Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• I like the thinking and the humour behind the concept, although I think the one-hit-kills mechanic spoils the flow of the gameplay somewhat. Perhaps you could lose a limb with each hit, making the poses look more funny, but get you less points. Perhaps you could then pick up collectibles to regrow limbs! I also think you could ham up the humour with cheers and funny voice samples for each pose, and add in a combo-chaining system for the poses. I'm not sure how much commerical potential this would have - but it would certainly be a lot of fun!
• addictive avoid-em-up! I would focus on the overall look of the game before allowing character customisation!
• Pose of Faith has an interesting hook - it's an infinite faller, where you must do poses and dodge obstacles (including flying penguins!?) in order to get a high score. That's pretty neat, and could be expanded upon with a lot of new content introducing more variety, player abilities, level gimmicks, enemy/obstacle types, etc. This version even comes with a character customiser, which is nice, though it just changes colours, no detailed features like faces or clothes available. This lets players customise on RGB channels but unfortunately blue is on G and green is on B. Ideally the sliders would update the character in realtime rather than asking players to press 'save' each time. Otherwise, the menus are good and functional. The gameplay is simple but the obstacle spacing, fall speed and controls make the game extremely punishing. Players have hardly any time to dodge obstacles, which could be fixed by pulling the camera out and/or reducing the falling speed and/or positioning the character at the top of the screen (the game could then ramp up in difficulty by gradually speeding up over time). Obstacles are close together, so combined with the lack of viewing distance and floaty character movement dodging them can be as much a matter of luck as it is skill. The pose system is cool - the scoring is linked heavily to the amount of posing players do, so you can't just ignore it, you need to be dodging and posing - that synergy could be really interesting, especially if combined with some kind of combo system. Unfortunately, the controls for the poses are difficult - a separate key for each pose, and all situated on the keyboard around the movement keys. Spreading these out to the right side of the keyboard would allow players to easily use two hands to play the game, as would putting the poses or the movement on the mouse instead. Simplifying the pose controls would help a lot as well - instead of 15 different buttons, how about just 3 or 4, and different combinations of input leading to the different poses? However, for the tight jam deadline I understand this might be a bit much. A lot of effort must have gone into animating the different poses themselves, but maybe implementing fewer poses would have allowed more time to refine the controls and gameplay. Visuals are mismatched and audio is minimal. Changing the camera position and spacing the obstacles out are easy fixes that would immediately make the game more enjoyable to play, so don't be discouraged - it's not that far off as it is currently, just needs some refinement.
• What an addictive game this is, was extremely fun to play and I tried to beat my high score every time! I can see a lot of potential in this game by turning it into a hyper casual game for mobile devices, with multiple levels and global high scores. Also adding dance moves and body parts to unlock! Instead of pressing keys for dance moves I would look into creating buttons for the HUD for the user to press as I struggled trying to remember what key does which move. The only this that lets this game down is the lack of audio. Very well made game and extremely fun to play, well done!
• Probably the first game I've ever played where I could edit my character on the fly before dying and having what I can only assume is one of the devs make the death sound effect which scared the hell out of me, and then made me laugh! I also liked the fact I could make my character invisible which was funny. Overall I quite liked it, maybe making the art and audio a bit nicer aswell as some more progressive game design towards difficulty and hiding the very distracting character editor while im falling would be a plus. Great work!