Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• This character has so much passion into it, I appreciate the great work you have put into this, the amount of moves this guy has is impressive for one guy the animation feels just uncanny and it fits so well, there's some considerable mistakes present in this character however. Pros: The Wendigo psychosis cycle is definitely interesting. The way wendigo is animated really sells a scary vibe This character also wants to be silly, and does a decent job at it The hitboxes scale with the height in a way that makes them still viable Cons: Combos die too easily to DI down since most moves throw the player into the air but the knockback isn't strong enough upwards to stop them from landing and getting actionable Rip and tear jumps the DI modifier to 3x (from 1x) which is wild in a bad way Wendibago is ridiculously op, it's an unparriable giant projectile that when flipped, spawns on top of the opponent, easily being busted Consume gets comboed on DI down This mod has some strenghts, I.e whatever technique or skill used to do the wendigo sprite really helped the character feel intimidating, I particularly am a fan of the silly aspects of the character, but they really distract, specially wendibago, which needs quite the urgent nerfs, this guy felt like he fell for a lot of traps that could be avoided, but distract from him. Good job.
• # __Wendigo__ ## Theme Ah, the wendigo. Such a classic of folklore and horror media, and such an easy tale to butcher. It most certainly fits the folklore theme, that much is obvious, but if I am going to be frank -- as you'll see later -- it doesn't really feel like I'm playing like one. I can't in good conscience rate this category lowly because of that though. **SCORE: 4/5** ## Moves & Mechanics Wendigo feels really clunky to play, if I am going to be honest. A lot of moves share nearly identical purposes to one another (Destroy, Split, XSlash, and Rip and Tear all are extremely fast moving, forward advancing slashes, for example), knockback and DI values don't really factor in actual DI making Mince Meat constantly drop and prove to be very ineffective as a multi-hit. And on top of all of this, there are several moves that are just... minus on hit or just don't have followups? Consume is a stubby command grab that deals very little damage, even raw, and give the opponent a free turn despite looking like it returns to neutral in predictions. The air version of XSlash has no followups, various moves have what feels like unintentionally few followups that make it hard to continue combos off of them. The Bite command grabs are also just very hard to land for very little reward, it's never worth going for. Wendigo does have mechanics though - those being the "goobers," for lack of a proper name, and Blizzard install. for 2 meter, Wendigo can enter a seemingly permanent install state via Blizzard that gives them free action nudge movement, like a significantly weaker Mutant Juke. On one hand, I question why it's so cheap, but it is fairly hard to benefit from outside of niche microspacing, so it's whatever. However, Wendigo makes up for no projectiles via the goobers. They run away from Wendigo on spawn, and dont do anything until they spend meter on Wendigo Psychosis, wherein they go mad and slowly approach the opponent. These goobers will try to attack in close range and fire projectiles at far range, but can be killed instantly by any attack. I will admit, it took me a very long time to understand the effectiveness of these guys, and they are still far too slow and weak to setup against an opponent who actively kills them as you make them, but if the opponent neglects them for too long, they can fill the ground of the arena with an unhinged amount of projectiles. Parriable, sure, but it forces some really awkward situations nonetheless. It's really hard to place how effective the goobers are, because they dont stop the pain of the lack of a traditional projectile by any means, but theyre not useless. Just a little awkward? I respect the hell out of doing something different though. I do feel the need to mention goobers always spawn to the right of Wendigo no matter what, which feels like an oversight and is awkward to work around. And then theres Wendibago. Why does Wendigo have a motorhome? No, seriously, why the fuck do they have a random motorhome as an attack? And why is it unironically their best button? It feels extremely random and contributes to the feeling of this just being a mishmash of ideas with a Wendigo skin. People already get pissy over the use of the Wendigo in media and call it appropriation, this is just absurd for the sake of absurd. On top of how their hustle is Mario's up taunt from Smash, for.... some reason? In short, there's a lot of oversights and funky stuff that makes it really awkward and WAY harder than it should be to play, but I mean, they're still enjoyable enough? They just take a really long time to get the ball rolling and struggle a bit to combo, and anyone who knows what the goobers do can keep that gameplan locked down tight by killing them on spawn. I think I have to dock points just for how much redundancy there is in the kit and the jank that makes most moves really hard to use, though. **SCORE: 3/5** ## Visuals This is a NuclearKnees character, and with that comes their trademark sprite method of 3D->2D spritework. It looks fucking rad, but if I have to be honest... that's all it has going for it visually? Nothing else in the kit matches the quality of the spritework of Wendigo themselves, especially the intro house which is in a totally different pixel density than everything else. Almost every move has hit1.wav syndrome, and the icons are *just* okay. They're really nondescript, especially the normal icons, but for the most part they do a passable job. What REALLY bothers me, though, is how common VFX errors are in the kit. Particle effects will fire out in the wrong direction constantly, XSlash's hit effect will fire off sometimes for absolutely no reason, and various attack effects will just get stuck enabled if Wendigo gets hit out of the respective move, and it just feels really sloppy. A lot more work should have been put into the visual effects to fix them, because there's not much worse than a move hitting you despite its attack choreograph just fucking off in the opposite direction. **SCORE: 3/5** ## Aesthetics And this is where my gripes mentioned earlier throughout the review come to really bite the character. This doesn't feel like a wendigo, plain and simple. In native American culture, the wendigo is a monster typically associated with cannibalism, winter, and the hunt. This wendigo features various bite command grabs and a blizzard install and sure looks like one, sure, but the vibes kind of end there. It doesn't feel like I'm stalking my prey, moreso it feels like I'm a big, burly bruiser with a legion of goobers at my command. The vibes fall apart even more with that goddamned Wendibago. I'm really sorry for getting so hung up on this one move, but genuinely, why? This shatters the aesthetics of the entire character the moment it enters play, it's so out of left field and non-cohesive with literally anything else thematically. Their moves don't make me feel like a hunter at all, I just feel like a hulking mass clunkily jutting around the arena, and this certainly isn't helped by the move redundancy. And returning to the goobers again, there is a real world "Wendigo Psychosis" which is associated with an uncontrollable desire for human flesh -- this is a real thing, and I commend you for that deep cut. They bite you at close range, awesome. ...But why is their most useful usecase a gun? **SCORE: 2/5** ## Gameplay Despite all of this, I can't say in good faith that Wendigo isn't novel. The idea of summons hasn't really been explored in Yomi the way Wendigo does it, and while it has its quirks, I still overall approve of it. However, it really is not enough to carry their fairly lean-feeling kit. The move redundancy really, really, REALLY kills Wendigo here, they really struggle to compete against competent vanilla or any kind of zoning as their only true projectile is the Wendibago, which costs meter and, while is fast, is parriable as all hell due to its size. I want to like this character, I really really do, but in its current state, it really does crumble under its own weight under proper scrutiny. **SCORE: 2/5** # TOTAL SCORE: 14/25
• I like how bite is *just* fast enough to beat most grab beaters. Not everything here functionally works atm and there are some prediction errors I came across but the core idea and execution works just fine. Does this concept have a shot at ever really working as a balanced vanilla tier character? I'm not sure. But it's worth progressing just because it's cool. wtf the insanoids can pull out guns There is a bit of antics going on here that I'm praying has some relevance to the source material. Given that the wendigo is a pretty sensitive topic amongst mythological monsters these days it would not be appropriate to have stuff like the gun and RV if they have no relevance. I can neither confirm nor deny so this is inevitably going to take a point away from aesthetic or smth. However due to being technically impressive, only lacking content in the air, and fitting the theme at a base level I can't rate it low.