Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• I failed too many jumps.
• A pretty fun homage to Castlevania and so many similar games! Well done all around. Because you obviously spent a lot of time developing a narrative, I felt that should have had more visibility from the start of the game.
• Interesting idea - a metroidvania in cthulhu's crib. The player controls and camera could use a few more passes to make sure it's really tight. I suggest taking a look at your favorite metroidvania game with tight controls, analyze them and try to copy as much as possible.
• Fun game! The art direction was nice, and I'm very impressed at how you've managed to compress the genre into this quite bite-sized experience. I felt the ability unlocks were spaced out well throughout, and the enemy combinations were interesting. I'm not a huge fan of attacks that freeze-frame and remove player control (I'd have liked a way to get out of that), but the other aspects of gameplay felt smooth enough to give a good overall impression of control. I liked the story twist at the end. Tiny nitpick on the dialogue box: clicking before the text has appeared should fast forward the text to completion, not skip to the next line! I would personally have preferred being able to buy other stat upgrades than healing (simple stuff like a slight damage increase, the attack ending quicker, etc). Overall, good job guys, you should be proud!
• Midnight Symphony , a big project with a huge scope. This Metroidvania gives homage to the founders of the title like Castlevania and Metroid. The size however is a bit of its downfall. While the level design is lovely and encourages newer players to the genre to explore and to get used to the game. The gameplay suffers a bit, perhaps because of the time limit. The combat, while it is the core mechanic of the game, feels the least developed, loss of character control while fighting, makes the fighting something that is avoided if not necessary. The ranged attack feels like an afterthought, as it is incredibly powerful at the later stages of the game, being able to completely obliterate any enemy and even the final boss. My tip to you developers making the game: Make sure to focus on the core mechanic first hand. If combat is what you mainly do to progress in the game, then put the absolute most resources on that specific thing. Now you picked one of the hardest mechanics to work on, which is melee combat. Establish timing, animation and feedback really early, nothing needs to be complete until the end, but make sure you take it all into consideration when making it. The hit stutters that you managed to make, with the game slowing down a bit when you hit things, really was a cool addition, now if the combat was more polished, it would be amazing! The core mechanic goes first. It should be your golden nugget that carries the game, make sure it really works 150%! The level design was lovely, I really liked what you did with everything looping around in order to kill what can be considered metroidvanias most controversial topic - the backtracking. The placement of the secret rooms was also an enjoyable part of the game, letting players feel a sense of pride once they found them. The art of the game felt spread out a lot. Now I imagine it is because the map is gigantic, but it felt a bit inconsistent from area to area. Try to keep in mind the scope of the project. Always think small in terms of the scope, and then expand when you feel that you have control of it all. If it is smaller, you can spend more time to decorate the areas, the enemies and everything, instead of trying to fill the gaps of giant maps. Boss battles are also somewhat of a timesink, always remember that. Keep it small and simple, but make those few things super tight and fun to play with. Overall though it was an impressive feat to create a big game like this, with upgrades, merchant and story. Keep in mind the scope and core mechanic for the next project! Well done!