Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Hi Alejandro, my name is Clemens, I am a programmer and I hope I can provide some useful feedback about your game Deux Est Machina. To begin with: The game is challenging and fun! I like your documentation, which has a pleasant scope and length. The UI elements in your game look beautiful and nicely designed. I also recognized your use of post-processing effects. They make it easy to understand when the player got damaged (in addition to the HUD). Your game is small and simple and has a good size for a game jam like this. I like the idea of “sacrificing something in order to get something else”. If I may make a wish for a simple improvement, it is that you (the player) can see what happens (basically "the red part") before you select an option so that you can decide if I want to go in that direction or not. (Basically: "If I select this improvement, the consequence will be this."). For me, the consequences felt random. The ambient sound you use fits the game. However, I am missing some sounds effects (e.g., weapon fire, explosions, enemy spawning, etc.). For me personally, the game is a little too challenging, but maybe I am just a bad player. Maybe you should think about different difficulty modes. I found it hard, that my healing is only 3 or maybe 6 points per killed enemy, but enemies kill me after 2-3 strikes. In addition, I do not get healed after finishing a section or by collecting some health packs. However, playing the game is fun and the challenge urges you to try it again and again, which is great. The game appears to be very complete and has an overall simple but nice look. I like the way it visually communicates the actions (e.g., spawning and exploding) to the player. I am happy that you set yourself a realistic goal for this project and reached everything you wanted. Also, I am glad that you learned a lot about Unity while developing the game. I think you did a very good job! Best regards, Clemens Scharfen
• This is a nice, well polished, slice of a game, you should be proud of what you achieved. Some general notes: - From your documentation, you mentioned spending Week 3 polishing and bug fixing. This is great, and is very important to make sure you dedicate development time to improving what you have. Next time though, it might be worth creating a plan at the beginning, of the features you're going to add, and what you're going to make. Just so you that can better plan your development time. - It was great that you put a Controls screen in the Main Menu, as a "further development" task I would also look at adding a tutorial level where you explain the controls and objectives to the player (maybe even have the E to interact tooltip always appear when near the PC). - Game Balance is a very difficult thing to get right in a game, as the people that play will have different skill levels. A "quick" approach to balancing is just add a difficulty option (Easy, Medium, Hard) which then change some levers in the game (i.e. Easy starts off with the repair ability). This can then take a large part of the balancing challenge from you, as if a player finds the game too easy/difficult they can just change their difficulty. - I like how you added different upgrades in your games, but I would look at making them currency based instead of level based. This would then allow you to use the other parts of your world which are empty, as you could put bundles of currency there (in some cases protected by a difficult boss). It just adds more things for your players to do. - I would look at adding a Local High Score ("You completed 3 levels, you're best is 6"). Again its something "quick" to do but gives a large bonus and adds a lot of replayability to your game. Again though, this is really impressive and something you should be very happy with. Great job!