Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• loved this entry, but was slightly held back by the frustration of missing cards I needed! One of my favorite games so far!
• The card deck selection and card merging mechanics were really cool and a great use of the alchemy theme. The overall usage of light to both illuminate the environment and damage enemies was also really satisfying (and incorporated the shadow portion of the theme well). The pacing of the overall tutorial portion could have been a little slower. Rather than have all of the environment objects (like the dresser, furnace, etc) in the first room, it would be helpful to walk the player through several rooms, perhaps, and allow the player to uncover the function of each card type in relation to the environment objects more slowly, rather than all at once in a single room. Another thing that would have been helpful would be a clearer visualization of damage being done to enemies when they enter the light (perhaps a different animation, sound, or other visual). It sort of felt like nothing happened to them or they disappeared whenever they floated toward me, and it didn't really sink in that I was doing damage even though I knew, from the tutorial, that light would eventually kill the enemy . On a separate, note, excellent work on the game design document. It's visually appealing, easy to read, well organized, and outlines your game design quite well.
• Interesting concept! The art style works well, is pleasing to the eye and the sounds are spooky enough to compliment the horror style of the game! A few things to note and a couple of suggestions: Some of the enemies, the bigger ones, move faster than the player, leaving no room for the player to properly avoid them and with no health bar and no way of telling how much damage they do, it could feel frustrating to people. Would like some background music, just for the purpose of ambiance, I understand that you wanted the players to hear the footsteps and the monsters nearby. The lights around the place just dim out after a few seconds. It might be a good idea to add a dimming effect to, for example the candle, allowing the player to, at least, use it to hide for a moment, after all, candles burn for quite a while and I understand that steam eventually runs out and so does electricity. All in all, I'll be looking forward to the progress of the project! Thank you for your hard work and keep it up!
• I enjoyed being able to merge items together. However, I didn't understand how to fight any of the enemies. Your GDD was top notch.