw one at the wall and realized what it did was an awesome realization, I had to step away from my computer for a minute to soak it in. So cool. I want to see this mechanic in more games, it is super memorable.