Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• PRESENTATION
  

  Visuals use the RTP and some extra tiles. Mapping was randomly generated and very bland in many areas, with a lot of repetition and some non-conformity in rules (that is, some places you couldn't walk behind ceilings whilst in others you could).

  Sound was used well enough but nothing really outstanding or interesting. Music was the same - it didn't get grating but it didn't really stand out as well done.

  What was written was full of grammatical errors and other written issues. Thankfully there wasn't much writing in the game, though, so it became a bit of a moot point. Just something to push you into the gameplay - no real story or characterisation.

  GAMEPLAY
  Gameplay consisted of going down through a long dungeon, collecting randomised loot to battle monsters, get stronger and try to reach the end of the dungeon.

  When you died in the dungeon you would get teleported back to the start of the dungeon with only special items in your pack. The idea being that you use special items to give that special tag to weapons and armour you want to keep through the dungeon in order to be better equipped each subsequent time you go through.

  You can also upgrade the weapons and armour you have with another special item, thus making older items you'd tagged as special better than they were.

  Skills were elements that you upgrade in various ways using points gained after battle. You could level up an element for more points or upgrade the stats of the skill instead. You then equip a different element to one of four keys and in battle pressing those keys would cause the spell to occur. There were two other keys reserved for HP and MP potion use.

  Autosaves would cause you to load the game back at the start of the dungeon when loaded from, and this caused issues with loading the dungeon up afterwards - the dungeon is randomly generated and something in the case of loading from the autosave put everything in the wrong position, meaning that you could load a floor where it was impossible to get to the next one since the stairs are blocked. Thankfully you can just warp back to the entrance and it fixes things.
  

  There was a game crashing bug that would occur sometimes with opening chests - probably something to do with the randomly generated loot.

  ENGAGEMENT
  Aside from the crashes that occurred about three times during my play time of the game, and the weird loading bug, I enjoyed the game quite a bit. The maps did get a bit annoying with how bland and empty they were after a while but the decision to have 10 floors of each element helped alleviate that a little.

  The battles were interesting and fast, randomised loot is a fun concept when it works (which it did in this case) and I definitely felt like I was playing a cheap version of the Lufia II dungeon - not a bad thing!

  I do wish that more 'keep' and 'equip upgrade' items could be found. Having only four found over an hour of play time was pretty skimpy, especially with how fast your weapons and armour became redundant.

  THEME
  The theme was dungeon delving and everything about the game focussed on that - getting stronger with better weapons and armour in order to go further into the dungeon. Sadly the issue with the writing and bugs didn't help much but otherwise it hit the theme well enough.

  57/80

• Theme

  Go to the end of the dungeon. That’s it.

  Gameplay

  Simple and ridiculously addicting. Something I can see in a mobile game. The rewards are incredibly satisfying. However I do have an issue with it's information deliverance in regards to saving. It's very inconsistent.

  If I save and load a save without quitting the game, I don't warp back to the entrance and lose my items. If I quit the game to take a break and then load my save, I warp back to the entrance and lose my items. And if this happens, the easiest way for me to get rid of this issue is just load that save file again and don't suffer from this unexpected repercussion. In short, it's just very tedious and unnecessary.

  Presentation 

  Inconsistent art style and needs some work.  This game would’ve benefit more with a story. Also the tutorials blend too much on the background and if you have poor eyesight, it becomes harder to decode what it does. It shouldn't be this hard to read.

  Engagement 

  Took me awhile to finish but it is very addicting.

  Total – 64/80

• I had a hard time tearing myself away from this one. There was always something to keep things interesting - changing equipment, upgrading skills, swapping them around, etc. Despite all this, the whole thing feels very streamlined. The combat system is really great and there were some white-knuckle moments after the big difficulty spike around Floor 80. I haven’t been able to beat what I assume is the final boss yet, but I will definitely return to this one. This is what dungeon crawling is all about.
  

  Score: 65/80

• Did not pass initial screening: Crash.

  Crash: Uncaught Syntax Error: Unexpected end of input.

  47/80
  

  As a roguelike dungeon crawler, the game was simple. While simple, the combat was fun and the levels were easy to navigate. While the lighting was dim, it wasn't overly so. Graphics and sound was used well to put emphasis on the mood. However, battles were an abrupt change of pace due to the greatly different sound and graphics.

  While enjoyable to play, it doesn't do much to really stand out above the crowd. It is fun, no doubt, but it has little that will make it rise against similar rogue-like games.

  Likely due to some plugin, the game crashed a few levels in with a Uncaught Syntax Error: Unexpected end of input. Also, there appears to be an issue with items where you can potentially retain items when you shouldn't or that you lose items when you shouldn't. One of these is true and it isn't quite clear which.