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Playability - Almost no bugs, a very smooth experience! The only bug I could find was that if you skip the intro at the right moment, the screen is stuck with a yellow hue cast over everything. Theme Implementation - Great writing! It was a bit long but it clearly laid out the premise and plot. - It would have been nice to have some writing in the mid-levels. Cleverness - You don't get anything for beating a boss! Missed opportunity. Slay the Spire provides players a different pool to choose from than the normal pool of upgrades. - You and your opponent are a ball of stats with approximately the same capabilities. Upgrades amount to having more stats, and as far as I can tell there are basically two builds: tanky or slappy. You mentioned Darkest Dungeon 2 in your inspirations, I think they're a great game to reference for how to improve here because their gameplay has several dimensions to far past just HP and DMG (statuses, tokens, position, stress, etc.) As much of a cultural monolith Pokémon is, its combat is very lackluster in my opinion, but even that has a couple dimensions past just 2 balls of stats ramming into each other (weaknesses, team building, more significant stat management) - I would have a better time deciding what to do with my turn if I knew what my opponent was going to do, or if I at least knew how many bullets they had left. Artistic Style - Pixel art and hand drawn art can live together, even on the same screen! See Celeste. I think you could have gone with non-pixel art for the UI so that you could have more clarity and style, as it gets harder to render things the smaller the elements are. And on that note: - I think you also have a pixel scaling issue where not every element on screen has the same pixel size. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FCJWPYqV0TI?feature=share If you ever had a feeling of "why does my pixel art feel off?" It's likely because of this rule. - An abundance of great art and animation, in the cutscene and the gameplay and the UI. Well done on the pixel art front but I think there's room for improvement. Try following Saint11's tutorials, he does an overview on a ton of pixel art fundamentals. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/451274825155792463/ I congratulate you on your achievements in this submission! In less than 2 weeks your team cooked up a very polished game. Keep honing your craft! Thank you for participating!