I got to play this one as well as a finalist, here are my thoughts.

I think I had some really bad RNG when playing this game, as the first battle felt way too OP for me. They spammed an AOE that did way more damage than I could heal. I only got out of it by the skin of my teeth. First battles are not supposed to be brutally hard. Remember the player is learning the game. It should be a cakewalk to you as a dev as you know the game inside and out, but the player doesn't. I'd suggest maybe removing that AOE myself, or make sure it can't spam it 3x in a row like it did with me.

Unfortunately  I hit another problem. Lag. This game lags badly on my PC, and I only had one other game I had to judge lag. That first big outdoor map lagged at 40 FPS, which meant the action dash into the monster system didn't work too well as it stutter stepped. I saw you used a lot of VS plugins and as such,you do really need to reduce size of maps and number of events if you are going to use fancy weather, fogs, and all of that. Even VS recommends it in their directions. I did finally get the map to go to about 50 FPS by turning off almost all effects, but it was still an awkward experience.

Then I hit the town. Holy fog! That fog was can't see hand in front of my face. Tune that down a little please! It might be realistic, but realism should never take a backseat to player experience. I finally got to see by lowering the setting all the way to 20%. 

Overall I think you have a decent idea with this game but the massive lag issues hurt my experience playing this game. If you tune that up I think you will have something good here though.

I was one of the official judges this year, and now that the results have been made public, and I'm free to do so, here is my score and thoughts on this title:

Overall score: 9

I really liked the story of this one, and some of the more custom assets. I felt the battles were a little basic, as once I unlocked all the abilities for Sesily, it was pretty much spamming the same things every turn after that point. While I don't mind a basic battle, unga bunga, this felt a little stale to me. I did like the ability to dash into monsters in the game world to get stats, but felt they were such minuscule improvements that they didn't really add much. Still, a nice touch, though. The story was the real high point of this for me. Felt like a lot of lore and characters packed into a small space. I'd love to see it expanded!

Hey there Grimmy Nocturne, I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. It took a while to load, long enough that I was wondering if something was wrong. That was probably due to a plugin you used and I'm not sure how long it took other people to load, but you may want to double-check that and see if there's a fix to shorten it. You nailed the dark and spooky vibes right away, setting the mood for the rest of the game. The mapping was nice, but most of the areas felt a bit too big considering there was little to look at besides a bat here and there. The story felt rushed at moments, which I'm sure is from trying to finish in time.

Dashing into bats to become stronger was a silly idea, so I loved it and spent way too long hunting down every bat. Unfortunately I'm not sure how much of a difference that made to my actual strength, since the battles felt difficult even with my bat-powered self. The enemies just seemed to have so much health that it took ages to kill them, and I often lost a teammate during the battle (including Sesily in the first fight!), but luckily that didn't matter as long as I won overall. I tried to mix up which skills I was using, but didn't find any amazing synergy moves between skills beyond hitting hard and healing when my health was low. So including some other moves like roots that would bind a foe or blind them with a bunch of leaves would've been cool.

Overall, congrats on making a game with such strong environments! With a bit more time and polish, I know this could be an even more incredible game.

I love the sound design in this game -- the victory / loss themes made me chuckle a little, but all of the other music / sound effects are excellent, though they could use a little volume equalizing / balancing.

I thought the story was interesting, though the second half feels less polished than the first. I assume that was due to the time crunch of the contest, though. I know my entry suffered the same fate. 

The mapping is nice, though some maps are too dark to be able to really enjoy that. 

Overall, an enjoyable experience and I hope you continue polishing this one after everything is over! :)

Blackheart 

by Grimmy Nocturne

Hey there Grimmy, thanks for submitting a project to the 2022 IGMC. I was asked to judge your game in round two of the IGMC 2022 game jam. Here's some feedback about your project.

I like all of the extra options in the options screen. There are many more than the average entry in here so good job with that.

It's interesting that you've ask the player if they wanted to live right at the beginning of the game, I said yes, but now I am left wondering what happens if you say no? Probably Game Over? I'll have to replay it sometime.

Nice music selection.

When Mathias joins the party he teleports to her. You could make a quick and small movement event to make that look better. Same thing for when Sylvena joins.

I prefer to play with a controller and you've bound the dash skill to pressing 1 on the keyboard. It would be a great idea to also tie it to a button on the controller going forward.

The animations on all of the player skills are well picked and customized, but the first enemies you face is missing that extra effort.

You should allow an autosave before the first crusader fight. Not that it's overly challenging, but just in case someone messes up real bad, they won't have to restart the whole thing.

You've done a good job of mapping the town and other maps, but there's too much fog and you can barely see what you're looking at. I would reduce that quite a bit.

Nice little RPG throwback by letting the player smash the pots in the buildings for loot. I also find it interesting that most of the things you interact with get destroyed. It's kind of a subtle thing but good.

I like that you've used classical piano pieces like Moonlight Sonata through-out the game.

I think that you've spoiled something when you revealed the inner thoughts of Lord North. It's kind of clear that when he reveals the main character's inner power that 'something' is up, and I can't help but think that you could of saved that for later in the game. 

Good story writing I really enjoyed it.

Why is it that the special tree move that the main character gets is soo strong on Lord North, but so weak on his minion? Regardless, you've done a good job of balancing the fights.

You could further improve the game if you rewarded exploration a bit more, especially with how big you've made most of these maps. You could do this by simply adding more chests and hidden interactable events.

Add name borders to all of the show texts so we can better identify the names of each of the characters. 

The story starts really strong and fizzles out slightly through-out the game. I think that you should change the 'I joined to save my brother' motive of the 2nd character because it's too close to the main character's motive and comes off as a lack of creativity in this scene.

The action sequence for 'The End' is pretty tight! I liked that.

The final sequence was good, although I wonder what the other ending would have been. :)

(I chose the 'I refuse' option.)

Overall I think that you've done a great job with presenting a project for the IGMC 2022. I found it to be an enjoyable experience and I look forward to what you work on next.

-Drifty

Very fun game. The comedy and banter between the characters was my favorite part. The combat was very satisfying, and the story left me wanting much much more.

The mapping and the sprites of this game, the characters..! Really well done!

Blackheart is a well-told short story with thoughtful musical selections, environmental theming and turn-based combat that make it stand out.