Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Nice idea, but struggled to get to grips with the controls and aiming and it was all too easy to fall off the side, such was the sensitivity of the movement controls.

• I really enjoyed this game, it's definitely lacking in functionality but the first step in a compelling game experience is "finding the fun" and this is good fun to play.
  

  I think you constrained yourself much more to the source material than a lot of other submissions which makes it hard to identify what you were decided was a good gameplay decision versus what you felt you were compelled to do by the framework. Such constraints can lead to really creative solutions though and I've kept this in mind. 

  It's great to see you've reflected on what you've accomplished in your report and I hope you'll stick with this project for a bit. The frantic pace of the game makes aiming a bit tricky but it might be worth considering turning your screen point into a ray and using a Physics raycast/spherecast to see if the player has clicked on anything in particular and then using that  z value for aiming magic? It changes gameplay a bit but it could feel really satisfying to fire 4 magic circles and have them all meet right on an enemy.
  (https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Camera.ScreenPointToRay.html)
  (https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics.Raycast.html)
  (https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics.SphereCast.html)

• I struggled to understand a lot of this game. My missiles only seemed to hit the penguins randomly and I couldn't see what the 'dropping a rune' actually did - there was no visual queue at all.  At first I thought the missiles were 'guided' but if anything they tended to veer away from the targets so I can only assume this wasn't working. The game balance was also off, the penguins needed to be a bit slower and the speed of the player seemed odd - I could actually outrun my missiles. The idea was interesting but I didn't get any impression that I was using magic in some way - you really need to make the game mechanics reflect the game style. A couple of bits of advice  - in the GDD you said look at comments in the scripts for explanations; often the GDD is read by non coders who aren't going to look at scripts, so this doesn't really work. Finally I know this is harsh, but I think it's an important comment for your career - sometimes for whatever reason games just don't turn out (even for seasoned professionals), in this case it's usually better to scrap them and move on rather than present something which only really damages your reputation. This is something I learnt the hard way!

  Simon Tomlinson, Independent Consultant