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The 2018 7DRL Challenge Evaluation Process Click a table header to sort. |
| Name | Author | Runs on | Play | Completeness | Aesthetics | Fun | Innovation | Scope | Roguelikeness | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DEAD FACE | jere | 
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.78 |
| Meters Below the Ground | gridbugs |   
| Play | 3.67 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.67 |
| Arcane Seeds | High Sodium Games |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.61 |
| Artifex gladii | pawel_s1 |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.61 |
| Shift Stack | Mantis-Eye Labs |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.58 |
| Arcana | underww |
| Play | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.56 |
| Patient Rogue | watabou |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.56 |
| POLYBOT-7 | Kyzrati |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.56 |
| Purge Persist and Profit | IBOL |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 |
| Dimlit | gruebite |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.50 |
| TouretteQuest | larsiusprime |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.50 |
| Piratical | Lone Spelunker |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.44 |
| 65 Million Years Ago | ArcaneRoboBrain |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.39 |
| Nauwhea (7DRL) | roocey |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.39 |
| Snek Trek | Maurog |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 2.33 | 4.00 | 3.39 |
| Cunning Rogue | badscribbler |
| Play | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.33 |
| Dealing with Demons | whale cakes |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 |
| Murky | Draconis |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.33 |
| Temporus: Rogue | Firebelly Studios | 
| Play | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 |
| The Sky and Depths of Kobrade Hills | Jan_rl |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.33 |
| Demon Bathhouse RL | neontropics |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.28 |
| My turn to pew | Zhamul |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.28 |
| Time To Die | Darren Grey |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.28 |
| Catalot | Evgenii Petrov |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.25 |
| Coffee Brogue | Kiazi |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.25 |
| Dr. Hallervorden | irskep |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.25 |
| H.V.N.T.R.S. | FourbitFriday |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.25 |
| Space Dungeon Pew Pew | codyloyd |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.25 |
| StarFarer | max-radin |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.25 |
| Aqua Cats | MatthewLacker |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.22 |
| DeliveryRL | keipra |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.22 |
| Zombie Rogue | gamefish |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 2.33 | 3.67 | 3.22 |
| @rcus | tomtl |
| Play | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.17 |
| Ana's Eight Armed Alien Arena | rubybliels |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.17 |
| Day Star | jmlait |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.17 |
| Deathcall | makuto |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Dungeon Penetrator 2018 (Pico-8) | Glen McNamee |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Greedy Warlock | Lavaflyer |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.17 |
| One Way Out [7drl] | skarl |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.17 |
| Townsfolk Are Tasty | antumbrastation |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Viking Gone Rogue | CaptainKraft |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| The Jarl's Heritage | Aril |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 2.33 | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Verger | -hexcavator- |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 2.33 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.17 |
| ?????? ??????? ??????? (East Bagel Ship) | st33d |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.11 |
| Caves of Trash and Treasure | jhowl |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.11 |
| StyRL | akirassasin |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.11 |
| The Numerologist | RecurseGames |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.11 |
| Mito | hellochar |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.08 |
| Wastrl | theq629 |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.08 |
| Xenomorph 7drl of Infinite Underworld | CoolAI |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.08 |
| Dicey Dungeons | Terry Cavanagh |
| Play | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.06 |
| Turncoat Tomb | uberdroidgames |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.06 |
| Ghoul | pblc.works |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.00 |
| The Dark Count | Lachlan Kingsford |
| Play | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
| The Faded Forest | crabpotgames |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 |
| Tower Noire | Cow |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 |
| Trial of the Warlock | savagehill |
| Play | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 |
| ARDOR | sgtcodfish |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.67 | 2.94 |
| Hexnaut | bigalphillips |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.94 |
| Laborind | Vidsneezes |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.33 | 2.33 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 2.94 |
| Pacifist Jukebox | sowomoz |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.94 |
| Crypt of Grimwin | teamkalamakkara |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.92 |
| DRAGON BUSTER | groverburger |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.92 |
| Felines | Iziminza |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.92 |
| Gauntlet Rogue | geldonyetich |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.92 |
| Twin Demon Slayers | bryqu |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 2.89 |
| Adultlike | Ludipe |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.83 |
| Bones | Chao |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.83 |
| Cubelodo | Enlades |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.83 |
| Dungeon Sprint 7DRL 2018 | Clevername |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.83 |
| Eosos | Shakajiub |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.83 |
| Jam-King's Big Bash | alexhall |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.83 |
| Kingdoms of Ekulera | arqcenick |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.83 |
| Rogue Wave | skwint |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.83 |
| TAIYOH | mrhthepie |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.83 |
| Amrita | Slogo |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 2.78 |
| Dragonvein | Key Wraith |
| Play | 2.67 | 3.67 | 2.33 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.78 |
| Cover and Move | moontea |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.75 |
| HeroQuestRl | Pigmeat |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.75 |
| JingkeRL | ceremonial |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.75 |
| Tank Control | heroicfisticuffs |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.75 |
| muxRL | dhuckle3 |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.75 |
| BloodCrypt | AdamStrange |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.67 |
| Fuzzy Wuzzy Hunters | Akhier |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.67 |
| Hell is other people | pc98 |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.67 |
| Shadow Ledger 7DRL | Kyace |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.67 |
| Space Getaway | crneumre |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.67 |
| Space Station TDA616 | blinkdog |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.67 |
| Tower Of Pain | schraf |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.67 |
| Zealot's Curse | ToothandClaw |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.67 |
| Duck Tape Hero | thp |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.58 |
| Haunted Mansion | Slashie |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.58 |
| LPN9 | webthingee |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.58 |
| NoMad | Tijn Arts |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.58 |
| Superhotlike | Beavl |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.58 |
| The calling | mapedorr |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.58 |
| Prophetlike (gamejam) | Pezomi |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.33 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 2.33 | 2.00 | 2.50 |
| The Blight | Snowdrama |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 4.00 | 2.50 |
| The Rogue Gem | Varz |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 |
| Trial by Fire | potatomancer |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 4.00 | 2.50 |
| Between Games | Kiborgik |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.42 |
| RDDL | Gamepopper |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.42 |
| EldritchRL | arc0re |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.33 |
| Olijkerd (7DRL) | marnix |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.33 |
| P.A.P.A. roguelike | Xecutor |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| The long gun | dommillar@gmail.com |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| the Dark | ifman1 |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| Dragon Dive | SquidPony |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.08 |
| Roguelike Cowboys | Old Mohave Games Studio |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.08 |
| The Untitled Action Tolkien Show | Jaldhar |
| Play | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 2.00 | 1.17 |
Reviews
DEAD FACE
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
4
3
4
Innovation
4
4
4
Scope
4
4
4
Roguelikeness
4
3
3
I went into this not knowing what to expect. Often with hacking games I get frustrated quickly, not understanding fast enough what I'm meant to do with usually dire consequences. This one however, took me a couple of goes to understand and once I got it, I found I loved it. It doesn't detract from the rest of the game at all, adding a great layer of gameplay to what seems like a typical roguelike on the surface. I didn't get control of mechs very often, but what I did play I loved as well for sheer strategy and intriguing mech-layout. I found when I wanted an easy playthrough, I'd just stealth it up and occasionally hack data points for the thrill of it, but if I wanted a challenge I'd happily take on a mech and pilot it very badly. The only time I won was through stealth, but that's not a surprise - it's the easy way. Aesthetically, it's the typical roguelike but with extra UTF characters and a good use of colour - for something cyberpunk-inclined, it's a perfect style. The terminal screen is clear and easy to use, though I got annoyed I couldn't scroll up to repeat my previous command - but that's just because I use terminals regularly and I expect that functionality. Overall, I absolutely loved it - and would be glad to see a post 7DRL version if one was ever planned.
Completeness I gave you a 4, which is the highest score we're "supposed" to give. This feels like a basically complete set of mechanics. I couldn't help but feel like something was missing, but I couldn't put my finger on it, so I didn't dock you points for it. It's missing some gameplay glue somewhere. But that's high-level criticism for a 7-day roguelike. Aesthetics This game is REALLY PRETTY. But I knocked off a point because I couldn't always tell why things were happening. I would take some damage, or the alert level would go up, or I would lose the game, and I would just have NO IDEA WHY. It was really frustrating. According to the scoring rubric, UI is part of Aesthetics, so 3/5 for you. Edit: Then I came back later and put it back up at 4/5 because this is the prettiest game in 7DRL, easy. It wouldn't be fair not to acknowledge that. Fun I agonized over this one, but in the end I had to go with my subjective experience: I loved the hacking minigame, and I avoided mech combat as much as possible. It always felt like getting into a gunfight was a bad idea. The times I tried it, it ended badly due to alert level explosion. The alert level mechanic felt a lot like it was kicking me while I was down - it would get up a bit, and then the fact that I was in a mech would make it shoot right up to 5 so there was no way for me to get out of a gunfight once I got in it. So I went for a 3/5 instead of 4/5 for feeling like I had to avoid a huge part of the game to do well. Innovation 4/5 obviously. Excellent ideas. This is what 7DRL is for. Scope Solid scope from a 7DRL. Nice variety to pickups, mechanics, enemies, parts, and flavor. 4/5. Roguelikishness Had to do a 3/5 here because the hacking minigame is realtime. For me, a roguelike is all turn based, all the time, as a core requirement.
A really impressive 7DRL. The hacking mini-game is really really fun. I found the other elements to be a little dense and/or too difficult but will definitely return to up my game. It's easy to see how much thought and effort went into this entry - the controls are simple and the display is flawlessly integrated into the game. This is a must-play from this batch.
Meters Below the Ground
Completeness
4
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
4
4
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
I enjoyed this game a lot. It's clever, well thought-out, and feels very complete. The different special abilities feel nicely balanced (with the exception of the medkit, which seems more powerful than the rest), and I also liked how well progress meters were incorporated into everything. I also like the cleverness of the title and the variable ways of playing given the different missions and abilities. All of this suggests, to me, a score of 4 for completeness and fun. The game is short, though sufficiently difficult that it's possible to play several rounds of the game in a very short period of time (I think I got through about 12 games in 30 minutes, but I was pretty bad at it). This seems like a standard scope for a 7DRL, so a score of 3 seems appropriate. There is no question about this being a RogueLike though (score of 4), though I feel like most of the mechanics here are already present in other RogueLikes; the innovation this game brings is in how those mechanics are tied together quickly and neatly, and their connection to the progress bars. This seems more like an innovation score of 3. Potentially more could have been added (more content, more complex or unusual abilities / mechanics, etc.), but given how polished and stable the game is I think what was developed here is still very good. Although ASCII graphics were used, it was very clear what the different objects were, how to move around, the character's status, and so on. In other words, the graphics were simple but pretty and clear (definitely a score of 4). Overall, this was one of my favorite (if not my most favorite) entry for this game jam. Excellent work!
A small, neat Roguelike with an A+ pun-tastic name and great gameplay with lots of nice touches that tie into its 'meters'-based theme well. COMPLETENESS Seems complete and polished. No bugs encountered (other than the enemies, who are literal bugs). Balance could do with improvement - the early game is much harder than the late game and some abilities (such as the Medkit) are vastly more essential than others. AESTHETICS Nice clean ASCII, with some nice functional touches like enemies turning red when near death. Controls are simple and easy to grasp, though perhaps oversimplified for those used to traditional roguelike control schemes - you automatically go down stairs just by touching them and pick up items automatically, even when the relevant meter is already full, wasting the resource. FUN A variety of small mechanics combine together well to provide some interesting tactical gameplay. In particular, the metamophosing enemies add some time pressure but with interesting means of managing it. The sub-objectives on each floor are also a nice addition that help to provide some variety. The deterministic combat means that you need to plan ahead and make clever use of your abilities to avoid the attrition of trading blows, but makes healing items paramount and (ironically) can make you highly succeptable to RNG in the early game, where you may simply not have the tools you need to survive. Despite this, I found it highly enjoyable. INNOVATION The game features a number of small twists on traditional mechanics which work together well and add up to an experience which is fairly unique. SCOPE About what I would expect from a 7DRL; a reasonable number of abilities, enemies and objectives. Once you have seen all the different objective types there is not a huge amount of variety between levels, but to its credit the game limits itself to a mere 6 levels to avoid outstaying its welcome. ROGUELIKE Yes.
Congratulations on making an excellent game. This is a standout entry to me. You should be proud. Completeness Polished, balanced, bug free. No apparent rough edges. 4/5, the highest score I am supposed to give. Aesthetics Your fonts and tiles look perfect even though they're simple. It's unique and appealing in a way I can't put my finger on. And the UI is exactly what this game needs. 4/5 Fun At first I thought the spiders were unfair and OP and couldn't get much past level 1. I put the game down and forgot about it. Then it came up in my judging queue and I spent another 30 minutes on it, and won! I now see that I was being a giant baby before. I'm happy with the balance in this game. In fact, it might be the best-balanced game in the whole event this year. Certainly not too easy! Innovative The scoring rubric says a 3/5 is "a neat twist on the usual mechanics," which I think fits this game. There's nothing head-exploding here, just a few well-chosen ideas. Scope The scope is what I'd expect from a good 7DRL, so I gave you a 3/5 here. Four enemy types (larva, arachnid, beetoid, queen), six-ish abilities, small levels...it makes sense together, it's just not "OMG how is there this much content." Roguelikeness Is a roguelike. 4/5.
Arcane Seeds
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
4
4
4
Innovation
4
4
3
Scope
3
4
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
This game was a lot of fun. I wish it was a bit longer though! Some play throughs seem unwinnable, others seem to have the exit two rooms away. I beat the game about 10 times in 30 or 45 minutes and thoroughly enjoyed it. I rated it 3 in completeness instead of 4 because I feel like there needed to be a bit more of it. Most of my wins were under 2 minutes, even the ones that were in the furthest away room possible. What was there was great though. Aesthetics are pretty minimal and mostly easy to understand. I think the idea itself is really cool and would totally play a more robust game that focuses on this idea. Overall a great 7DRL!
For a 7 day entry, this felt quite "complete" and solid. Well done. No random crashes, etc. Input keys made "sense". I liked the good use of colors, and the "seed" of the idea behind these was definitely and interesting and unique. I'd suggest perhaps adding some sound effects, maybe a bit of background music. Maybe once you die, you post how many moves they lasted..?
I really liked this game. It feels very self contained- it does not appear to be missing anything or possessing any extraneous elements. This game was a lot of fun to play, and I can see myself opening it up again in the future, or showing it to other people. I found it to be very difficult but I was able to get a few lucky runs with sustenance and invincibility seeds Premise of the game is a pretty good roguelike joke- Simple gameplay but a lot of care needs to be put into both short and long term planning Delightfully cruel (tfw you starve to death because you’re levitating) Some runs are impossible, but this didn't bother me because average run is only a few minutes Graphics are clear and effective. You can win while levitating
Artifex gladii
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
4
3
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Very nice game! I can't say I really dig the combat system, but probably it's a good game design when even without understanding of all niceties you still can win. There is even a secret ending! Unfortunately there are a few bugs in the game. Sometimes first level have no exit at all. And HP of your characters are only displayed under the character and hard to track when there are several enemies around. Inventory might randomly stop working. But other than that it's a very nice experience.
A very interesting and fun mechanic - uses positioning as a mechanic rather than simple brute bump-to-attack. There is quite a curve to learn the tactics, but they make for a fun experience once you figure things out. The art is really well integrated into the game and story. I didn't notice too much of a difference between easy and normal, but it's nice to have options. The upgrades also are surprisingly fleshed out for a 7DRL - nicely done. Definitely recommend setting some time aside to dig into this one - it's a mechanic that would be a lot of fun baked into a full game.
An impressive, complete experience. I was particularly pleased with the movement-centric momentum?-centric combat, and with the intelligence of the enemies. It strongly punished just going full assault. There were a few small bugs here and there, but nothing of great significance. The 1.1 release provided significant improvement. Being able to see the swords and modifiers was super helpful, and provided me the feedback I needed to get a standard win. Scope was good for a 7DRL - tough, enough to explore, enough to require multiple plays to win, but not long enough that I got bored. I'm glad that I played it.
Shift Stack
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
4
3
Scope
4
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
I liked the graphical style and creativity behind this idea for sure. Technically it was solid - no crashes, input did what it was supposed to 100% of the time, no glitchy sound effects. Would probably do pretty well on game portals - kudos! I only scored it 3/5 on the "Roguelike meter" because it felt more like an arcade game then a roguelike (to me). Great piece of work for 7 days though.
Took me awhile to figure this one out but once I did I was able to really appreciate it. Quite difficult at first but I feel I can consistently beat it now, which I interpret as it being well balanced. I think this game really captures the rogue-likey feel of having to think quite carefully each individual move while still requiring some long term planning. Graphics are extremely well done. They do a great job of wrapping the mechanics in an appropriate theme. I am a big fan of the bird enemy. The sound effects are a nice touch.Even though they are simplistic they make the entire game feel more complete. All in all I think this is a great entry
Arcana
Completeness
3
4
3
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
3
3
4
Scope
3
4
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
This game looks amazing! It's so unfortunate that it is incomplete. I was so excited at first, but there is only basic framework setup and very little actual content. But potential is there and amount of work put into it is quite amazing for a 7drl.
Excellent work, really enjoyed playing it. Showing the controls at the beginning may help the player experience. I liked the scope, mechanics and overall execution.
An essential part of roguelikes is the single modal interface. So usually party-based roguelikes fail, devolving into micromanagement or multi-level combat. Aracana shows how party based roguelikes can be done right, giving hope for the whole genre. Completeness: The game is stable and performant; but it is clear there are several cut-back decisions no doubt due to hitting time limits. I am very impressed that the author scaled back smoothly; keeping the game stable and intact. But "Continue" with no way to save? And the Death screen being the only time "Quit" shows up? I would be more impressed if your comrades attempted to cart you back to town while you watched, giving you a chance for resurrection if you have enough $$. Aesthetics: I, as usual, have a list of nit picks. But it is important to underline everything done right. Nice crisp font, good choice of colour. I love the rivers; but would argue the palette is a bit harsh, a more subtle set of blues would look nicer. Sliding on diagonal walls is most awesome, a feature I believe every roguelike should have. And vi-keys are most appreciated. Using the same letter to dismiss pop-ups as to raise them is also an excellent touch. Messages are colour coded nicely, as is the difficulty of quests. The F1 hint at start is well placed. When quests complete, there is sadly just quick message. I think as a central mechanic they should have a pop-up to alert you, and a special turn-in screen when you return to town. On the hiring screens giving the price of the hire would save jumping into a subscreen. Fun: Combat seems balanced, perhaps rewarding ranged too much. My main objection is the opaqueness of the system. One knows not if a warpick is better than a flail, other than relying on ancient D&D knowledge. This is very '80s RPG style, but frustrating when trying to equip a full party and unsure what is an upgrade. Likewise, one knows not how mana works for spell recharging, or how equipment affects or doesn't affect spells. Individual inventory is a useful idea for being on the main map, but in the town it is very tiresome to transfer items to re-equip. Some opaqueness I'm fine with (stuff like sleeping to trigger level up, etc), but I think this goes too far. The use of $$ to gate level up is a nice way to keep one hungry for gold as the game advances. Innovation: I am very impressed at how smooth the party based play occurs. The AI felt strong enough I was not annoyed with their behaviour. I liked that there is no "orders" or "direct control" required. It lets it still feel like a normal roguelike, just with some allies on hand. Scope: This is an excellent well-balanced scope for a 7drl. It might be higher than this, but the opaqueness makes it hard to tell if all the items/monsters are just chrome or represent additional mechanics. Roguelikeness: 100% roguelike. A definitive example of a party-based roguelike that is true to the roguelike spirit.
Patient Rogue
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
4
4
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
Out of all the 7DRL's I've reviewed and played, Patient Rogue easily takes the crown for my most favourite game. The runs are very fun to play and I'd love to see this game expanded on in the future. This card-based 7DRL relies on luck but also some strategy in which cards to pick or ignore as you progress further. I found myself to be starving quite often in each run as food didn't seem plentiful enough, but I enjoyed how it made things and each choice more difficult. I'd rather it be that way than easy to win all the time though, as that feels more like the true nature of a roguelike. Patient Rogue feels very fresh and new with a light Slay the Spire feel to it, but doesn't seem like your traditional roguelike as lots of those elements aren't there. This is certainly not a bad thing at all though, as it innovates and has a bunch of new, well-tuned mechanics that work well with the flow of the game. I enjoyed the clean and simple aesthetic with the pixel-y vibe to it. The minimal sound effects do the job and suit the feel of the game as well. I mostly played this on an Android phone which it worked wonderfully on. I tried it on my desktop's browser, which it scaled and worked properly as well. I didn't encounter a single crash or bug either. A standalone mobile app would be really great to have and I'm sure there would be some demand for it as this is quite an enjoyable game.
I played version 0.0.2. Get the amulet of yendor (depth 11/12) to win. I beat it (~50% win rate). Defeat 3 enemies to level up (heals 1 health). Revealing an enemy also reveals adjacent enemies. Completeness 4 Charmed monsters do damage depending on the difference between the current dungeon level and the current character level, not the damage their card says. Aesthetics 4 Nice pixel art graphics. Mouse controls are OK. Shift click shows the card description. Fun 4 Very fun. Good level of difficulty. Pleasingly brutal hunger clock. Each game goes differently depending on which cards you find. The dearth of food cards makes it funnier when you get 3 food on in the same level. Innovation 4 Card game with roguelike theming. Scope 3 Decent number of cards. Roguelikeness 3 Turn based Random cards Permafailure RPG stats and abilities Tactics/strategy Doesn't simulate a physical space
I'm so conflicted about this one. I love the look and feel of this game, I love the concept of a solitaire roguelike, I love the idea that it could be played as a physical card game. But I felt frustrated by the RNG. It seemed like if I happened to turn over the correct cards in the correct order I would be capable of winning, but it never worked out that way for me. In most situations I think knew what the best decision to make was, but often times my situation was so bad that the run was unsalvageable. As a 7DRL this is pretty darn good, and I think with a little bit of tweaking it could be excellent. I just noticed the link the new version but haven’t gotten a chance to play it much, but I am really looking forward to it.
POLYBOT-7
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
3
Fun
4
4
2
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
3
3
4
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
POLYBOT-7 Is a delightful game that takes the unique character building aspects of COGMIND and turns it up to 11. It is very complete and polished. I bumped into a few issues when running windowed on linux (mouse cursor missing, couldn't get map panning to work particularly well) but it was otherwise just fine. As always, the attention to detail in the UI was quite nice. The box drawing characters for walls was an interesting touch but had the unfortunate side effect of leaking information about where other non-visible walls were somewhat unappealing artifacts. I don't think this is a huge deal overall but actually made that part of the game feel a bit less polished than it actually was. I struggled a bit figuring out how to rate POLYBOT-7, as a 7DRL, w/ regards to innovation/scope considering it's starting point. I decided to mark it 3s due to it's striking similarity to COGMIND. That's not to say I think it is bad in any way. While I do think POLYBOT-7 is great, I found the tractor beaming a bit frustrating. I almost won a few times but found most of my runs ended up taking a nose dive when running into a parts drought and ending up with insufficient propulsion. I guess I'm not very good at it yet, but after about 90 minutes I felt like I usually just got jammed up :(
A great spin-off of cogmind. Changes the core game by making your character a magnet for whatever utilities and weapons happen to be nearby. The purge mechanic is interesting - you can occasionally purge and toss off half your equipment and hope to grab something better. Otherwise you are left running with what you have - which at some level does relieve some of the pressure cogmind has in terms of the sheer number of choices. So, a nice choice for a 7DRL. Certainly worth spending a lot of time on this one. As to be expected from this author, the interface is top-notch and the graphics are perfect (ASCII mode for the win). Sounds effects are just the right amount - not too little and not too much.
Polybot-7 was overwhelming for me. I had a hard time figuring out what was going on, even with a readme, a manual, and a dev diary. The game is attractive but tends toward sensory overload. The very first thing I see upon starting is a flashing "MATTER WARNING." What is it trying to tell me? What are the C, E, M, CORR, TEMP, and SPEE meters? The help screen expands on the names; I'm still not sure what they do though. The manual does not cover this. Hovering the mouse over some of the items in the world displays both a tooltip next to the cursor, and a line of details in the lower right corner of the screen. The tooltip goes away when you mouse off but the details remain, which is a bit confusing because they're right under the inventory, which makes it seem like maybe something in your inventory. Once you pick up the same item, hovering over it in your inventory does not show the same details in the lower right. Instead, you have to right-click on the item, at which point you have an entire half screen of other stats to contend with. After examining all of the blue icons surrounding me I think I'd like to pick up a leg. So I move over it, but I seem to have picked up some light armor instead? This seems to be a pattern: I never pick up the item I move onto. I keep moving around and eventually manage to pick up all of the items, at which point I get a flashing "ENERGY WARNING" message. What does this mean? So I start off down the corridor, at which point all of the items in my inventory do a dance and reorder themselves. I have no idea what happened or why. Do the letters next to my inventory items correspond to keys to press to use them? No, apparently not. I don't know what the letters are for. Having read the dev diary I understand a bit more about what is being attempted; something about having a cloud of potential equipment following you around. It's an interesting idea. I love the look of the dungeon, with the line walls and the doors that open up when you approach them. However, there are detailed-looking but non-functional (I think?) things on the map, which can be confusing. Likewise, when you get damaged, there are full-screen effects (random letter glitches) that make it hard to see what the important things were that happened. Messages show up in the upper left and then disappear, and simultaneously the items in the inventory flash and then disappear, at the same time as weapon effects in the main screen. Meanwhile various numbers and graphs on the right are changing, so it is hard to know where to look to figure out what just happened. There are numerous tactical overlays that can be toggled, and a half dozen versions of the inventory display. Despite all this I have a hard time knowing what I need to do to get good. I'm sure that if I devoted enough time to learning this I might be able to come to grips with it, although I had a similar experience with its parent game Cogmind. So I suspect I may just not be a very good player.
Purge Persist and Profit
Completeness
4
Aesthetics
3
Fun
4
Innovation
3
Scope
4
Roguelikeness
3
In Purge Persist & Profit , you fight alien bugs while trying not to run out of oxygen, ammo, and health. The oxygen acts a hunger clock and makes the game very tense. Combat is fairly simple, but there is an interesting mechanic where the aggression of enemies varies and they sometimes swarm you all at once. I ran into one bug where stats are sometimes not fully replenished at the end of a level (I think having to do with which input method you use). Not starting with full stats essentially makes those levels a death sentence. The sprites, sounds, and music are all great, but the aesthetics are really dragged down by 80% of the game on desktop being taken up by a grey background and a mobile interface. I did check out the game on Android and it was better there of course, but oddly enough there's still a grey wrapper around the game proper. I would much prefer movement be handled with swipes. Let the cool art take center stage! PP&P features an upgrade system where you get money from two sources: previous runs and global player activity. I found both ideas to be interesting and would possibly work to make the game more addictive, but they also make it much less roguelike. Gathering money seemed to be at odds with progressing and I didn't like having to choose between the two. On the whole, the game is great fun and there appears to be enough levels to keep you busy for a while. It's nice that it's playable on both desktop and mobile. The alien planet theme and resource management combine to make something worth checking out.
Dimlit
Completeness
4
4
3
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
3
4
4
Innovation
3
3
4
Scope
4
3
4
Roguelikeness
2
4
4
This game is very original defense/base building game. But not quite roguelike. Being text and turn based doesn't make a game roguelike. This game could be much more fun if starting 'safe' period would be longer. Even easy difficulty do not give enough time to explore "info" tree. Most of the time grues are starting to invade lit area before I could build something defensive.
Dimlit is really interesting entry. Although it doesn't feature fancy graphics with tiles and animations, it looks elegant and stylish. It's ASCII power, I think . UI is simple and easy to use. The base of the gameplay is lightning mechanics - player has to survive in ever-darkness plane, filled with dangerous grues. With use of glowsuit, PC needs to collect crystals, to build structures that emit light that helps to deal with enemies. Simple, yet innovative (a bit, for a roguelike genre), and very pleasant.
Dimlit is a very interesting game. It hews to the roguelike requirement of tactical decision making; but rather than tactics being determined by a level generator; they are determined by the world you've assembled out of darkness. After a bit of a learning curve you swiftly get to the point where you feel the adrenaline rush of venturing into the dark in search of crystals, risking all for a chance at a new structure.... Completeness: The game is steady and seems bug free. For a game with a survival theme, however, some form of high score list would make an excellent addition to let one see how much better one has done. The right hand of the screen is strangely unused, as if it were designed for a narrower window. I'd recommend resizing the console to better fit the area used (Which is why i put this under completeness, not aesthetics) At one point a dark tower was damaged by a grue (!). When I tried to destroy it, it wanted me first to repair it! I'm also not sure sentry towers work as I had plenty of grues wandering about them, and never saw a fire. And the harvester I built seemed to generate bonus crystals only back at my base, not where it was. Aesthetics: What a brave choice! Black and white in 2018? The opening screen art raises little hope of an aesthetically pleasing game. But, to my shock, the author pulls this off in the game-proper. With only Inversion as the signifier, a large number of different states and situations are expressed. I would have used more shades of grey, which would let you tell true-black from black, and maybe feather the edge of the light. But this would have been unwise. The sharp cut off makes it 100% clear where you escape the realm of darkness, an essential thing to track. The lack of true-black makes finding dark towers a bit more interesting as you need to find where your beams can't light up. Meanwhile, controls support vi-keys and arrows, and usability is all space + bump. The menus are easy to flow through, and the lack of named monsters makes the tech-buildings have nice clear glyphs. Fun: Balance is remarkably well done. It is not too harsh on the easy level to let you start to gain a feeling before bad stuff starts happening; and the slow ramp up leads to an increasingly hopeless fight against the dark. It avoids the risk of being too easy and boring; there is always a dark storm about to mess with all your careful plans. (This is how it rewards tactics; how you react to to situations, over strategy; how you prepare. And thus why it is a roguelike) I do object to 4-way movement. I believe 8-way movement would make it more interesting how to move to fetch crystals, 4-way makes little interest in optimizing path finding. Also, it would be easier to repair advance techs surrounded by power if I could bump diagonally - I had to demolish power to do so. Innovation: As a base-building roguelike that doesn't even feel overmuch like a base-building game, I think this is very innovative. Scope: The tech tree alone, with careful help and stats provided for everything, is a start. But as you progress farther and encounter dark towers, etc, one begins to appreciate how much is actually in this game. Roguelikeness: Single modal interface, focused on the player. Tactical grid-based action. And lots of RNG to keep the planning horizon short. Very much a roguelike!
TouretteQuest
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
4
4
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
The "tic" mechanic is an interesting take on the "hunger clock". I enjoyed that, and the clean aesthetic of the game. I liked the "content" cues at the entrance of each room. Enemy AI and map generation would would probably have benefitted from longer than a week of development -- they're distractingly simple.
Tourette Quest sets out to model the experience of sufferers of Tourette syndrom and Narcolepsy and succeeds at opening an interesting and clever window into that world while simultaneously providing (literally) compelling gameplay. This is done via introducing a 'stress' resource which exacerbates various negative effects and is increased and decreased through various actions. COMPLETENESS Seems fairly complete. No bugs encountered. AESTHETICS The monochrome mixture of MSPaint and photos is not the most attractive graphical style, but does its job. Controls and menus are clear and easy to understand. FUN The game succeeds in blending its message into entertaining gameplay with the various symptoms having interesting effects and requiring you to manage stress to mitigate their effects. The main negative is that engaging with these systems isn't really necessary to win the game - as all the enemies move randomly it's easier to dodge them all and simply escape to the exit. INNOVATION Games which explore autobiographical mental health issues are pretty rare (the only other example I can think of is Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia). The various symptoms of Tourettes and Narcolepsy are expressed as game mechanics in a novel and interesting way. SCOPE A reasonable scope for a 7DRL, with a number of different effects and item types. ROGUELIKE Has many ingredients of a roguelike, though the combat system is modal and menu-based more alike a JRPG and consequently the gameplay is very different to a standard roguelike.
This is a great example of “show don’t tell” being used successfully in a game. I enjoyed the strategy of having to choose between the action that I wanted and the action that I was compelled to choose - but I really enjoyed knowing that this decision factored into a larger experience that the developer was trying to convey. Graphically very clean and effective. I think the art for the enemies was great. The battle screen vs the F-150 is screenshot worthy. I ultimately won by avoiding as many enemies as possible, which is fairly interesting because it’s literally stress/trigger avoidance as a game mechanic. Interesting premise, supported by relevant mechanics with a substantial amount of polish. This is a solid entry for sure.
Piratical
Completeness
3
4
3
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
3
3
4
Scope
4
3
4
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
It's a very nice game, but a bit grindy. Well... Not a bit. The grinding is real here. You must purchase certain abilities to progress. But earnings from runs are relatively low. You are more or less safe on most runs, as you can always return to your guide and get back to town. And there are no very damaging enemies. So you slowly grind for better weapon. Then slowly grind for lungs, to be able to dive better. Then explore sunk ship. Not always it is possible to explore whole ship. So you repeat this several times until you find everything required. I liked the atmosphere. I liked presence of a plot. I understand that for a 7drl it's already quite good. But IMO either earning could be buffed or prices reduced to make experience less boring. Ideally combat should be more varied and have some risk/reward choices.
Piratical's world feels alive, which is a hard thing to achieve in any game, let alone one made in a week. I struggled to achieve much in the game (never managing to scrape together enough money to even buy a lowly cutlass), but I did enjoy my time hiking around the caves and swamps of Louisiana. Maybe a little too unforgiving, but maybe I'm missing something.
What a different yet creative rogue like adventure! It's a great mix of storytelling with rogue like gameplay to find and track down the dreaded dread Bloodbeard. Despite only having the 7 day deadline, the experience of "interviewing" some of the local townspeople to put together a plan for where to look for Bloodbeard was a lot of fun. Being a web developer myself, it was awesome to read through the actual history researched and recorded in the source code. Next level cool! While extremely minor, I only had 2 suggestions - maybe a sound effect or background music track, and perhaps a banner or something that slides into view once you die (to remind you to hit "refresh" to try again or whatever). Again, really minor things. Fun game, and I'll be playing more times for sure.
65 Million Years Ago
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
3
Fun
3
4
2
Innovation
3
3
2
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
65 Million Years Ago is a treasure hunt that takes place in the Cretaceous period. Naturally, that means dinosaurs are hunting you, but they're also hunting each other! The combat is, surprisingly, roguelike enough but fairly simple. I was shocked to find out that a handful of dinosaurs are weak enough to fight in melee combat. There's several delightful small touches here: the dinosaurs fighting each other, the collectible mosquitoes, the humorous intro text. The tiles are pleasantly consistent. The UI and controls are solid. If I have one complaint, it's that the lack of a hunger clock makes it too easy to sit in a corner and rest out the night time. This is a perfectly scoped game for 7DRL. Not too ambitious, but does its thing well. And it's a great theme of course.
Fun little game about surviving for a couple of nights as a time traveler to the Cretaceous period. Attractive graphics and smooth, playable interface. There is a nice day/night cycle which affects when your time machine and stun gun will recharge (they're both solar-powered). The various types of terrain don't have an effect that I could see other than blocking movement. My most successful strategy seems to be to hide in a corner overnight and let the dinosaurs drive each other extinct, then go around and collect their remains. The dinosaurs have emoticons that appear over them which I think communicates their mental state (angry, generally). They tend to get locked into battles to the death with each other. You can stun one dinosaur a day, roughly, and you can bludgeon some of them to death if they're stunned. Not a recommended strategy for T-rexes. I like that you can choose how ambitious to be in chasing a high score. It's not too difficult to finish the game if all you care about is staying alive, but the temptation is to try to get more dino-souvenirs to take back with you.
Escape in the teleporter to win. I beat it (score = 1010). Completeness 4 No bugs found. If a mosquito is on the same tile as a dinosaur only the mosquito is visible. Aesthetics 3 Tiles are OK. Numpad or qweasdzxc to move. Space is used for both the stun gun and picking up loot, so when standing on loot you cannot use the stun gun. Fun 2 The only helpful tactics I found were tedious to use. Innovation 2 Enemies fight each other. Player is significantly weaker than most enemies. Scope 3 A few different enemy types, a few different loot types. Roguelikeness 4 Turn/grid based Random maps Permafailure
Nauwhea (7DRL)
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
4
3
4
Innovation
3
2
3
Scope
4
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Very interesting game! One of gems of 7drl 2018! One two complains: First - there is no way to display current list of blessings. If you play several times in a row, it's easy to forget what blessings you took in current run. Second - shrines choices should change on every pick. Also it would be nice to have some pickup/structure that replenishes significant amount of FP on later levels. Foraging is almost non existent on deeper levels, and if you don't have FP replenishing choice in a shrine, you are completely screwed. Other than that - excellent game, interesting ability choices with synergies and anti-synergies.
Inspired by Maori mythology, Nauwhea is a fairly well put together roguelike and generates some decent content but doesn't feel like it's breaking any new ground. It seems very much like your typical coffeebreak 7DRL except for the Maori theme, which include the monsters, items, and weapons. Other than it, it very much feels like a standard roguelike. I ran into quite a few crashes upon exiting the game, but it still managed to save. Other than the crashing, there were no errors or spelling mistakes that I noticed and the game feels finely tuned and balanced. The console design is minimal and easy to understand, as well as the controls being quite basic and standard for a 7DRL. I really liked the dungeons that were generated in this as they had a mix of big rooms and corridors with some seemingly hidden areas too. The monsters were all very simple though, and would rush you upon seeing you. I would have liked to see more variety in this. There are also items and scrolls present, which add to the depth but seem to be the only initiative for fully exploring the levels. I found Nauwhea to be fun for a few playthroughs, but the strategy for each run was the same and felt too bland to me after a short while. I felt that having to walk over grass and fern multiple times to recover your food points seemed too tedious and ruined the exploratory flow as well. With that being said though, the game is still worth checking out and seems very complete for a 7DRL besides the crashing upon exit.
A good solid traditional Roguelike which distinguishes itself via an interesting Māori mythology theme and a couple of interesting combat ability upgrades. COMPLETENESS Seems fairly complete and polished. No major bugs encountered. One minor graphical glitch in that certain enemies have a different symbol in the sidebar to on the map. (Some enemies also share a symbol with other different enemies, though I'm giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming that was intentional.) AESTHETICS Nice clean ASCII, with some neat visual touches such as differing background colours between floors, animated water and so on. The help menu explains most of the basic concepts of the game well, though there are some omissions (such as where food comes from) and a less experienced player may not be able to find the help menu in the first place. Could use a 'look' function to help tell what certain things are at a distance. FUN Good, solid, traditional roguelike gameplay. The Māori theme adds extra interest over standard Orcs-n-Elves and the special abilities and combo system add a good level of depth to the combat. INNOVATION Mostly a traditional roguelike, but the theme feels fresh and small touches like the combos and special powers that let you swap places with enemies or cause area damage by hitting walls are fairly novel. SCOPE A good range of powers, enemies and weapons for a 7DRL. ROGUELIKE Definitely.
Snek Trek
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
2
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Completeness: Snek definitely seems to be a complete and honorable homage to the classic real-time version of itself. A very faithful reproduction, that was completely bug-free and as polished as you could hope for in a roguelike version of the arcade game Aesthetics The first impression was very fun, engaging and somehow nostalgic, even though Caribbean steel drums were never a part of the original snake game, as far as i'm aware. The ascii was cute and each playfield/level had just enough texture to it that it stayed interesting. Fun Easily a few orders of magnitude more fun than it's arcade-cousin. The addition of abilities to the snek that allow for actual strategy and tactics to come into your apple-collecting endeavors was a very clever addition. I would've liked to see just a bit more added to the "goal" side of the game. Merely collecting Lvl x 10 apples per floor as a goal got daunting and repetitive pretty quickly, though that might not be a totally fair criticism considering how much MORE repetitive the actual Snake game was! Innovation Nothing too crazy in terms of innovation to the genre as a whole, but in terms of innovating the "snake collects apples" genre, it is a masterpiece! Scope: At base level i was about to give this 2 stars, as the core of the game doesn't do too much that seems crazy for a 7 day challenge. But in looking at the animation for the wriggling snakes, and the inclusion of music and sound effects, I bumped up the score by one. The game is very complete in it's current state and though i wasn't quite able to get to the end (level 6 was my furthest), it seems to accomplish exactly what it set out to do Roguelikeness Tis a roguelike, i declare!
This is a fun and cute little game. I like the cleanness of the user interface, and although the graphics are simple they work very well. My only complaint with the game is that the difficulty ramp is slow. I didn't find the game challenging until around level 5. Before that point, the levels felt about the same in difficulty, while after level 5 they were noticeably more difficult. However, I didn't feel like the game was unfairly difficult, but this slower ramp is why I gave the fun factor a score of 3 instead of 4. It also seems as though the difficulty increase does not involve new content but larger levels and more enemies (consistent with how the game Snake functions). This is good, but I felt it only warranted an average scope score (3). I didn't complete the game, nor could I tell if there was an ending point to it, but regardless the game feels complete and polished. Also, I really like the idea of taking a non-roguelike game (Snake in this case) and turning it into a roguelike. In this case, Snek Trek is a very good roguelike version of Snake, following what I would consider all the necessary criteria of a roguelike (hence a score of 4) and also being quite innovative as a 7DRL (also score of 4).
Snake meets Rogue in this 7DRL where you play as a snake competing against others to eat fruit and grow longer. COMPLETENESS High level of polish. No bugs encountered. AESTHETICS Very attractive animated ASCII-esque tiles and appropriate music. Clear UI and instructions. FUN The Snake/Roguelike mashup is interesting to play and quite fun for a while, but the parts borrowed from snake turn out to be fairly superficial in that you can flip direction whenever you want and rarely have to worry about trapping yourself. Managing enemy aggro is the most interesting part of the game. There is not a great deal of variety and it can become fairly repetetive after a few levels. INNOVATION A novel combination of Snake and Roguelike gameplay. SCOPE Fairly limited content, only really the bare minimum necessary to successfully explore the central concept. ROGUELIKE Has a more arcade feel than most Roguelikes, but I would say it qualifies.
Cunning Rogue
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
4
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
A fantastic effort. It feels a lot like Rogue in a way many rogue-likes do not. Examples include the type of combat, the bestiary, the tone, the use of items (particularly single use). I particularly enjoyed the use of movement and 'dancing' with multiple goblins, zombies or bats to get hits in without getting hit. The interface could really do with some work. I've got a big screen, and ended up having to magnify the screen in order to see the elements - particularly when combined with the font. The messages showed no obvious way of seeing recent messages which proved particularly difficult with inventory management. A resizable window, and more streamlined inventory management would do a world of good to this game. For the record - After about an hour, I got about a quarter of the way down the dungeon before dying to hubris: another very traditional roguelike trait. This was a far more complete experience then I was expecting, and it felt balanced and tough. In the best possible ways, it felt like a Roguelike. A mighty effort - really well done.
This is a really impressive entry. Huge diversity of enemies with unique and thematic movesets. Fairly large variety of weapons and items as well. You created quite a large and long game in 7 days. The attack prediction mechanic is very cool and works wonderfully with all other aspects of the game. The graphics are effective. Initially I had some trouble reading the font (something about the spacing seems weird) but I got over that eventually. I had some weird UI confusion around using/equipping items and confirming/cancelling attacks but after a bit of time playing your system felt natural. The different colored squares for attack prediction were pretty confusing but I think that is part of the fun. I am not 100% clear on the yellow and pink squares. All in all this feels like a great, classic, roguelike. It feels complete beyond what I would expect from a 7 day project. Nice!
Dealing with Demons
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
Dealing with Demons is action roguelite about wielding a huge sword and signing contracts with demonic characters. Most roguelites focus on ranged weapons, but interestingly your only attack here is swinging around your sword (which starts huge and can be swapped for an even bigger one). The combat feels pretty good after you get the hang of it, but there's not much there: two abilities and two types of enemies. The titular mechanic is an upgrade option every 5 levels, which also has a drawback. It's your choice whether to take the option (sign the contract) or not. Sometimes the upgrade and drawback cancel each other out, but usually the upgrades are absolutely worth taking. The balance is a little scattered. One upgrade let's you kill enemies in one hit and that makes things way easy. My favorite part of DWD is the art. It's low fi, but chock-full of character. The title and win screens are really well done. Looking at the colorful art, listening to the catchy music, and swinging around my colossal sword felt great . I just wish there was more.
Pretty nice, I liked the concept. Got too OP too quick but the weight of making the contracts is a nice addition to the roguelikeness of the game. Looking forward for further improvements after the Jam.
Murky
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
The use of the limited colours and usable keys on the PICO-8 is wonderful - the graphics are well designed and clear, though with some things until I tried interacting with them I wasn't sure if I could walk through them or they were going to bite me in the face - namely what I think are ghosts in the Lair area. The combat mechanics are great, giving multiple tactics to the player other than the usual "stab in the face and hope for the best" - I spent a few games messing around with different strategies. It's a good short roguelike, with solid gameplay and surprising level of depth in combat for a limited environment.
Loved it! Murky provides a good 30-60 minutes of entertainment, which is great for a 7DRL. I was able to beat the spider queen on my sixth or seventh run, by using my elven speed and a large collection of arrows. I like the sense of progression through zones, and that they're all directly connected (as opposed to the floors in a typical Roguelike). The enemies are fairly simple in their behaviors but ensure you have to use a combination of kicking, elven speed, and shooting to defeat them without getting hurt. Health and arrow pickups add an incentive for exploring, and dangerous mushrooms a low-level obstacle to look out for. I felt like the terrain could have been a little more interesting; often it seemed like there was a single pathway carved out of the forest or the rock, and the boundary between zones was very linear. But for a 7DRL it is a solid game.
Temporus: Rogue
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
In Temporus: Rogue , you're flying a spaceship around to different locations and then going on missions to collect artifacts. The thing that stands out immediately is the art: a mix of super low resolution pixel art tiles, non pixel-art effects, and awesome color choices. Keep in mind this is an update to a prototype that seems to have been made about one year ago, but it sounds like a good bit of effort went into the changes this year. The game feels a bit incomplete considering how long it's been worked on in total. There's a Help button on the main screen, but it only tells you there is no in-game help! I ran into several cases where my character became unable to move and then several other freezes. I couldn't make heads or tails of how to properly and repeatedly use the melee/range attacks. I couldn't figure out a way to progress beyond a single infinitely repeating mission to "Find the artifact", but I would guess that is all there is currently. Perhaps I've just done a poor job of understanding the game, so take all of this with a grain of salt. In spite of that, there's some interesting ideas at play here. You can set down drones to fight for you. I was confused why the drones didn't move, but it made more sense once each mission shifted into a time survival mode and you had to fight off waves of enemies. When I say "waves" though it was usually just 1 or 2 enemies. The difficulty is undertuned. Outside of the waves, the primary enemy only seems to attack when you do (and there's no need to kill them). There are also enemies (or friends?) trapped in "stasis fields". Supposedly they can be freed in some way, but I could only ever destroy them.
Stylistically, this game is quite excellent, in both title graphics and actual game graphics. In terms of controls, it's okay - I tried the touch controls for a while and then switched over to the keyboard for movement, a step up on PC. I assume it plays better on Android, considering it's designed for it more than PC play. (If I had more room on my phone I would have played it - alas, no room). In gameplay, I found it quite fun - though I wasn't sure if the interface scrambling on the first location intentional or not. It was nice to have a goal beyond "murder everything" and the drones added an extra layer of strategy when at an artifact with multiple moving monsters. My only major drawback in playing was on one point returning to the ship, after my third artifact, the game unexpectedly crashed.
I love the look and feel of this game. Definitely a roguelike. I like the drones. I wanted to like this game a lot more, but it took a really long time to figure out what was going on without any instruction or obvious way to start the game. (It's the matter transporter) I also ran into a number of bugs where I just froze and could not move. Also ran into trouble when placing drones and ended up blocking myself in - this could be a feature I guess (?) but it's really frustrating. The style and music is great. I love the tactical positioning of drones - this is a really interesting feature. For example, using a block barrier to push an enemy into the direct XY-line of your Dv2 drone is a great feeling. Also getting an enemy stuck right in the intersection of two Dv1 drone firing circles is very satisfying. These types of mechanics can be the backbone of a really great and interesting game. One note - it's hard to tell but it seems like a lot of this game was developed previously - it could be clearer what the difference is from the previous game, if any, or if this is a brand new game made for the 7DRL challenge. (-1 in scope)
The Sky and Depths of Kobrade Hills
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
4
4
3
Innovation
4
3
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
3
The world of Kobrade Hills exists on a single screen, but offers much more to explore than first meets the eye. If you want to get the most out of the game you will need to be stubbornly curious. I'm going to call Kobrade Hills a Roguelike Platformer. Now, when you hear those words you will probably imagine something like Spelunky or Vagante, but in this case you would be mistaken. Kobrade Hills takes the essence of a platform game and applies it to a world very much rooted in the Roguelike tradition. It can be difficult at first to parse the visual information required to make informed decisions about your leaps, but the developer has blessed you with permalife, so there is ample opportunity to learn from your mistakes. There is a small minimap overlay that shows you information about the tiles directly above you. It's worth paying attention to this once you start trying to navigate your way up the limbs of a tree. There are a few wonderful surprises that await you if you persevere, but I won't spoil them here.
The Sky and Depths of Kobrade Hills is roguelike inspired by Dwarf Fortress' approach to 3D environment. And it features a lot of jumping, as main gameplay element, alongside exploration. Starting in the depths, player needs to *jump/climb* his way up and find a way to enter locked church. What's next? I don't want to spoil it - game is confusing sometimes, but also full of revealing moments. Jumping mechanics are intuitive and pleasant to use, but linked UI elements could be more polished. Also, even if game offers help with backtracking, it's not easy yet boring. In the lower floors of church, I encountered some graphics glitches - it seems that some symbols are not displayed correctly by included font file. To sum up, TSaDoKH is good roguelike that'd use more polish.
The Sky and Depths of Kobrade Hills makes an impressive attempt at providing a proper 3d roguelike experience. This is not merely different levels, but actual proper layered topography. It takes a while to get used to the iconography, but once you figure it out it is surprisingly effective. Completeness: One of the first games I figured out the jumping mechanic was sadly a game I'm pretty sure the tree was placed too far from the church to make the leap, forcing a rebuild. This is one downside of permalife - an errors in level generation will be found. I'm also not sure there is a win condition. I felt I completed the quest I assigned myself on returning the bones to the altar, but nothing happened. Aesthetics: I am impressed with the portrait mode layout, a nice change from the usual wide-screen format. Mouse over tooltips are a nice bonus and integrate well on the terrain. Lack of vi-keys, especially with diagonal support, is frustrating. People without keypads need these. Further, 1-9 do not work. Fortunately page up/page down/home/end do work, so I could progress, as diagonals are important in this game. I was initially quite confused by the - and = icons; but after some work it becomes quite easy to parse and understand. I would love to see how far this could progress with a game with combat. Fun: Leaping around and discovering the different holes was a quite enjoyable. I enjoyed the different types of terrain and interesting level generation, and appreciated the winged boots at the bottom to allow return. But it was hard to explore enough to be confident I didn't miss secrets as they are so easy to hide in this system. Innovation: This goes without saying. It is not just a true 3d grid roguelike, but one done well. Scope: Impressive variety of level generators, but the game itself is very much a toy to explore them. Roguelikeness: The exploration pillar of roguelikes is well satisfied, but it needs some combat I feel to truly be one.
Demon Bathhouse RL
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
The voxel style graphics are appealing, especially with the addition of lighting effects. The key-based map exploration can be frustrating with Metroid-era levels of backtracking. A bit more variety in enemies and terrain would really take this up a notch.
Visually wonderful - the fact you made a 3D roguelike in 7DRL conditions, even a simple 4 direction voxel graphics one is something to be commended. That as well the aesthetic looks good in such a limited graphics set, with effects of the steam off the bath just makes it more excellent. The gameplay is standard roguelike affair of walking into enemies, though the fact you have to strategize - hitting monsters side on to avoid damage and taking them through the springs to weaken them to blue added an extra element of thought to encounters. Wasn't able to find the ability to take out the laser enemies, but I liked you could hear the beginning of the sound effect the step before they fired - a good warning sign. I didn't progress particularly far in most of my runs as I kept getting distracted by the scenery and getting killed, or missing boxes and therefore keys, but I still enjoyed it. Escaping from a location is a good varient to the standard roguelike go deeper for loot, which I also appreciated.
Good job on this! The lack of animations severely decreased my enjoyment of your game because I couldn't really tell what was going on a lot of the time, but it would definitely be fun with a little more polish. Completeness: 3. (Scale is 2-4 for all categories.) The only thing keeping this from a 4 is the lack of title/game over screens and animations, or some other way for the player to figure out the rules better. Aesthetics: Very pretty! But 3, not 4, due to the lack of visual feedback for anything, and the way-too-small text. Fun: 3. The mechanics mostly work well together, but a few things brought it down for me: Once you pick a direction, half the keys become useless because they only let you backtrack without increasing your score It's way too easy to die without knowing why; deaths in roguelikes ought to teach you something about the game "get as far as you can" is not super compelling to me; it's the same set of concerns the whole way through until you die Innovation: Neat twist on the usual mechanics. 3 Scope: Pretty much what you expect from a 7DRL. 3 Roguelikeness: Is definitely a roguelike! 4
My turn to pew
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
3
Fun
3
4
2
Innovation
4
4
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
3
Going to mix up my format a bit, for in case the person reading this has read any previous reviews. Short snippet followed by the "The Good" and "What could've been Better": Summary : This was a surprisingly wonderful little game with a well thought-out set of mechanics, pleasant art and a song that both fit AND didn't get irritating. The player inches their way through a turn-based SHMUP (Shoot 'Em Up) style game where the action plays out in little "real-time" snippets, thought the player doesn't have any actual control during the real-time moments. The game DOES have an end, though it doesn't come in any sort of climactic form, the game just kind of ends after cycling through the same area a few times. The Good Excellent and innovative gameplay. I just picked up a game on steam that does a turn-based SHMUP style, but haven't tried it yet so this game was my first experience with it. Great art and catchy, non-irritating tune. Fun upgrades that had a meaningful impact on gameplay. Never tried "slow" engines, though, seems like faster would always be better Good variety of enemies, no feel of same-ness among them What Could've Been Better The controls were a bit wonky. You got used to it eventually, and perhaps it was meant as a skill component, but the player always needed to adjust where they actually clicked to account for the screen's forceful march forward. This resulted in many unintentional and unwanted collisions early on while the muscle memory developed Enemies would semi-frequently just disappear in a bit of a buggy way. The ending was a bit confusing. I just saw the rocks that spelled "End" 3 times and then the game just closed (or crashed?)
A great idea and reasonably good implementation. I've always wanted a way to turn an action game into a turn based game by automatically pausing at intervals, and this game gives me precisely that. I would buy this game if it had more depth/content.
An interesting experiment in combining turn-based roguelike gameplay with a side-scrolling shoot-em-up, but an awkward control system and a failure to exploit the turn-based mechanics for any new gameplay mean that it ends up being a not entirely successful blend. COMPLETENESS Seems to be reasonably complete, but not a great deal of polish (no title or game over screen, slightly weird formatting on menus). No bugs encountered. AESTHETICS Nice graphics (although its fairly difficult to tell what many things are supposed to be) and music, but really suffers on its control scheme, which is clunky and painful to use, requiring you to either use an awkward number-keys and mouse combo or select from a menu every single move. FUN There is potential for a fun experience here, but in implementation the combination of side-scrolling shooter and roguelike ends up stripping all of the enjoyment out of both of them. The chief culprit is the control scheme, which turns even simple movement into a repetitive slog and - because the point you click isn't the point you'll move to, it's the point on the screen you will be at after scrolling - makes evading obstacles far more irritatingly difficult than it needs to be. Ultimately making the game turn-based adds nothing and I ended up wishing it were just a straightforward real-time shooter! INNOVATION Shoot-em-up Roguelikes have been done before, but are still fairly rare and the precise implementation details here are quite novel. SCOPE About what I'd expect from a 7DRL - a reasonable variety of enemies and upgrades. ROGUELIKE Takes some limited roguelike elements, but is really more of a straightforward shooter made turn-based. Even the procedural generation is quite limited, recycling the same pre-built chunks of level over and over again.
Time To Die
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
2
3
Innovation
3
3
4
Scope
3
4
4
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
The game have a very interesting mechanics in theory, but quite boring in practice, unfortunately. At least first level is such a drag. Enemies that spawn enemies that spawn enemies? C'mon! Enemies that move you around? Ok... 5 at once on the starting screen? C'mon!!! Also there are quite some minor bugs here and there, like unkillable enemies (I know the trick! I killed several enemies of that type, but one of them decided not to die), mouse controls near bombs icons is very strange. And one (somewhat) major bug - victory is broken. Also, once you unlocked several bombs and accumulated some noticeable amount, killing final bosses is as easy as pausing time and placing 6 bombs... While I understand that somewhat limited and wonky mouse support is most likely limitation of the T-Engine, but... I'm a player, right? And ... well... mouse support is limited and wonky! On some maps it's really hard to see enemies weakness points, especially when time is paused. The moment when you take damage could be visualized or somehow highlighted better. Many many times I was completely clueless what and how hit me. And it would help learn the game mechanics better.
Cons I found while playing: Didn't heard the audio Game start at full screen (not necessarily bad though, but I prefer to be asked first) Not enough feedback while playing, to know whether what I'm doing is effective. Pros: Sprites and visuals are pretty good, and look very feature complete for a jam game.
Definitely this is an ambitious and well put together entry for a 7DRL. The portal selection was a great idea, along with each different type of world (my boys underscored that with "It's a Mega Man Roguelike dad!"). I gave this one quite a bit of time, and my only real gripe is the hex-based system threw me more then a few times. The aim / shielding system didn't always seem to work, and once I was in melee range of a mob my gun didn't work at all (I did a quick scan of the help to see if that's a known bug / design choice / etc but didn't see one). Apart from that, everything gameplay based and animations seemed real solid - throw in some audio and booya!
Catalot
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Surprising variety of weapons and item abilities, and challenging enemies. Fun little hack and slash with some strategic options.
Catalot excels in feeling feature-complete and being fun with decent controls that support a fluid feel to it. The aesthetic look to it is pixel-y and simple, but works well and looks cute with a cat being your character. Another thing to really enjoy is the variety and abundance of items, although those who don't care for inventory management may not like how there's so many to pick and choose from. Managing your items takes a few minutes to get used to since all you use to control this are numbers. It doesn't take too long to learn and go through the motions quite quickly though and because of this, I didn't mind the management at all and was quickly diving deeper in dungeons without the abundance of items feeling tedious. There's also an abundance of enemy types with ranged, healing, and respawning ones (damn Overseers!). Catalot's dungeons have multiple ways to go and forks to take, some ending up as dead-ends, which added to the depth and fun as well. The game feels very much feels your usual 7DRL and I didn't find anything too fresh or new besides the cat character. I would have liked to see better dungeon generation with more corridors too. I was going to recommend different classes in a post-challenge version as well, but there's actually enough variety in the weapons and items you pick up that each build still feels fairly unique. I can highly recommend anyone to check Catalot out for just simply being fun, and it's one of my favourites that I've reviewed in this jam.
Coffee Brogue
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Overall I thought this was pretty fun but I felt like it suffered from a lack of balance. Perhaps I am just not good enough at the original game but I felt like I was at the extreme mercy of the RNG. I did have a blast firing off super powered staves and stuff but it also felt like I was one level without a pit away from just getting obliterated. I was unable to win in about an hour of playing and almost all of my games ended due to having to take RNG down stairs and getting two shot. On further reflection, I think trying to compress a very well balanced game like Brogue is probably a pretty difficult task. I feel like the balance fell short of hitting the mark but still made for fun, but often frustrating, experience. My biggest point of struggle was actually the game interface itself. I prefer to play brogue in its graphical build but you only shipped a term binary. The interface overall feels less responsive and less capable (I couldn't get inspection to work, for example) and suffered what seemed like a lot of bizarre color artifacts. I tried trouble shooting this with multiple terms, color schemes, and other settings but could not overcome it. To your credit, I did start up official brogue in term mode and it had the same issues as well. A graphical build would have helped me a lot.
To be honest, I thought I was going to be bored with this because "why not just play Brogue?!" The quicker dive, ridiculous items, and the ability to immediately see late-game content was quite interesting. I wouldn't say the game was super innovative, but it's a glimpse at a cool twist on Brogue. Fun game.
Dr. Hallervorden
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Dr. Hallervorden is a fun, technically well made game. It has good balance and a clean attractive interface. I love the different floors and how they each have a different theme and the generated levels do a good job of capturing that. I enjoy the flavor descriptions for the various rooms, it helps bring the game alive. Sometimes I feel like there's a bit too much going on in the combat system (which then bleeds into the interface). There are a lot of values and things to consider while fighting and a lot of the time it feels like it doesn't matter that much, because as long as you don't die you can just rest to full. And if things go sideways you usually have tons of healing and stim potions to get you out trouble. As a result the UI, while very clean and nicely presented, can feel a bit dense and overwhelming until you really learn what to look at and what to ignore. Overall, I'm impressed with the depth and polish of this game and think it is quite excellent!
Great job getting all this done during the challenge. It is a solid game. It was a bit easy, although maybe not for a 7drl. The UI is great, other than a few minor niggles (eg S
H.V.N.T.R.S.
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
4
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
The game looks very cool and atmospheric. But, unfortunately, minimalistic art often makes it very hard to understand if terrain is passable or not. Double escape to quit is honestly horrible decision. I closed the game twice by trying to cancel crossbow aiming! The game view scrolls when the character is way too close to the edge of the screen. It's easy to find a monster breathing into your face or even take a hit by a projectile that was fired by off-screen monster. Frankly speaking combat system is quite easy to abuse which makes more or less safe, but quite boring gameplay. Only 3 inventory slots and absence of ability to drink a potion from the ground makes drinking said potion somewhat cumbersome. I wasn't able to test how it plays with a friend, but controlling several characters is very confusing. There are many starting options, but I couldn't find any value in most of them. Overall it feels more like turn based adventure game than a true roguelike.
I really enjoyed the Commodore-64 art style, especially the 1-bit art for the ground, walls and pits. The music is very evocative and, while I'm no expert, feels at home in the same, limit, early 80's range. The RNG could be improved because a couple of times I started a game only to be swamped with monsters and bullets flying everywhere. I feel like some polish could be added to the inventory management and using special abilities. It took me a couple of attempts and re-reading the readme to understand it properly. If I have any negative criticism its that the story could be simplified and made more available through the environment, monsters and items. It feels a bit like a wall of text that can easily be skipped in favour of just playing the game. It's difficult to give feedback on a game that hits all the right spots and feels like it was only time that limited the polish that could be applied to this fun roguelike. Well done!
Space Dungeon Pew Pew
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
Nice little game. Very simple and without any twists to more or less traditional roguelike mechanics, but fun enough to win it once or twice. Turrets near staircases seems a bit unfair, but roguelikes are generally not very fair. Inventory could be more friendly. Looking into stats to figure out equipment details is not very convenient.
Completeness This is a pretty polished experience. It felt like a Real Game. And that's hard to pull off in 7 days! 4/5. Aesthetics The UI is pretty good, and I would have given a 4/5 here, but I was frustrated at not being able to compare weapons and armor on the fly. I had to equip it, check my stats, and maybe switch back. It was very frustrating. And the rest of the look is very bare-bones rot.js style. So, 3/5. Fun Good balance of enemies, armor, weapons, and items. The levels are pretty samey but the generator does rooms-and-corridors about as well as you can do with rooms-and-corridors. The game felt short but polished. A complete set of ideas. I did get slightly bored eventually, but it felt worth my time. I would give you a 3/5 here for fun because it did kind of get old after 30 minutes, but having played a bunch of other games, it's definitely in the top 30% for fun. So you get a 4/5 from me. Innovation Every mechanic in this game felt conventional. It's not a bad thing to have a traditional but themed roguelike (it was still fun to play), but because the mechanics are so simple and conventional I have to give a 2/5 here. Please do not take this as me saying this game is not good though! Scope The turrets and enemy variety bumped this from a 3/5 to a 4/5 from me. I felt like there were multiple approaches to most situations, and it didn't feel samey until I had basically beaten the game. Roguelikeness This is a roguelike. 4/5.
StarFarer
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
2
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
What I loved Very clever control scheme. Though at times it felt difficulty to control this unwieldy and speedy space-ship, it was very reasonable and an interesting way to control the game. I think separating the accel/decel controls from the heading would've made it much more intuitive. When things were diagonal it was hard to tell, at times, if i was really slowing down or not Aesthetics were a win, for me. As far as roguelike graphics go, it felt very space-themed and the animations were a very nice touch. The tactics of space combat were also quite satisying. The UI did a good enough job of showing the enemy's stats that choosing which weapon to fire with wasn't a trivial choice and you could see the impact of it clearly. What I WOULD have Loved The game was only a touch buggy, i noticed that the UI didn't scale properly on different monitors. Also the end game was somewhat lackluster. I got a prompt informing me that I'd won but nothing else, the game just kept going. The mechanics around shops and money felt a little inaccessible given the length of the game. It was hard to make enough money (past the starting 25) to really do much of anything, but when I WAS able to do something, I had a great time doing it and wish i could've done more Tough to do in a 7drl because this game already had quite a big going on, but a little more depth to the star systems would've been great. Maybe some asteroids flitting about and other such space debris.
This game feels great to play. Ship movement is well communicated and energy management creates interesting situations. The planets and stars look nice. The graphics and UI elements feel very “space-y”, and the music really ties it together to create a nice sense of immersion. The quest for the Orbitron Device was a little frustrating, most of the clues as to its location were not particularly helpful unless I had already been to the solar system that it is in. Winning or losing felt like it was a little too strongly influenced by rng; I won games where the macguffin was on a planet in the starting system, and I lost games where the starting system was completely over run by pirates. The ship combat was very difficult, and I found that a more successful strategy was to avoid the pirates altogether, put my money into energy improvements, and focus on exploration. It seems like all the systems are in place, it just needs a bit of tuning to be a really nice space exploration roguelike.
Aqua Cats
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
As a concept, it's great - taking the two usual key movement controls and making it into two controllable characters aiming for one goal is a good twist, as is guiding the submarine. I got very frustrated with the controls very quickly - the submarine moves too slowly for me in its current gameplay state, even with the speed option. If the movement system was changed to real time, and standing on an arrow kept it moving until moving off, I feel it would make a better, less frustrating time. I did enjoy letting off torpedoes into the scenery and literally anything that moved. The sonar was a nice way of showing obstacles without standard vision. Great concept, I sincerely hope that it gets built upon after the jam.
Aqua Cats is a fun little subaquatic management/navigation game. You have two cats who you need to assign to a variety of actions/vantage points on the vessel. As you descend the light fades and you must rely on your sonar to detect hazards, and use your torpedo to blow through the rock formations if necessary. The world is nicely rendered and the functions of your sub are intuitive and fun to use. The game is not particularly challenging nor does it offer much replay value, but it's enjoyable to play to conclusion. I can see the premise being expanded into a more complex and rewarding experience. The potential for local cooperative multiplayer is novel and would work well if there were more time-based hazards to overcome.
Playing Aqua Cats is very pleasant experience. It's polished and mostly bug-free roguelike with nice set of tiles, and even simple animations. Gameplay feels fresh, combining turn-based gameplay with real-time cannon aiming. Definitely interesting mechanics, but game is slow paced and using 'jikl' control scheme is not intuitive at all. Still, it's very solid jam entry.
DeliveryRL
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
3
3
4
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
Nice little game, but a little bit too random and too simple. And lack of the main menu with ability to start new game after the loss is a bit irritating. While it's nice to win the game once, replay value is very low. All runs are very samey. Roguelikes where fighting monsters gives you nothing and generally should be avoided were done before and pizza temperature, while thematically interesting, but not really original as a game mechanic.
I'm too used to and expect at this point, to wade into monsters and waste them. Not so here and it took me a while to come around to -not- laying waste to the environs and all that dwell within. It took me longer than I'd admit to stop trying to smash through everything and actually start lobbing items to distract/confuse/slow mobs, but once I got into actually thinking about my moves I had a lot of fun with the game. Still smashed every rat I saw, accidentally ran into numerous goblins and orcs accidentally and dying on low health. As of this review, I've got to floor 4 at most.
Completeness The scoring rubric says 4/5 is "polished, balanced, practically bug-free," which your game is. Aesthetics It's an ASCII game with a fully realized UI. Pretty much as good as it gets for 7DRLs. Solid choices here. 4/5 Fun Great theme, well chosen mechanics, appropriate item and enemy variety, well-tuned difficulty. I really had fun with it, over many runs. 4/5 Innovative Nothing earth-shaking here, just appropriate application of a theme to the genre. "A neat twist on the usual mechanics." 3/5 Scope I was about to give you a 3/5, but then I thought back to the other 7DRLs I've played, and they all have smaller scope than this one. So you get a 4/5. Roguelikeness Obviously a roguelike. 4/5
Zombie Rogue
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
2
4
4
Fun
3
4
4
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
I'd like to see it have more big bosses in the early levels to surprise the player, but anyway, great job.
Wow - a great and surprisingly deep game. It's hard to believe that it was done in seven days! The infection mechanic is fun - similar to golden krone hotel, you can change forms to access different strategies and player characteristics. I with the game supported keyboard but the mouse control is very well done and about as convenient as can be asked for. A surprising depth of items, weapons, upgrades, etc. Definitely the most robust 7DRL I have played yet.
This is a really slick, playable game; way more than I'd expect to see in a seven-day Roguelike! It looks like it has been under development for quite a while before the 7DRL so that makes sense. The graphics and animation are attractive and more importantly the interface does a very good job of explaining what things are. I haven't completely figured out the how the zombie/human team system works yet but it seems like there are quite a few possibilities there. The couple of times I tried escorting someone it was a bit awkward; we ended up on top of each other, or I had to wait for them to get out of the way before I could move. Otherwise though things worked like I expected.
@rcus
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
3
2
4
Innovation
3
2
3
Scope
3
2
4
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
I -adore- the style used in this game - the characters look like "what would Finn the Human look like if they had Jake's transformation powers" and "was in a roguelike" mashed in a good way. Enemies are distinct, everything is clear as to what it is, and the drawing of the bow interface is simple and clear. Unlimited arrows help, especially when I forget to read enemy movement patterns and fire off a square away from a slime's death. On time of writing, I've only got as far as the underground forest, but I'm absolutely adoring it. (Also, dad needs to sort himself out if he has to be saved -every year-)
I played three games. The first two, I died on level 1. The third, I won with almost 5,000 gold (100% of the gold from every level). The aesthetics are promising. It looks great until the water level. It would be nice if the message log scaled to the user's resolution. If you're rendering to the DOM, maybe use percentage font sizes instead of points. In terms of fun and gameplay, it felt very shallow. I would rather have had half as many levels with more variety in enemy movement, enemy attacks, environmental characteristics. At some point I started to be able to predict the enemy movement based on which direction they prioritize, which was a little bit fun, but not enough. The levels are so large that wandering around felt like a chore. Once I understood the rules, the game was very easy. I never took any damage during my entire winning game until I spawned right next to a snek. I never felt like I had to deal with crowd control with enemies because there were so few per level, spaced very far apart, even near the end of the game. It's clear you put a lot of love into the title and intro, and you did a really good job with the theme and feel. Next time, I suggest making one or two really interesting levels rather than seven basic levels. And if there's no reason to have big maps, then have small maps. This game might have worked better if the maps were more like 20x20 instead of 100x100. More claustrophobic and high-stakes for each move. The current level size leaves the player too much room to escape. Completeness: feels polished until you get to level 3-4, where the emptiness makes it feel unfinished. 3/5 Aesthetics: Is pretty, controls make sense. 4/5 Fun: Not fun after first couple of levels. 2/5 Innovation: Move, shoot, collect coins. 2/5 Scope: Enemy variety is almost all cosmetic. Levels all feel the same. 2/5 Roguelikeness: Not enough mechanics to attain "roguelike" status. 3/5
I really enjoyed it, great work, nice music, the aesthetics are adorable. Point to improve: maybe implementing a store, I'm not sure what do you spend the money on.
Ana's Eight Armed Alien Arena
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
4
4
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
A neat concept, especially the variety of monsters and their death effects. Got a little repetitive, but I can see that problem going away with a bit more development.
This game introduces some interesting tactical decision-making. I like the changing environment and the amount of different kinds of situations you find yourself in. Pretty good.
Day Star
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Day Star was very tough for me. I died dozens of times without ever getting off the first level. Even managing to kill any monster but the trilobytes was a hit-or-miss feat. It's very much a learn-by-dying sort of game. Even with repeated experimentation, though, I never did figure out what some of the items did. (The gold cross doohickey, for instance, or the maximum-umbra spell.) I like the "ruined library" aesthetic. Making turning cost a move is an interesting idea. Coupled with the lack of a "wait" key, though, it means I am regularly in situations where I know I will unavoidably die within the next few turns.
This game is beautiful and I loved what I saw of the world, but I really struggled with the combat. Changing direction take a turn and one hit from any enemy will kill you. Thus combat is very much based around positioning, but I couldn't figure out a way to get a hit and retreat from enemies that took more than one hit to kill. There are some spells that you can acquire but none of them added much to my longevity.
Deathcall
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
2
2
2
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Death Call is a roguelike about killing summoners. Each floor has one "caller", which can bring forth unlimited numbers of henchmen. The balance seems a little bumpy here. A late game spell takes away about half your health. Wizards can hit you from like 20 tiles away and vice versa. Clearing out enemies then becomes really straightforward if you're willing to cast lightning on them one by one and wait in between for your cooldown. I personally did not have the patience (but did see the end after stumbling upon a debug command which grants 10,000 HP). Monster pathfinding could use some work, as enemies can't seem to navigate around corners (or each other). One glaring issue is that Escape both toggles targeting modes and otherwise closes the game. I lost count of the number of times I accidentally exited, totally wiping out all progress without warning. Having said all that, Death Call is a fully functional, if basic roguelike that has its moments. It really shines when you get swarmed by monsters, have to make a mad dash to the stairs, and are forced to utilize all your abilities. The ASCII looks good in this game. There are sounds, though the sound choices are a bit odd. There's 10 levels, but also an infinite mode. You can even train your stats.
Great work for 40 hours! Seems like you had a really great 7DRL run this year. I played this game in WINE on macOS and it ran great. Completeness: 4. no bugs that I could find and the UI all makes sense and works. I once spawned in a cell with walls on every side, even diagonals, but I had Phase Door so I was able to escape. Aesthetics: 3. not the most beautiful thing I've ever seen but solid and easy to understand. Fun: 3. It just felt a little too simplistic for me compared to other 7DRLs. There's definitely enough here to have replay value, but I save my 4s for the ones I really love, and this one didn't quite make the cut. Maybe some variety in the environments, or stranger enemies and abilities, would have bumped this up to a 4 for me. Innovation: 2. This game is a solid recombination of standard roguelike game mechanics. That doesn't mean it's not a good game, this just isn't your strongest category. Scope: 3, pretty much what you'd expect from a 7DRL. Enough abilities and stats to make it interesting, not above and beyond. Roguelikeness: 4. Definitely a roguelike!
Get to the end of 10 levels. I beat it on my first try. My best score is 1398 turns. Completeness 4 No bugs found. Has a win condition or optional endless mode. Difficulty of each level boils down to whether you find the caller quickly or not. Aesthetics 3 ASCII is OK. Numpad controls are OK. Arrow keys can be used without too much disadvantage. The map scrolls when you get near the edge. Fun 3 Easy, although I did have some close calls. The biggest danger is carelessness, since the enemies are sparse until you approach the caller and some enemies can attack from offscreen. Some choices about what to train and which abilities to keep. Sight range is much larger than the screen size, so playing to win involves looking way offscreen (very slow). Targeting enemies in the huge sight range takes a long time. Innovation 2 You have stamina (I never ran out). Scope 3 A few enemies/abilities. Roguelikeness 4 Turn/grid based ASCII Randomness Permafailure A little tactics/strategy RPG stats Recharging abilities
Dungeon Penetrator 2018 (Pico-8)
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
This is a really slick (albeit fairly standard) Roguelike. It has quite a lot of stuff in it: dungeon, monsters, weapons, armor, stats, keys to open locked doors, potions, fog of war, gold, pet-type creatures, etc. It even has a title screen with a song. Controls are streamlined: move, pick up stuff, bump to attack. The monsters do not path toward me; they seem to mostly hit me accidentally, which undercuts the tension somewhat. There also seems to be no reward for killing them, so dodging around them is mostly what I end up doing. The graphics are really charming though. I'm impressed with how much was accomplished!
Dungeon Penetrator I played this game while hanging out with some friends when the review session opened, and what I found was a cute lil roguelikey crawler that boiled down to a really simplistic gameplay loop that, while seemingly unable to offer much new content as the game went on, was genuinely fun to kick back and enjoy. Judging is on a scale of 2-4, with 1 and 5 reserved for fringe cases and requiring permission from the competition leaders. With that out of the way, here are my scores. Completeness: 3/5 This was a hard category to judge (as was Scope, which is tied really closely with this one). There are a lot of good ideas going around in this one. Not only is the title/splash screen really nice looking, dungeon generation is really awesome and there are a decent amount of objects to find, even if they act similarly. I see a lot of things that can be added/worked on, even just from the gifs you posted on the itch page. I see a minimap being pulled up, and yet there's no keybind for that. This is especially necessary with the size of the dungeons (one of my favorite parts of this game!), as sometimes I got lost in the corridors. Furthermore, I grabbed a bunch of potions and couldn't figure out how to use them. EDIT: I have updated my score in this category after reviewing the standards for completeness. I've had 0 bugs or crashes which is great, but on the other hand there aren't TONS of features to support it. Aesthetics: 3/5 I'm really happy with how this game looks. The monster animations add just the right amount of liveliness to an otherwise static dungeon, and all the sprites do a good job communicating what they are. I like the thematic Famicon-esque sound effects, although they get annoying to play at volume. I've already mentioned the splash screen looking great, nice and simplistic, and even though the aesthetic of the rest of the game is entirely different, it wasn't disappointing. Why does it say press X though? I assume it's purely just to fit the retro/console theme, but I mashed x until I scrolled down and read that I actually had to hit z. Fun: 3/5 Exploring the dungeons is really fun! However, until I figured out that x was to use potions, I often just went into a cycle of avoiding combat completely, since there is no enemy AI, and I could make it down several levels like that! Either way, this is crawling in its purest form, for better or for worse, and I kept coming back. Innovation: 2/5 I'm not too sure what to put here. There aren't any new mechanics that set this apart from other roguelikes, however I think it's well done and is a solid game. Scope: 3/5 The way I look at it, this game takes a small scope and executes within it decently. There really isn't a whole lot going on in this game, but it is a cozy game, for lack of a better word, and that shows to me that you understand what you wanted to create and just did it. That's enough for me to rate this positively. Roguelikeness: 4/5 Darren will get mad at me for this, but based off of the Berlin Interpretation, this is a full roguelike! Random environment generation, Check. I love the dungeons here. Permadeath, Check. I got one-shotted several times to be honest, walking around at half-health can be brutal. Turn-based, grid-based, non-modal combat and actions, Check, Check, Check. It's also very favorable to exploration, since there's always one more thing to find, and you definitely have to hack and slash through plenty of monsters to get around. One more category, Monsters Similar to Player, particularly stood out. As far as I can tell, monsters have the same stats as the player, which makes them quite a challenge. The only difference is they wander aimlessly.
Greedy Warlock
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
2
4
Innovation
3
4
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
Took me a couple tries to understand what to do. For a Jam game is not bad at all, but still needs a lot of polish to be fun to play.
Get gold (score) and escape up the depth 1 stairs to score. I "beat" the game. Lower depths give more gold. If you have less attack than an enemy then attacking it loses health, otherwise you gain the reward. Completeness 4 No bugs found. In the online version clicking on the leaderboard button loads the leaderboard page in the same tab which previously had the game open, forcing you to reload the game if you want to play again. Aesthetics 4 Nice pixel art graphics. Mouse controls are OK. Fun 4 Very fun. Lots of different strategies to explore (how far to dive, whether to concentrate on attack/movement/mana, which cards to prioritize, etc.) The cramped maps lead to some interesting choices of which path to take. The leaderboard suggests score totals to aim for. Innovation 4 Deck building with roguelike style grid movement. Scope 3 Decent number of cards and enemy types. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based Random maps/enemies Permafailure RPG stats and cards Tactics/strategy Deck building focus
One Way Out [7drl]
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
4
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
Infinite defense is an interesting subgenere and not very well explored as a roguelike. But infinite defense is only interesting when there is an infinite progression of defender vs infinite strengthening of attackers. In this game neither defender nor attackers are evolving. Once you find and enter the loop, it's only a matter of patience and luck. Each cycle is the same. And it looks like author didn't planned for a possibility of near infinite defense. The game slows down with each cycle up to unplayable state. Yes, the game overwhelms with number of enemies and scale of spells, but IMO it would be much better if these numbers and strength of spell would grow over time, instead of being like this right from the start.
A very cool concept. Player is a wizard making a last stand against a seemingly unstoppable horde of enemies. A useful selection of spells makes for interesting tactical decisions, and resource management is key. Damaging and killing enemies gets you much-needed mana for spells, but you can very quickly be surrounded in melee combat. Wounds do not merely do damage, but cause the player to bleed more and more over time, so they must be managed. Taking a turn to pick an arrow out of yourself is a fun concept. Gameplay is brutally hard, but persistence reveals threads of hope as viable strategies and combinations of spells become apparent. Very good work for a 7DRL and specially good for a first-ever roguelike. I expect a lot more from this developer in the future. One tip - I would love if the spells were bound to keys like 1-5. It would make gameplay a bit quicker. Fly you fools!!
Townsfolk Are Tasty
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Townsfolk Are Tasty is exactly what is says: you're a "night terror" who goes around eating townsfolk. Importantly, it's a 1HP game. There are 4 types of enemies and the 2 that are aggressive can kill in one hit. One of those types, the Priest, is in fact immune to your attack. You'll die a lot. There's a chess vibe here. It's very easy to get cornered by two approaching enemies. It's also incredibly easy to get attacked by walking around a blind corner. I did that a bunch. The hunger clock is serious stuff too. It's a tiny game, but well made. Now here are all my minor gripes. The restart key should probably be closer to the numpad because of how often death comes. I also ran into a bug where the game crashes if you try transitioning screens on the same turn you would die. The one thing that really feels missing is some progression. You just keep going around killing villagers forever. At the very least, a score or count of how many villagers you ate would be nice. The balance could be a little better and of course more enemies types would be cool too. Townsfolk Are Tasty is humorous, tense, and fun. Recommended!
It's an interesting idea; you're a vampire on the prowl. Hunt townsfolk and avoid everybody else. Unfortunately the difficulty seems to vary wildly depending on whether you run into a room full of townspeople or a room full of guards. There doesn't seem to be any tactic for dealing with enemies other than running away; they all kill on contact. Conversely, catching food is not particularly difficult (apart from finding townsfolk); people come up to you or wander around. You start with only 30 turns until you starve, and eating someone adds only a handful of turns to your starvation meter. As a result you don't have much time to do anything. The game looked reasonably good and ran fine for me. I did not encounter any technical problems.
Viking Gone Rogue
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
3
Innovation
3
Scope
3
Roguelikeness
4
I like this game. It takes a few runs to get a handle on the patterns for beating it and then it feels like an interesting roguelike/puzzler. Kind of hard to tell if your guy has a shield or not, the difference on the sprite is fairly minor. Crashed every few games while playing. Lots of gameplay related bugs. When disarm knocks a guy back, the pathfinding code seems to push lots of guys back. You can push guys into the level geometry and they... die? vanish? Several places, especially above contiguous vertical sections of wall have invisible terrain you can't walk through. Some thin pieces of terrain on the sides can have axes thrown through them. Got some level generation with enclosed unreachable areas, fortunately only a monster was in it.
The Jarl's Heritage
Completeness
3
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
3
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
2
3
2
Scope
3
4
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
The Jarl's Heritage is the first roguelike I've played that felt like an NES game. The graphics and music are low-fi, but delightfully reminiscent of Final Fantasy I. The music in particularly is very charming. It's cool that there are a lot of items in this game and 5 slots in which they can be equipped. Any unused items can be transmuted and the gold can buy consumables. The inventory and buy menus look good. There's a little strategy around when to use certain abilities, but it's an odd choice to force the player to use an ability to get the equivalent of a bump attack. The balance is a little crazy too. The early game is filled with lots of unavoidable deaths but once you get certain items, you can barely be touched. Unfortunately, TJH has a few technical issues. Every time I opened the game in any browser, my entire computer locked up for some time. The game doesn't do full screen very well and it's easy to get into a state where the game becomes unresponsive. The game page claims this is not an issue on desktop, but I didn't see a download link. The Jarl's Heritage is a charming game overall, but could use a little polish and some more content (as there only appears to be 3 enemy types).
This is a neat little game! It's bigger than I would expect for a 7DRL. There are a variety of weapons, armor, rings, potions, cloaks, etc. Some atmospheric music and nice graphics. The combat is a bit on the easy side, most of the time. There is a bug with the equip screen. I think it's supposed to be comparing the stats of the new item with the one you have equipped, but it seems to print the new item's stats in both columns. You can equip both items and compare the resulting stats so it isn't the end of the world. I'm glad I played this, and I can see myself coming back to it again.
Get a high score (involves getting exp and gold). My best was 10067. Completeness 3 I didn't find an end goal. Equipment comparison shows same the info for both items. I found no way to cancel the item use/transmute UI other than by moving. Item UI sometimes shows up over shop UI. Restarting unmutes the music. Aesthetics 3 Tiles are OK. Arrow keys for movement, numbers for abilities, mouse to deal with items. Every attack require you to first select a skill and then a direction. Font is slightly hard to read. The song quickly gets annoying, but is easily muted. Fun 2 I didn't find an end goal (if there is one, it shows up long after the game stops being interesting). Huge and uninteresting levels. Movement is slow, and there is no key repeat. Has infinite gold loops. Once you can one-shot enemies it gets really simple. If you keep going to the next level the enemies eventually get tougher. Once I got far enough that enemies posed a threat it was fun trying to avoid enemies where possible and get to the next level. Innovation 2 Use abilities rather than having one standard attack. Scope 3 A few enemies/abilities/items/stats. Roguelikeness 4 Turn/grid based Randomness Permafailure A little tactics/strategy RPG stats and items Recharging abilities and consumables
Verger
Completeness
4
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
2
2
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
3
Verger has an "open world" map that you explore screen by screen, which I had first assumed was infinite but is actually a 10x10 grid. You shoot enemies that look like T. rexes, collect coins from them, and then recharge your mana in pools. With only one enemy and little strategy, there's really not much here. However, Verger is more than the sum of its parts. The aesthetic is terrific, the music and sound effects solid, even the text is evocative. Little details like random enemy/grass colors on every run are nice. I ran into a few annoyances (mostly typical ones having to do with screen to screen movement and obstacles), but nothing major... though I am convinced recharging at pools should be instant instead of requiring ten button presses. I enjoyed exploring this game, even though I wish there was more to it. The help screen heeds you to "unseal the hidden door". If such a thing exists it must be well hidden because I couldn't find it after meticulously exploring all 100 screens.
I like it. It really is a pretty game considering it's a Pico8 cartridge, that limits the scope for sure but also give it its charm.
A good entry and a valiant effort. Rules were clear, art was good. Music was good... until I'd played for some time. Some variation (or moodiness) would have helped a lot. I appreciated that when I was hit, it was my fault. It felt above all, fair. Some variation of the monsters would have been appreciated, as would have some way of telling where I was and where I'd been. It may have been a little too big for the amount of gameplay - 10 screens by 10 screens began to get repetitive. I did not reach a victory condition (if there is one) but got to 79 riches before thinking that I've seen what the game had to offer. Thank you for your entry, and congratulations on your success.
?????? ??????? ??????? (East Bagel Ship)
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
2
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
Turn based shoot'em up? Hell yeah! With modular ship? Hell yeah!!! With bullet hell and without any hints about modules... Uhh... Interesting game, but hard to play. Modules are so similar that it's hard to tell them apart. When you reach bullet hell section of the game, it becomes very chaotic. If you go to the kitchen and take a cup of tea, after returning it's really hard to comprehend what's going on on the screen. What is flying where. Also amount of bullets is so high that dodging is useless. Some will always hit. And it's becoming increasingly difficult to connect new parts, as they are destroyed by bullets. Interesting concept. Somewhat innovative as a roguelike, but not as much in the field of shmups. The game is supposed to be high score, but high score is missing. Also game hangs time to time.
I played the bug fix version. Reach the Yendorium Reactor (dist=0) to win. Score = fuel*10 + blocks*1000. My best was 19710. Brown marks indicate damage (blocks have 3 hp). You can't be damaged by lasers you cause. Shooting something point blank causes a backfire. Completeness 3 The online version froze (I didn't encounter this issue with the desktop version). Sometimes what looks like a block/asteroid is actually empty space, or what looks like an open power grid spot is actually occupied by an invisible block. I ran into a situation where almost an entire column of space was blocked by invisible stuff (moving into it has no effect). Aesthetics 2 Controls are OK. Arrow keys to move and space to fire. Tiles are sort of ugly. I had a hard time distinguishing some of the different block types. It's hard to tell what is going on when there are a ton of lasers on the screen. Fun 3 Good level of difficulty. Figuring out how to best attack multiple tile enemies and choosing where to put blocks was interesting. The game over screen pops up quickly after you lose. Often I had no idea why I died. The block which stops fuel consumption slowed the game down quite a bit for me. Innovation 3 Multiple tile ships. Ranged attack focus. Scope 3 Several block types, a few asteroid types. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based Random maps/enemies Permafailure Tactics/strategy Player/enemy similarity Not much RPG stuff Multiple tile ships
An interesting look and feel to this game - who the heck *doesn't* like "space" - right? I can see the start of something here, and encourage a bit more development of the idea. I guess I just wasn't "feeling it" in its current iteration. Great artwork though - kudos.
Caves of Trash and Treasure
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
2
2
2
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Risk vs reward. It's probably the oldest theme in games in general, not only in computer games or roguelikes. This implementation definitely could be better. There is no high scores table! In a game that is specifically dedicated to getting high score! This game can be "won" with single keypress. Controls could be better too. Bumping into the wall takes turn. This makes escape phase very cumbersome. Technically this is a true roguelike, but on a weaker side of the definition. In terms of available action your character is very limited. Which makes the game somewhat boring and predictable.
An interesting exploration of one extreme of managing limiting inventory space which tasks you with choosing between combat effectiveness and score. However it never really provides much real incentive to care about score and the huge amount of junk to sort through can make it feel like the roguelike equivalent of a car boot sale. COMPLETENESS Seems reasonably feature-complete, though some bugs remain; keyboard input buffering means that holding down a key can result in that action repeating for many turns afterwards with not chance to interrupt. AESTHETICS Clean ASCII graphics and straightforward control scheme with a nice clear tutorial. Multiple input options and sensible screen layout. FUN The extremely limited inventory forces some interesting decision making but does largely devolve into repetitive sorting through dungeon litter for most of the time and results in you having very few options in combat. The most intriguing aspect of the game is the other treasure seekers who are strong enough that they are best avoided. INNOVATION Nothing that I haven't seen before, though it is an interesting exploration of limited inventory. SCOPE A decent scope for a 7DRL with a variety of different items and enemies, however there is not a great deal of functional variety in any of those things. ROGUELIKINESS Yep.
Get treasure and escape up the depth 1 stairs to score. I beat it. Completeness 4 No bugs found. Aesthetics 3 Controls are OK. Numpad or vi-keys to move. Holding down buttons can cause a large amount of actions to queue up. This caused problems for me since the game has slowly regenerating health and no long rest button. ASCII is OK. Fun 3 Trying to escape with the crystals is pretty fun. Unfortunately the game before that part is an uninteresting slog. Innovation 2 Very limited inventory (4 spots). Scope 3 Several item and enemy types. Roguelikeness 4 Turn/grid based Random maps Permafailure RPG stats/items ASCII
StyRL
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
2
3
4
Fun
2
3
3
Innovation
3
4
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
Uh. It might be a cool game... But it fails badly in explaining what's going on. And it is definitely not balanced. It's damn too hard and sometimes plain impossible. I thought I understand some point, but with different enemies the behavior was different and I don't know if it was a bug or I still don't understand how it works. Games where figuring out combat mechanics is part of gameplay are totally fine. But then the game shout provide enough hints and information for the player.
The combined effects of weapons and fighting styles felt very unique. With little to no randomness (I couldn't tell if enemy moves were deterministic) this becomes something of a puzzle game. I like the concept, and would like to see more game/content on top of the core mechanics.
StyRL has some awesome ideas and plays pretty well but the fun is hampered by imbalance and a game that just feels too hard to get a decent run going. The idea of combat being determined by which direction you're facing is a fresh idea and works quite well. I didn't encounter any crashing or bugs either. Picking up items and managing inventory feels fluid and intuitive and the inclusion of items is definitely welcomed and adds to the strategy. I found the game's content to be pretty standard for a 7DRL with nothing too ambitious but something that still feels coffeebreak-ish and tightly designed. The one thing I didn't like with StyRL would be how difficult it is to get even a few floors deep. I appreciate difficulty in a game and especially a roguelike but this one seemed a little too much as almost every run would fizzle out fairly quickly due to enemies being overpowered. Other than that issue, this 7DRL does everything right.
The Numerologist
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
2
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
3
This could be nice little tactical game if author wouldn't add unkillable enemies to the mix. Well, they can be killed, but they are resurrected in 6 turns. And you can't break line of sight to loose them. There is no line of sight. In theory it's not so bad. But in practice, in a game where have to do some sort of pillar dance to skip unfavorable dices, presence of an unkillable enemy is fatal IMO. I don't know if it's a bug of features, but killing two such enemies in one tile brings back only one. But this doesn't help much. And later on in the game there are hordes of such enemies. Inventory management definitely could be better. Character is strangely centered on the screen. It is in the center of the screen, but 1/4 of the right part of the screen is info panel, making the character very close to the right part of visible area, thus limiting ability to see approaching enemies from the right. I'm not entirely sure if levels are procedurally generated. I definitely seen the very same level several times. Entirely predictable combat makes this game closer to puzzles than roguelikes.
Knowing the upcoming "random" values changes a traditional roguelike dungeon crawl into a deterministic puzzle that is an interesting change of pace. The game plays well, with some variety in enemies and items.
I had a good first impression of this game, but the Halls of Wisdom ruined the experience for me. Fighters seem to spawn faster than I can kill them to get out of a corner, and it feels unfair in a way that a roguelike really shouldn't. Death should be a teaching moment. In this game, it feels out of my control, even though I can see the dice! Completeness: 4 (highest rating), but I almost gave you a 3 because Escape is a magic game-deleting key that I hit by reflex sometimes. I lost 2 games this way. Aesthetics: 4; looks great! Fun: 3. Again, promising, but between the enemies that never die and the infinitely spawning fighters that take 2 turns to kill, I think the balance prevents this game from living up to its potential. Innovation: 3. Innovates with the dice thing, otherwise pretty standard. Scope: 3, what you expect from a 7DRL Roguelikeness: 3. It seems like the levels are not randomly generated, which IMO is a core requirement for a true roguelike. So you get rogue-lite. You definitely succeeded at 7DRL! The balance is just not to my taste.
Mito
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
3
3
This game is actually building/simulation game, not a roguelike. You can't loose. There are no enemies. It's just the matter of more or less efficient placement of leafs, a bit of luck with location of fountain. Many features of the game are not described in the documentation, some are probably not quite features, but bugs. There are some very nice details, like horizontal branches bending depending on length. I think by adding some upgrades and equipment and some insects both above and under ground this game could be turned into something more roguelikeish.
Personally, I didn't enjoyed it too much. For a casual player that don't want to read the whole description page before playing, the mechanics were nothing intuitive. That being said, the scope and execution are both to be praised. Other than the inclusion of randomness in the initial canvas, it didn't feel a roguelike. May be a great game for a certain niche.
Wastrl
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Overall I think this game was an interesting idea. I failed to beat it, and don't really have any idea how close I got. My biggest complaint was the balance felt totally off. The AP system was interested, but it made a lot of things feel very punishing and unfair. Guns seemed really bad. I didn't figure out until my second play through how to even use the guns because they don't show up in the activate menu unless you have all 5 AP. Bare hand seemed to have the best damage per turn by far, where as the rifle is virtually worthless. The interaction of these systems encourages trying to careful tweak your movement so that enemies end up at max gun range so you can get a free shot. Then you need have to move such that they land next to you without hitting you to maximize bare-hand damage. While this is technically tactical, it also feels like extremely tedious play. I usually ended up losing due to getting mobbed by skunks and then various other enemies piling on. Due to the AP system it seems impossible to employ typical roguelike combat techniques. Maybe I should have tried to kite things into mountain passes more often but also monsters appeared to spawn randomly infront of me, so I was kind of scared to retreat into the narrow areas because they offered no room to navigate or use the tactics described above. Some serious work on balance could elevate this game a lot. Also I crashed once during level generation. Wasn't able to reproduce.
Interesting feel. Things are larger scale than most roguelikes. The action point system gives it a different feel as well, thought it makes it harder to predict what will happen each turn.
Xenomorph 7drl of Infinite Underworld
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
4
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
In Xenomoprh 7drl of Infinite Underworld , you play the secret weapon of a desperate king. The play area is a sidescrolling grid and you can attack oncoming attackers on this grid. Later you control a whole horde monsters. One kind has short range but high health, while the other has very little health but double range. Xenomorph is a strange game with an even stranger title. Why a reference to the monster in Alien in a medieval setting? Who knows. I do know that the game is neither set in an underworld, nor infinite, nor actually a 7drl (you're explicitly told in game that it took 25 days to develop). With stock music and art, it's really hard to tell how much work was done during the challenge. Overall, the final product is actually really cool. Something about controlling a swarm of alien bugs is super fun. The game has a strong sense of speed. You're able to move through the grid 2 tiles at a time with hardly any resistance. I died once before really understanding the rules, but afterwards things felt really easy. There's not much depth to the game and only a little strategy, but it was surprisingly fun.
I played version 1.0.08. Kill all the enemies to win. I beat it. Completeness 4 No bugs found. Some of the text is awkward, for example: "You will go to this city and will get righteous place here." Aesthetics 3 Tiles are OK. Mouse to move is not too bad, until your front line gets wiped out and you get switched to a straggler 100 spaces back, slowly make your way thru empty space until get back and quickly get killed, get switched back to a straggler 200 spaces back, etc. Or you could be smart and immediately restart if that situation occurs. The death groan sound effects are hilarious. Fun 2 Easy. I didn't find any strategies other than to play conservatively and not advance until I had safety in numbers. Innovation 3 Control a horde of xenomorphs rather than just one character. Scope 2 2 xenomorph types, 3 functionally different enemy types. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based Random maps/enemies Permafailure No RPG stuff Control multiple characters Not much tactics/strategy
Dicey Dungeons
Completeness
2
3
3
Aesthetics
2
3
3
Fun
3
4
4
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
Initially, when I realised I was being assaulted with a midi version of a Taylor Swift song I thought I entered hell. But under the blocks and nightmare bright basic visuals I found an actually pleasant and intriguing - if a little bit basic - battle system. The battle system itself was clear and easy to use ( and easier on the eyes ), and rather fun! A good changeup from the usual "walk into enemy and hope the RNG is entirely on your side" of traditional roguelike fare. The only unpassable block I had to deal with was the Knight, who kept building its shield stat rather than doing anything else, making it impossible to actually bring down the shield. Of course, with improvement and mechanics balance this could be fixed. Overall, enjoyable despite the broken Knight enemy, slightly eyebleed-bright graphics and inital blast of Taylor Swift. I hope to see an improved version in the future.
Even with it's barebones visual style Dicey Dungeons is a lot of fun. There's a decent number of items and abilities available, which leads to some interesting choices when tweaking your build for the next enemy. Some of the enemies need some balancing — the Knight can suck you into a prolonged battle of shields, and the Yeti is almost unbeatable without a certain ability. Despite this I kept coming back until I beat it. Can't wait to see where the developer takes this.
I really enjoyed the game. You're right that you are onto something. There are some obvious issues with completeness and polish, but it was fun and felt like an interesting new roguelike. Finish it up so I can play it more :-)
Turncoat Tomb
Completeness
3
4
3
Aesthetics
3
4
2
Fun
2
3
2
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
Strange game... It's really hard to understand what's going on. As far as I can tell, there are enemies of different colors and coats of different colors. You can switch coats and enemies of the same color as your own are fighting for you. In theory this could be fun. But implementation... Spinning view makes me dizzy. It's often hard to see what's going on. Coats are rare. You can easily die before you even find a new coat. Monsters do not easily leave area of the altar of their color. So luring differently colored enemy to a monster of your color is very cumbersome. Line of sight calculation is very bugged. It is somehow delayed and it's easy to miss a turn because it's not immediately visible.
On my best run of this game, I got to level 12. I decided not to keep trying after about 45 minutes of play because later levels seemed to just be more of the same, and no win condition was stated in the instructions. I think this is a promising concept, but I didn't feel like the factions did much for me in practice. I felt like I could only take a couple of strategies: Switch colors every time I saw a differently colored monster Fight everything to gain XP and become a badass, ignoring the faction mechanic Of course, #2 is why I eventually died, but #1 isn't really a fun mechanic for me. And with no goal in mind, I didn't feel motivated to optimize for making it to a certain level. So while this isn't a standout entry to me, I did feel like it was worth my time to try out. Completeness Polished, balanced, no bugs that I could see. 4/5. Aesthetics Intuitive UI, good-looking, nothing weird or out of place. Definitely one of the best UIs this year. 4/5 Fun Difficulty was bimodal for me. Either I died on the first level, or I was good to go for a long time. The level 1 enemies seem really unbalanced. I never felt like I was able to predict how hard a fight would be before I had either already killed the enemy, or was in deep trouble. It seemed like some of the armor was better than the other armor but I wasn't able to swap it out to see if I already had full armor slots. So given the blandness of the melee combat, balance issues, and not feeling like the factions mechanic was fun for me, I'm going for a 3/5 here. Innovation A neat twist on the usual mechanics. In practice doesn't seem to have a huge effect, so 3/5. Scope Pretty much what you'd expect from a 7DRL. 3/5 Roguelike ness Is clearly a roguelike. 4/5
I played versions 1.0.1.2 and 1.0.1.3. If there is a goal I couldn't find it. I got to floor 19. Scrolling zooms the map in/out. Completeness 3 Depositing gold from above an altar causes the gold count to flicker but seems to have no other effect. Enemies will sometimes disappear despite being in the light. If there is a goal I couldn't find it. Aesthetics 2 WASD to move. I wish you could move with arrow keys as well. The rest command passes multiple turns. Walking into walls passes one turn, so this is not a tradeoff, just a one time gotcha. Tiles sometimes overlap so that what looks like a wall is actually walkable floor space. There is a long delay before stats get updated, a long delay before lighting gets updated, and a long delays as the map scrolls to catch up with the player character. It is visually unappealing and makes the game annoying to play. Fun 2 Slow moving, especially with the game's delayed reaction to everything. Decisions about when to run and what altars to support. With no apparent goal it seems pointless. Innovation 3 Different enemy factions fight each other. Scope 3 A few enemy types and weapons. Wide open or room and corridor maps. Roguelikeness 4 Turn/grid based Random maps Permafailure RPG stats and weapons
Ghoul
Completeness
4
4
3
Aesthetics
4
4
3
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
3
3
2
Scope
3
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
3
Ghoul is a simple game about collecting treasure in crypts and it has a great aesthetic. The tiles are Oryx (well put together here) and the fonts, though somewhat hard to read, are oozing with style. Your characters have randomly generated names, which is cool. There's not too much procedural generation. Your runs consist of a handful of standard levels. Once you figure a few tricks about the enemy AI and the two things you can do (wait and push monsters away), the game becomes very easy. It appears to allow runs to be strung together endlessly, but it'd be nice if there was some more meaty gameplay to support that.
A thought this was a really good, really complete effort. The mechanics were well explored, and the artwork/mood was sensational. I did seem to hit repeated no-win scenarios. These mostly involved getting stuck in the top chambers of the final rooms, where (due to the inability to move diagonally, not go into the chamber lest not be able to escape, and not be able to spook away further or get them away in the first place) I died repeatedly. I wasn't able to go past night 3 without encountering one of these situations. It does a feel a bit more like a puzzle game than a Roguelike. Specifically, the limited set of rooms seemed to have specific solutions rather than exhibiting roguelikeness. But as a game, it worked. I played the game for about 40 minutes. If the game has a win condition, I didn't find it. As I said, this is well done. Congratulations on completing it within the time period.
I really enjoyed the graphics, and I think the multi-run highscore idea ties in nicely with the grave robbing theme. I found the gameplay to be slightly shallow, each room seemed like a matter of baiting the enemy into following me at a far enough distance that I would be able to exit the room and re-enter it safely. If this could not be accomplished, and an enemy ended up close to me then it seemed like I had no real way to get myself out of that particular situation. I guess it seemed like my tactical options for most rooms were limited, and I wish I had more tools which I could use to navigate these situations. I played it on a pc and the lack of exit/quit button was kind of frustrating, although I understand this would not be an issue if I was playing on a mobile device. I think this has potential as a mobile roguelike. A few more room types, and distinct enemy types would go a long way in livening up this project
The Dark Count
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
2
3
3
Fun
2
4
3
Innovation
3
4
2
Scope
3
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
I came into this feeling pretty wary over the idea of something turn based trying to take gameplay elements of combat from real-time action games. I came out of it still a bit wary, but the execution isn't too bad after a couple of playthroughs. I imagine the combat system would work better with more visual cues from the game screen ( such as character animation ) than just text prompts and the movement prompts on the side. The interface and graphics are about what I expect from a 7DRL, nothing spectacular, but actually functional. The pop-ups of what I assume were ZULU talking were a nice touch in design. Didn't manage to beat ZULU but did get him to appear. I'm definitely intrigued by the combat system, and hope to see a post judging version with improvements.
A perfectly-sized 7DRL focused on tactical combat. The breakout between attack and defense turns is really cool and adds a lot of strategy to the combat. Movement and placement becomes important - so is keeping the right space between you and your enemies. There isn't much else here in terms of roguelikeness but what is there is executed flawlessly.
I think that breaking combat down into an “Attack” and “Defense” phase is an effective way to add tactical decision making into a roguelike. I appreciated the different enemies- the brutes have knockback, the smaller enemies can be stunned but are dangerous in groups etc. These simple characteristics add a good amount of depth to skirmishes with multiple enemies, and the the momentum system incentivises aggressive play. Unfortunately I think dominant strategies that are present in traditional bump to attack systems are still present here. I ultimately won by maneuvering all the enemies into a line and stunlocking Zulu to death. Outside of the combat I think the overall game arc could use some tuning. As far as I could tell the only way to progress was to defeat enemies until Zulu spawns when a certain threshold has been reached. I understand generating a city for thematic reasons, but I think its size led to a lot of aimless wandering while looking for enemies. If the focus of the project is on moment-to-moment decision making in combat, then the large size and relative vacancy of the city does not contribute to this goal very effectively. The combat feels like a beat-em-up/brawler game, and in that vein I think a smaller map, or a more condensed experience would really help the combat system shine. Other bits: -Winnable but challenging, whenever I lost I felt the urge to play again. -UI for movement and attacking is very clear -Despite my complaints about progression this feels like a complete, well considered experience -Tiles felt a little muddy, there was a dark grey structure that occurred sometimes that looked like it should be walkable -I am not sure what the red streets on the minimap are -I was not sure in which scenarios I could parry, it seemed like most of the time but not all of the time. This made it a little bit harder to plan effectively.
The Faded Forest
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
The Faded Forest is a game about razing forests, building structures, and occasionally fighting monsters. It reminds me strongly of two things: Board games, in particular ones like Forbidden Island or Pandemic where the players are fighting against the terrain itself. The limited number of actions per turn and varied classes each with slightly different bonuses are highly reminiscent of such games. Clicker games like A Dark Room. Progress in the game is repetitive and incremental, but also guaranteed since there is no way to lose. All of this together feels very fresh and The Faded Forest brings in a lot of neat ideas. I had a good bit of fun at first. Where the game lost me was the tedious slog to get to the (unexplained) victory condition. I'm fine with mechanics that require discovery, but many goals/items/buildings in The Faded Forest are totally bewildering. By the end of the game, I was fairly sure many buildings did nothing at all due to the lack of explanation and visible effects. All of this could be alleviated with a shorter game so the player doesn't have to take it on faith that something is going to happen. I did eventually beat The Faded Forest, but it first required me to painstakingly explore a 15x15 grid and go through 200 generations (i.e. times when I was sent back to the class selection screen and back to the center tile). Losing my claimed territory to the wilderness was fascinating at first, but after clicking 'Raze' after the 500th time (and struggling to find any paths that stilled work) I was tired of of it. There were also a few minor bugs: hitting monsters for negative damage, one total freeze, and shops that stopped offering the Sell option (at least this seems like a bug). Roughly what I expect from a 7DRL, so nothing to be worried about. There's a lot of critique above, but only because I did truly find the core mechanics interesting and I think they could really shine with a few tweaks that focused on reducing the tedium. The game feels artificially long for how much content it holds and could use some more explanation all around. In a more compact form, all my complaints would probably be gone.
Looks good, but feel like is lacking something to drag the attention to the correct spot. Didn't feel roguelike to me :/ and the UI can be improved. Other than that, great work.
Tower Noire
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
3
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
2
2
2
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
Nice little game. A little too simple, but have some charm in it. It's all about risk/reward. At first you just have to kill all enemies in hope of a better equipment. But once you've got best things that can drop from enemies, it's better to avoid them, unless you want to risk a few remaining HP betting on healing potion. A little too random, if the game won't generate required enemies and/or required items for quite some time, it is impossible to progress. Equipment switching could be better, though. It's too cumbersome.
This is a very pretty standard dungeon crawler. I liked the way the game looked and sounded, and it was certainly fast and easy to get into. I wasn't able to complete the game but I got apparently close to the end (level 22). It's hard to tell if the game has an ending though, because each level feels the same (similar layouts, and same enemies) and the instructions weren't clear about whether I was supposed to reach a level where the McGuffin would be found or if I had a chance on each floor of the McGuffin spawning and I needed to look for it. I felt all of this affected the Completeness and Scope scores (only 3 each), though the game otherwise felt complete and was stable. The items were interesting, and the inventory system worked well (even if I kept mixing up the keys, but that's my problem). Although I didn't see much that new beyond what to expect in a simple roguelike, the game was still fun for me.
Completeness Polished, balance, no noticeable bugs. 4/5 Aesthetics Pretty! The UI is OK. My biggest gripe is that the down arrow doesn't go from 'wear' to 'drop' in the item menu. Lots of dancing between X/Z/arrows to do stuff with items. Also, holes are REALLY HARD TO SEE, even when moving slowly. 3/5 Fun I did not have fun while playing this game. It is too hard, in a way that does not feel fair. It's very easy to be trapped between a dancer and a flame, without having other options in combat The manual says some weapons might be better due to passive effects, but I never saw ANY passive effects. Any time I used a weapon other than the starting sword, I just died sooner. Enemy variety is low Most enemies should not be killed because they don't drop anything and will just sap hit points. The enemies that are worth killing are extremely tough, and drop mediocre gear that doesn't justify the HP loss. Having to pick up all the gear at the start of the game is annoying, and just reminds me how frustrated I was with my previous game. up up x z z left x z z up x right x right x left left left left up up up...ok now the game's started. Comparing items is very tedious, because dealing with items at all is tedious. Check stats, throw, equip, check stats...is it better? Probably not because all the weapon pickups are bad. OK, go back, repeat the whole process... So I have to give it a 2/5 for sheer frustration. I understand there might be a smarter way to play, but for a 7DRL, I think developers have a responsibility to make sure people can have fun without investing 100 hours. Innovation There is turn-based hacking and slashing in a procedurally generated map. Pretty standard roguelike stuff. 2/5 Scope 3/5 - meets expectations for a 7DRL. Roguelikeness Yep, it's a roguelike! 4/5
Trial of the Warlock
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
4
2
Innovation
4
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
I had a lot of fun playing Trial of the Warlock and found it pretty easy to pick up and play and learn. You have two attacks for each hand, one holding a dagger with a basic and consistent attack, and the other holding a wand that you can choose from a selection that you collect along your adventures. These two attacks/hands have differing speeds which determine who gets to attack first when enemies are present. There are four spots in each room that enemies might spawn in, as well as items that you can collect after the battle is finished. You must defeat all enemies present before you can move onto the next room, which you progress along in search of stairs to descend past four levels total to win the game. You can also perform a "ritual" after each battle or room to improve your wands and items by combining them together with differing effects, sacrificing one of them. Adding to the depth of this game, there are different types of elemental attacks and effects that come into play when using your wands and items, as well as different enemies that may resist physical attacks, but not magical for example. This adds to the variety of the game and can make for some interesting runs and builds. With that being said, Trial of the Warlock didn't really feel like a roguelike in the traditional sense. It simply contains random elements but doesn't follow the typical roguelike structure. I really liked the artwork and aesthetic feel here though, and the style was easy on the eyes. It was easy to navigate around with mouse clicks and the design and UI were easy to pick up on and learn. The game felt complete and didn't crash and I didn't encounter any bugs, but I felt that the balance was very volatile. Some runs felt extremely easy with very abundant items while other runs felt cheap and impossible. This goes both ways for me though, as it added to the addictiveness and overall fun of the game and I kept coming back for more.
A turn-based RPG battle system with a cute (if rushed) artstyle and a neat pseudo-first person view. Unfortunately it presently feels fairly undeveloped and unfinished and does not allow for much in the way of tactical gameplay. COMPLETENESS While functional, feels very incomplete without much polish and occasional errors in the text-log. AESTHETICS While some of the graphics feel a bit 'placeholdery', they are still fairly charming and the UI layout is fairly clear. FUN The gameplay is a bit too simple to provide any real interest, though it could be easily improved with a few more options in combat. INNOVATION It's a fairly standard RPG battle system. SCOPE A reasonable variety of different items, enemies and damage types. ROGUELIKINESS Some roguelike elements, although the core gameplay is very different.
ARDOR
Completeness
4
3
2
Aesthetics
3
4
2
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
3
3
2
Scope
3
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
4
3
A simple but fun dungeon crawl with an interesting energy mechanic. The aesthetics, while simple, are reasonably good. The only difficulty is determining which ASCII symbols are enemies and which are items, since there isn't a consistent scheme and no notification of what a symbol means until you walk onto it (or see it eventually move). Addressing that would improve the score from a 3 to 4. The capping mechanic is interesting and adds something different to an otherwise standard formula. However, since the only usable item seems to be the healing potion, the obvious choice is to cap everything so long as you don't lose excess energy. If it came down to a choice between keeping your weapon and capping it for a last-ditch blast attack then that'd make the game more interesting (again, increasing the innovation and fun from a 3 to 4). The game is short and easy if you're conservative with blast attacks, but still fun to play (scope of 3) and it definitely fits the definition of a RogueLike regardless of the graphics (score of 4). Overall, a short, fun, and interesting addition to the 7DRL challenge.
I liked the simplicity of the UI, the familiar presentation, familiar controls, and the focus on only one departure from tradition -- the mechanic of "converting anything to energy". The resulting sense I had was that my @ was a wizard lost in a dungeon with only her powers of matter-to-energy conversion, light generation, and magic blast to aid in survival. The simplicity is only marred by a few stubs of ideas, like swords and armor you can pick up but not equip, that are confusing. The game is modest in scope and length, but manages to evoke some sense of danger and exploration along the way to the last exit.
Ardor explores an interesting idea around converting items into energy to power your spells and torch, but it isn't developed enough to really get any good gameplay out of the central concept. COMPLETENESS Feels unfinished and lacks polish. Frequent crash-to-desktops on the inventory screen when trying to use items, and most items cannot be used at all. Dying or completing the game require you to manually close and re-open the program. AESTHETICS A large number of aesthetic problems which make the game very difficult to play: - Walls and floors are denoted only by a very slight change in colour. - Items and enemies both represented by letters (sometimes the same letter!) and impossible to tell apart. - Inventory screen only shows 5 items at a time despite having most of the box empty. No indication what 'page' you're on. - Enemies show up in the log just as their letter. - If there is any way to equip or use items other than potions it is not discoverable. FUN The game is very basic and a number of bewhildering design choices make it fairly painful to play. The central conceit of converting items into power is rendered pointless by the fact that there is nothing else you can do with the majority of them *but* use them as fuel, so no interesting choices. It is impossible to tell at a glance whether anything is an item or enemy and therefore difficult to take appropriate action. Completing the game is simply a matter of trial-and-error until you have memorised the route through the 3 levels. INNOVATION The mechanic of converting items to energy is somewhat atypical, but has been done before (for example in Jeff Lait's Everything Is Fodder). SCOPE Very little content. No dungeon generation and items and enemies are largely interchangable. ROGUELIKE While it appears to be one at first glance, the lack of procedural generation or any meaningful interaction or choices means that the fundamental criteria are not met.
Hexnaut
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
The game is more of a pure tactical puzzle than a roguelike. You are extremely limited in what you can do. It could be moderately fun if generated levels had some checks for instant loss. Quite often you start in a position with no valid moves. This is very underwhelming. On the later levels the game turns into a chaos. It is very difficult to comprehend all moves of enemies. There are only 3 enemies, one collectible item - gold, and very very basic levels. I would expect a little more from an average 7drl.
Having enemies attack each other rather than attacking them yourself has always been quite a fun concept to me, so this roguelike appealed to me quite a bit. The movement is simple, the goal is clear (don't die, pick up gold) - however. I have two issues with this game - unless you know for sure that the @ is the player character, there's no real distinct sign that that's the player character unless you die. In which case it's pretty clear as the @ is red. The other is that the second enemy you face, that moves two steps - the arrow to me is very unclear that the enemy will be moving two steps - I thought the arrow meant it would be curving round in an arc rather than moving two steps. Perhaps a key at the beginning of the game to say what movement arrows mean in terms of movement? I definitely look forward to seeing an improved version of this if you plan on working on this more.
This is the most 3/5 game I have played yet, in that I gave you a 3/5 in every category. Completeness It works, but there are a few minor bugs that kept me from bumping you up to a 4. Sometimes you start a level in an unwinnable state Sometimes enemies immediately kill each other The game over screen sometimes says "you got 1 gold on level 0" even when that is not true at all I wasn't able to screenshot my most successful run because 'press any key to restart' dismisses it Aesthetics Basically fine, but not a cut above. There didn't seem to be a reason for the enemies to be letters. Fun This is a good set of mechanics, and I could definitely see this running on a phone with 6-direction swipe controls. It needs more enemy and environment variety in my opinion. I didn't bump you to a 4/5 here because once the map gets bigger, the game doesn't really change. It's just, see how long you can go without making a mistake or spawning in an unwinnable spot. Innovative "A neat twist on the usual mechanics" is the scoring rubric's explanation of an 3/5 in this category, which I think fits. Anything with a hex grid merits at least a 3/5. Scope "What you expect from a 7DRL," i.e. 3/5. Three enemy types, no items, simple levels. Roguelike Not a roguelike, but not NOT a rogueLITE. So, 3/5. Roguelike elements, but more of a puzzle game.
Laborind
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
2
2
3
Innovation
2
2
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
The game is very basic prototype. A few enemies with the only difference in hp and dmg, two consumable items - one heals, one kills an enemy (or yourself). On every level you need to find a key and then a door to the next level. Killing enemies is entirely optional, but in most cases fights cannot be avoided due to size of the room and the need to backtrack. Backtracking is quite cumbersome because of blocking movement animation and room change animation. In general it's too little to do to even somewhat enjoy the game.
Observations: Adjust the volume in combat You can have more HP than the supposed Max, e.g. -> 9/6, 11/6, etc. LOL I killed myself with a wrench!? The item ratio in the exploding boxes must be close to zero though the enemy encounters are also scarce, add that to a streak of empty rooms and you found the player getting tired of just walking. Overall is a good base for improvement, pretty good for a Jam game.
An interesting and neat little idea for a roguelike. I think the base idea for the game is pretty sound, and would (like most things) benefit from more audio and perhaps a few more weapons. My kids enjoyed the game and we thought it also might help if there was a counter of some kind as to how deep we're going to get to the last stage. Hopefully you can chip away at this idea for a while longer...
Pacifist Jukebox
Completeness
4
3
3
Aesthetics
3
2
4
Fun
3
2
4
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
2
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
2
Pacifist Jukebox is a pun of course as your character is a box that jukes . It's not a bad idea for a roguelike and we could use more of them that explore non-combat options. In this implementation, you have to steal keys from the one enemy type and then deposit all keys at the exit until you've unlocked it and move to the next floor. On paper I like the concept a lot, but the mechanics turned out to be somewhat frustrating. Though you move super fast around the level, the enemies slow you down when you get near them. And you have to get near them to steal their keys. It didn't feel great having my character slow to a crawl constantly. Perhaps with more practice I would get adept at timing the enemy movement or something, but the game's claustrophobic passageways and multiple enemies (that are effectively half the size of a hallway) make that very difficult. The game is a good effort though. I'm sure some will be put off by the dizzying camera that swings back and forth as you move, but I didn't mind it. It reminded me of Hotline Miami. Kudos for trying something different.
It's a great idea - there needs to be more pacifist roguelikes out there - the execution however did kill any enjoyment I had of this game, regrettably. The way the rooms moved made it hard for me to remember that I was moving the player, not the room itself - meaning I often forgot how the physics worked, the player doesn't move like a marble, and it just kept throwing me off actually playing the game. The UI also perplexed me for a moment - I don't always associate green with speed, usually health. Took me a few plays to realise what was going on with the bars in the corner. As of this moment, I managed to get up to rooms with 3 keys to progress and kept dying to the monsters. I'd love ot play more, but not until the movement issue is addressed - because its seriously not clear.
Really excellent effort. I have spent more time playing this than any other 7DL thus far, and beat it. It's tough: really tough. It works for it though. A couple of things would have really helped me though: Firstly, Gamepad support. I beat it using a gamepad mapped to WASD (with reWASD) - which made it a far better experience for me (and hurt my hands less). Secondly, Ability to turn off the 'sway' - I think it was contributing to making me motion sick by the end. Thirdly, waiting until a keep press to start a level. I did encounter a few bugs - specifically jumping out of the level entering a level, and levels generated with a small space, no enemies and no exit. I particularly valued your enemy design. Even having just two types of enemy made my ability to run away that much harder. I also appreciated its 'fairness' - most of the deaths felt like my fault. The very quick movements required did hurt its roguelikeness score. Whilst a little planning helped, I felt far more benefit from very quick twitch (and far greater loss due to missing the twitch). Well done on completing.
Crypt of Grimwin
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
This game is surely knows how to disappoint. Intro story with some choices? They do not matter at all. Lock and door puzzle? There is NOTHING behind that door. Several other puzzles with NO reward! Once I got trapped in a completely enclosed room after pulling some switch. And no, this spirit is unable to travel thru walls. The game should encourage exploration and patience. But this game does not. Possession mechanics was much more interesting in the "Possessed" 7drl game. Possessed bodies in this game are extremely fragile. And chance based possession can easily lead to very disappointing death of failing 25% chance possession 8 times. Very short amount of time that you can remain in a spirit form makes it impossible to search for another body. One thing that is very well done is ... scrolling! Smooth auto-centering of the character with ease-out animation is very nice. Graphics... While "dirty pixels" art style suits the theme, it's often very hard to understand what's depicted so you have to resort to "look at" which makes presence of graphics kind of less meaningful.
A neat concept that reminds me of an old game where you take over increasingly powerful robots, although that one had a minigame for the takeover rather than just a dice roll. I love the lever puzzles. The combat feels a little bland, though.
DRAGON BUSTER
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
2
4
Fun
2
4
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
First person view labyrinth with very samey surroundings without minimap... Sorry, but that's somewhere in the opposite direction of fun. Escape closing game without warning, no pause? Uh... The gameplay process is not particularly engaging. Very basic first person hack&slash. Roguelite? Probably, but definitely not roguelike.
A really neat little game. Me and my boys enjoyed taking turns trying to get as far as we could. Technically, it was really solid: input keys always worked and did what expected, no audio or visual glitches. Not trying to be "that judge", but roguelikes tend to trend a little more on turn-based play. Great work, hope to see future entries!
Felines
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
Completeness There are a lot of half-baked ideas here. The way to start fights is by teleporting your opponent, which isn't explained in the manual The manual says you need cats to fight, but there are no capturable cats on the map You actually can start fights without having cats Because of that, charming animals is useless Magic Missile is just an immediate game-losing move So I have to give you a 2/5 for all the confusing stuff that seems like it should do something but doesn't. This might be counterintuitive, but I would have scored you higher if you had cut unfinished features from the game. Aesthetics The help screens are annoying to navigate, but contain a lot of really important information. The keys are somewhat easy to use but don't make a ton of sense. However, the main board game thing is pretty easy to use, and the aesthetic of the game is nice. 3/5 Fun The core gameplay here is an enhanced version of Trouble, with a roguelike-ish overworld. There isn't much strategy to it. I played through a couple of games to try things out and it didn't really hold my attention. 2/5 Innovation I do like seeing unusual ideas in roguelike trappings, so 3/5 here. This would definitely have worked better if the overworld had stuff going on. Scope You clearly had a lot of ambitious ideas, and only got through a fraction of them. The world does feel alive, and the board game is definitely complete enough, so I've scored you 3/5 for scope. Roguelikeness This is a board game, not a roguelike, but it does have an overworld that could turn into a real roguelike. 3/5.
Defeat the elder mage to win. I beat it. Completeness 3 Instructions include "s in nonsensical spots. "You kill you". Going fullscreen or expanding the window glitches the graphics. The instructions mention unimplemented card effects. Aesthetics 3 ASCII is fine. Hard to tell how many periods "........." is, and that information is necessary to play properly. Move with hjklyuNM rather than standard hjklyuBN. Multi-keypress commands, especially annoying when teleporting (Shift+z+t+move+Enter+move+Enter). In the board game it is possible for your home tiles to be the same color as the extraneous home tiles. Fun 3 Figuring out how to get past all the instadeath gotchas and glitches when starting out is fun. Board game segment is more time consuming than interesting. Innovation 3 Duels are fought by playing a board game similar to Sorry. Scope 3 Several spells. Board game with several special effects. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based Randomness Permafailure RPG spells Animals/people are referred to by their scientific name The majority of time is spent on the board game segment
Gauntlet Rogue
Completeness
2
4
Aesthetics
2
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
4
Roguelikeness
2
4
I love being able to mow down enemies, and I'm pretty sure this is the most enemies I've ever seen on a roguelike. Unfortunately, as entertaining as it was to mow down my enemies, it wasn't much more than point and shoot, very little strategy or thought involved in the gameplay. I did see that you only managed two days worth of work on this, which does give me some hope for an updated build with better features and maybe some differences in character gameplay? For now, I'll say I tried with all characters, got furthest with Wizard at 4 levels, and sincerely hope that you end up making the game you intended, possibly even better.
Wow - this is great. All the nostalgia of playing gauntlet on my atari, but turn-based. The translation is flawless - everything is here, even the sounds. It's turn based and that adds some tactical considerations for which direction to run/bash enemies in. It's fun for a bit, but I think maybe the original gauntlet relied quite a lot on that sense of hectic and frantic action. Without the element of enemies constantly assaulting you (in real time) the lack of interesting tactics becomes more apparent. But that's not really a flaw for this 7DRL, per se. It's a really nice piece of work. Everything works the way you think it will - definitely what I am thinking of when I think of a 7DRL.
Twin Demon Slayers
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
3
This game is very barebone prototype of team based tactical ... shooter I guess. There are two characters. Ok. But they are identical! Except for visual presentation they have the very same properties. Basically having one character that can attack twice a turn would be nearly the same. The game sometimes crashes on start. Sometimes it generates level where one or both characters are trapped and cannot leave starting position. There is no any kind of progression involved. Just shoot/attack enemies and slowly crawl toward the goal. Shooting visualization could be better for sure! Sometimes it's not clear why you cannot shoot. And sometimes attempt to shoot just ends turn without any good reason. It is roguelike? I don't think so. There is random level... It's turn based. But that's all. Not enough to be called even roguelike-like. At least in it's current state.
I am a fan of turn based squad action games, and this game is the first to ever make me consider the connection with roguelike games.
Twin Demon Slayers is an XCOM inspired dungeon crawler. Your task is to get your team of two to the other side of the dungeon and destroy a crystal MacGuffin. You can see the whole map from the start which makes planning your journey easier, but removes any sense of discovery from the game. The pixel art is pleasant and the controls work well. It would have been nice for your team members to have different abilities, or for there to be some pickups to deepen the strategy a bit, but all things considered pretty decent for a 7DRL.
Adultlike
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
This game is more of a puzzle than a roguelike. Everything is visible. All options are fixed and unchanging. While it's more or less fun to win it once or twice, further replay value is non existent. This game doesn't give roguelike feeling.
Get to the end of December. I beat it on my first try. Completeness 3 No bugs found. The win screen is unpolished (it momentarily looks like you lost). Selecting the block ability cancels the skip ability. It sometimes generates impossible situations, for example: Aesthetics 3 Tiles are OK. Mouse controls are OK. Fun 3 Generally easy. Most decisions are no-brainers. Because everything boils down to 1 stat (strength) there aren't really many tradeoffs. Column ability sometimes can be used in interesting ways. Worth playing until you beat it. Innovation 3 Map is themed as a calendar. Almost all tiles have an effect when stepped on. Scope 3 A few different tile types and abilities. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based Random maps Permafailure Not much tactics/strategy No enemies/combat Not much RPG stuff
Bones
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
What I Loved The combat mechanics were so very close to being amazing. Having played Dwarf fortress adventure mode and loving the idea of fine-grained combat control, but hating actually doing it, I had high hopes that this game brought something new to the table in that area. For the most part, it did! The only thing it lacked was sufficient feedback, visually or otherwise, about what was happening and when. The bone-jiggle effect was nice early on, but became harder to follow as you gained more and more complicated bone-interactions The overall look and feel of the game was phenomenal for what I'd expect in a 7drl. The water moving mechanics and wrap-around gave the world a life of it's own, with a river of bones carrying it's passengers endlessly through the map The UI and interactions among the different bone components did a highly satisfactory job of examining what bones you had equipped and what they were doing for each other. What I WOULD have Loved Just a little better feedback, or more verbose logs on what was happening in combat. Not sure if the UI was just buggy at times, but I would occasionally be attacking at range and not understand why and it was nearly impossible to tell who was hostile to me and when. When including non-hostile creatures that can become hostile, it's very important to show the player when the change happens. That's pretty much it. Otherwise a very well designed and thought-out game!
The theme and story are great. The idea for a different kind of combat is interesting, but extremely difficult to understand and execute.
Cubelodo
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
Cubelodo is a frenetic 3D collect-em-up. You play a blue cube avoiding red cubes and acquiring green cubes. As the description suggests, this is pretty much the quintessential Unity "tech demo" that usually pops up in 7DRL at least once a year but has little to do with roguelikes. Admittedly, it is a nice looking tech demo! There's music and sounds and cubes explode into smaller cubes. Moving platforms are scattered about to make things feel even more frenetic. There are a handful of small bugs, but really my biggest gripe with the game is the controls. You have continuously hold spacebar plus the direction you want to move. This is maddening. Why is spacebar even involved? It adds nothing since the intent of the player can be entirely captured with the arrow keys alone. Unfortunately, I expect most people who encounter this game won't figure out how to move at all (that was my initial experience and I watched a Let's Play where the same thing happened). Despite that I can honestly say that the gameplay is fun (though short on replayablility) and that's no easy feat! Dodging works particularly well in this game because you see which way the enemies are planning to move before they do move.
The controls are not at all intuitive - but once you figure them out, it is quite fun to race around the level and smash up those green cubes. I just wish there was a way I could fight back against the red ones! The dynamism of the level is impressive and almost disorienting (but only almost), great work there. My only complain is that it has almost nothing to do with a roguelike!
Dungeon Sprint 7DRL 2018
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
4
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
4
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
Dungeon Sprint 7DRL 2018 has good framework and a lot of potential, and more depth than your typical 7DRL. I enjoyed my time with this one and would like to see it further fleshed out. It didn't break any new grounds in terms of innovation but it felt well-tuned for being a roguelike and the controls worked pretty well after getting used to them. The multiple classes really added a lot of depth to my different playthroughs as well. I ran into the odd bug including being able to select blank spaces in character creation, and going up and down stairs when there was a monster nearby right as I descend. The inventory and random items are a nice addition, although I feel like the chests are too abundant and managing inventory can be tedious once you have a bunch of items. The game's style looks well done and had an indie feel to it, although I had trouble seeing which items were equipped in my inventory due to the highlighted square being not too easy to see. One thing I really liked seeing was how my character model would change depending on what armor and weapons I was equipping. The music and sound effects got the job done, but felt a little too repetitive after awhile. The dungeon generation was a little off at times with doors spawning in the middle of nowhere, but for the most part it created nice, big labyrinths with different sized rooms and long corridors. I didn't run into any dead ends or errors in that regard. The game feels very ambitious and has a lot of content and work for a 7DRL, but I do believe it was created upon an existing game so the rating for "scope" may be a little flawed with this game for that reason. With that being said though, there is a wealth of depth here with the extensive character creation, random items and mobs, hunger/thirst mechanics, and dungeon generation.
had some difficulty reviewing this entry because it was not clear what was part of the pre-existing game and what was accomplished during the jam period. I think the game has a lot of potential and I respect using 7DRL as a chance to iterate on an existing idea I just wish I had a better idea of what was worked on.
Eosos
Completeness
2
4
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
4
Scope
2
4
Roguelikeness
2
3
I wish Eosos played as well as it looks. There doesn't seem to be any depth here or much of a game. I don't understand how to really kill consistently or do much of anything. I have more questions playing this one than having fun. The music when enabled, works well and the game's tiles and overall design look and feel great. It also controls quite well with either the mouse or the numpad. However, that's the only good thing this 7DRL has. The game doesn't feel finished at all or balanced to me, but that's mostly because I couldn't figure out how to get a good run going.
A 'tower defense' roguelike in which you control multiple characters. A promising idea, though in its current incarnation it needs better balancing, pacing and variety to truly make the most of its concept. COMPLETENESS Seems reasonably complete. No major bugs encountered. AESTHETICS The tileset looks great, and the controls are reasonable once you figure them out, but the game is in desperate need of better information on its core mechanics and switching between characters never feels entirely natural. FUN The gameplay is very poorly balanced and ultimately quite repetitive. Your units have very low HP and you will die over and over in the early game before you realise that you have to attack from behind to stay safe, but this feels like more of an AI exploit than a clever tactic. Peons take too long to gain XP to level up and controlling multiple characters later on mainly just slows down the pacing even more. INNOVATION An interesting combination of roguelike and tower defense genres. SCOPE A fairly impressive scope for a 7DRL; multiple classes, levels, enemy types and bosses. ROGUELIKENESS More of a turn-based tactics game, but with some roguelike elements.
Jam-King's Big Bash
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
The puzzle-y nature of this game is appealing. However, the graphics are a bit small, and I found it hard to keep track of the move pattern for all the enemies. Hovering them all before every move got tedious quickly. Being attacked by pieces off the screen with infinite move ranges was frustrating.
This is a cool concept, but there are some major polish issues. Completeness: The game freezes when it generates a level about 1/3 of the time for me, so my longest game ever was 3 levels. The mechanics are never explained. Selecting different pieces to move is finicky; clicking from one piece to another just doesn't work sometimes. Score: 2 Aesthetics: The sprites look really neat! But there's not much going on in the level. Score: 3 Fun: There is a lot of dead time while moving across the levels. I suggest making your levels 25-50% as big as they are. Moving that green blob 50 tiles is not fun. Score: 3 Innovation: Cool idea, would definitely play more if there were more going on, mechanically. Score: 3 Scope: Pretty much what you'd expect from a 7DRL. Score: 3 Roguelike: Procgen + permadeath + turn-based gets you close, but the fact that it's so chessy made it feel like procgen chess, not Rogue. I would give you a 3.5 if I could. Score: 3
Kingdoms of Ekulera
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
3
3
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
2
It's very hard to judge this one. At first it feels awkward - no tutorial, no help menu, no readme file... Kingdoms of Ekulera are not very roguelike-ish and it's not trivial to figure out controls and game rules. And it's where that game loses audience - with large amount of 7DRL entries, it's easy to skip to the next game. It's a shame, because KoE is pretty good game (not very roguelike-ish, though). I really like UI style, also 3D models are nice, but terrain background tiles are just bad, looking like upscaled 16x16px sprites.
Kingdom of Ekulera is more of a 4x game than a roguelike, but does have a single avatar to try and recapture the roguelike feel. Completeness: While there is no direct bugs per se, the general lack of polish results in considerable pain points. For example, Esc insta-quits the game, something that should never live outside of debug builds. When you die, your hero does a death animation. But while it is teleported to the castle, it is drawn walking there and the camera is left in the wrong spot for a move or two. And then in your first move back alive, your character dies again ?? The same oddity is seen in the enemies. Aesthetics: 45 degree isometric is a fine projection, but NEVER USE WITH ARROW KEYS. This is a huge pain point of trying to map 4-way arrows with the diagonal grid, there is absolutely no preferred way to do this, so it is a constant exercise in mis-clicks, deadly in a turn based game. A unique colour should be used for your border, sometimes enemies have the same border colour making it difficult to tell. The welcome screen fades in/out slowly with no way to bypass with a key. The first few times it is too fast to read comfortably, later games it is too slow to get to the game. Feedback for 'a' and 'w' are completely missing, you have to carefully watch stat bars to see anything happened. Worse, if you are missing a precondition nothing happens and there is no message saying why nothing happened (like not enough gold to upgrade?) There is a strange strip of minmap cut off at the bottom of the screen. There are strange rules for forced-combat which makes it frustrating as you can't disengage. But sometimes you are forced to actively attack, I guess this allows 'a', but it feels like the game freezes until you deduce it is forcing you to "choose" to attack. On death there should be a key hit before transitioning to the minimap, it is sudden and abrupt at the moment. Fun: There is a good game in here, but very poor feedback makes it hard to find. I'm also still not convinced the enemies play by the same rules. The moral rules limit me to 5 battles, but I kill them over and over a gain and they keep coming? They also can run across their entire domains while I'm attacking, but they seem to instantly grab my territory on occasion? Innovation: First person 4x is an interesting combat. I also like the hundred kingdom idea. Scope: A good scope for 7 days. Roguelike: Controlling a single character does not make it a roguelike IMHO. This is a 4x
Rogue Wave
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
3
Innovation
2
Scope
3
Roguelikeness
3
A worthy effort for 7 days. I was particularly impressed by the world generation - it feels good. The graphics is functional enough to work. The combat was unfortunately not very interesting, and I couldn't pick what I could do to improve my standing other then hire more people. The choice to make attacks go both attack/defence made it tough to be able to play strategically. The combination of lets rob pirates, and sell their stuff is good. It's a bit tough to tell what benefit I'm getting though; I don't know if I've got cargo space left, as for me to keep fighting. Overall, it does feel like it needs a little polish. Well done on completing the challenge with something a bit different.
TAIYOH
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Simple, solid, super! Some polish could be applied so that there aren't double doors between rooms, and explaining the sun mechanic a little better.
In TAIYOH you play a vampire hunter who must use the power of the sun to increase the effectiveness of your attacks upon the undead. On each level there are several shafts of light from which you can charge up your "Sun Power". The catch being that you can only charge up once per level. This leads to some interesting tactical choices regarding whether to continue exploring a level with the hope of getting better gear or levelling up, or whether to move on to the next floor while you still have Sun Points in the bank. There isn't a lot more to it than that, but stomping out the Count was a fun enough journey.
Amrita
Completeness
4
2
3
Aesthetics
2
2
2
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
3
3
2
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
2
Completeness : I think this game's design was tight and accomplished exactly what was described in the description for it. Especially for a 7drl there wasn't much in it that felt unfinished, each enemy had it's place and (almost) every ingredient had a real, meaningful use in a playthrough Aesthetics: The color choices and presentation for me was totally fine here. I only had 2 major issues that would've been massive improvements for me. While learning the game, I had to constantly open the encyclopedia to reference and cross-reference ingredients. I wonder if there was a way that could've just been open on the screen at all times for the player to view. The message log only included things that the player did, I found that I had to deduce that monsters were finding and quaffing potions around the map, which was fine, but I didn't know what they were actually doing, which led to a few confusing turns where a "g" would just disappear off the map and I would have no clear idea why. Outside of the confusion, it would've added a "fun" factor to understand the craziness of these monsters just picking up random potions and drinking them if the game were to tell me what was happening. Fun : This game is definitely fun and unique, pure and simple. I opted only for 3 stars because, despite the awesomeness of brewing potions, I wish I had a bit more control over what went into the potions. Sometimes you'd get a "Tears of Grace" and "Venomlasher Fang" in your reagents list and I would be sad because those are oppositional reagents in my mind, and it would've been much more satisfying to create 2 useful potions instead of one that felt like a waste. Innovation : Even though crafting and alchemy aren't new concepts, this particular approach was very new and innovative to me. Having potion-brewing as the centerpiece of the game was an awesome design decision and using the mechanic was certainly satisfying! Scope: I think this game did an excellent job of maintaining a tight focus on theme and it's central mechanic. It didn't try to accomplish too much, and it didn't seem too basic either. Right in the goldilocks zone Roguelike : It's definitely a roguelike :)
Completeness The encyclopedia is very buggy and this had a huge impact on how much I was able to enjoy the game. I had to physically resize my browser window every time I opened it, or it wouldn't show at all. The rest of the UI is OK, but I did rate this a 2/5 for having obvious, game-breaking bugs. Aesthetics It's very green, there is no visual feedback to show cause-and-effect, and I have to keep cross-referencing 12pt text. Mouseovers on the ingredients would have made this game twice as fun to play. I gave you a 2/5 here for a generally confusing UI and general look. Fun UI issues aside, this is a pretty interesting concept with lots of meaningful choices. I never got past level 5 in an hour of play, which made me think it was too difficult for a 7DRL, especially when combined with the opaqueness of enemy abilities (again, I'm not going to keep re-reading tiny text on a separate web page every time I see a "p") and the deadliness of getting poisoned. I liked the walls. Walls are good, I wish more people would do walls like this. Good walls. 3/5 worth my time playing! Innovative The scoring rubric calls 3/5 "a neat twist on the usual mechanics," which I think exactly fits this game. I will say, though, that Cinco Paus treads a lot of the same ground with a lot more variety and polish. For the sake of generosity I'll assume you've never heard of Cinco Paus, and if not, please check it out because you'd like it! Roguelike ness Yep, it's a roguelike. 4/5
Did not enjoyed it, maybe because I died to easy and was a lot of text. If that was your intent good work. Tweet button didn't work.
Dragonvein
Completeness
2
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
2
3
2
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
2
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
3
The game is very basic prototype with very little to do. Most enemies are "random encounters". You can encounter an enemy right in the tile where you come from. This removes any tactics from the game. There is no scouting. You can build quite big army if you are lucky enough with tightly populated area, but then loose half of it due to chain of unfortunate random encounters. There is nothing to do except to move around. The graphics is nice, but I believe it's some sort of assets from unity. The game hangs and then crashes when you try to close it or press escape. There were roguelikes attempts where instead of single character the player was controlling a small army. This game doesn't feel like rougelike at all. Random terrain and random encounters do not make a game into a roguelike. There is a potential, but it's not realized.
I liked the variation on the Roguelike formula in this game, where you grow your army of soldiers and gradually increase their strength rather than increasing the power of a single character. The game still requires a careful strategy, especially near the beginning where you need to avoid fights until you have enough of a basic mob to just overwhelm enemies by sheer numbers. It's an interesting way of applying typical RogueLike strategies and tactics to a more party-based context, without needing to micro-manage the party. The only problem with the game in terms of completeness is a known major bug (crashing on exit), and lack of clarity about loading/instructions within the game itself. Although the readme describes the goal and what to do, it'd be good to have those instructions in the game itself. Similarly, when a new game loads after losing there is a noticeable delay but no notification of what is happening. A simple message that the game is loading would be enough, so players don't think the game has crashed. A message indicating what kind of loot was found, and how it improved your army, would also be nice. The soldiers already visibly upgrade, but some notification explaining what happened would increase the immersion and aesthetics of the game. (It's just cool to know I found a magical sword or something rather than just the same 'got loot' message.) Overall, it's a fun and very aesthetically pleasing little game.
My initial thought of Dragonvein was utter surprise - being killed before I'd even made a move. My second thought was it's aesthetic beauty: you've done a fantastic job of the tiles, dealt with the difficulties of hexes well, and used animation well. But, I struggled with Dragonvein a lot early on - particularly with the lack of direction and feedback. Eventually, rereading the description did help a lot - but I found it hard to judge why I was winning or losing fights, or how strong my team actually was. I also struggled with being unable to avoid combat: I had a lot of team kills due to randomly walking somewhere, and being attacked to death without any warning. But, I also understand that balance is tough - particularly in a 7DRL, where you may not have the chance to beat the game yourself. Ultimately, I was able to beat the red dragon, but haven't yet been able to beat the game. I'm pretty sure I close to exhausted the villages and towns, but was worn down by continual random encounters. The design is clean, and the game is interesting. The world building text works well. Despite struggling with the lack of information, I did like the use of people/shield colors as health and strength in the absence of a HUD. It's a clever game, and a worthy attempt over 7 days.
Cover and Move
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
Completeness You have to reload the page to start a new game, some effects are hard to see, and moving into a wall costs a turn. Other than that it's pretty polished! Ups and downs here, so 3/5. Aesthetics Basically fine, what you expect from a bare-bones 7DRL entry. 3/5 Fun There just wasn't enough for me to chew on. The balance felt weird, there was just one enemy type, I never got any use out of the pulse bombs...it just isn't fleshed out enough to be fun right now. I rated it 2/5 based on my subjective experience, but I do think this could get really fun with just a little bit of love added in progression and variety. Innovation The king-of-the-hill terminal capture is enough to bump this up to a 3/5 for me. I'd love to see this with multiple levels, with the player having to capture terminals to unlock doors. Scope It's just a single level with one main weapon and one enemy type, so I had to go with a 2/5 here for being very tiny. Roguelike ness Yep, it's a roguelike! You should definitely be proud of having completed a game! It certainly isn't the best this year, but it is a game and I did enjoy poking at it.
In Cover and Move you must take over three terminals to win the game, but with every terminal you take over, the rate at which enemies spawn increases. This becomes a real problem after securing your first terminal, with wave after wave of enemies pouring into the rooms and slowing your progress to a crawl. To make matters worse you have to spend every other turn reloading. You have a powerful healing ability, so it's quite hard to die, but it still feels like a bit of a slog.
HeroQuestRl
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
4
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
HeroQuestRL is, as far I can tell and as the names suggests, a straightforward adaptation of the board game Hero Quest into roguelike form. Even though I've always admired pico-8 games from a distance, this is the first one I"ve actually played. I love the art. The tiny sprites are great and the animation works well too. What doesn't work so well is the combat. You go up to monsters and attack them and dice resolve the combat for you. This seems interesting at first, but there doesn't seem to be any strategy. It's just rolling a bunch of dice. There are 4 different classes and you can bring all 4 in at once (which wasn't immediately obvious in my first play through). But none of them feel different. They have different stats, but I never saw how that could factor into decision making. Having to control 4 characters and then wait for the enemies to move and dice to roll was personally a bit frustrating (but perhaps take my feedback with a grain of salt as I'm not a big fan of such board games). There is effectively only one level because the game consistently (4 times in a row) crashes when getting all characters to the exit. This is an interesting board game adaption and seems to bring in a lot of stuff from Hero Quest. It's impressive how it all comes together, but I was really wishing there was more to the gameplay.
Get to the stairs. I won the first time it didn't crash mid game. Completeness 2 Back/cancel shows a square, but is actually controlled by the Z key. Once the line of sight was screwed up so that I was moving underneath black space. Selecting some characters, going back, then starting again allows you to take more than one of each character class. Crashed in several of my games, giving the following message: Aesthetics 2 The tiles/font are very blocky, ugly and hard to read. Arrow key movement and X/Z for selection. Fun 2 Easy, not much thinking needed. The animated dice rolling for combat is extremely slow (you can press enter and select "no dice" to not show the animations). Even with no dice animations, the delay during combat results and between turns is way too long. Innovation 2 Attack dice use skulls and shields rather than numbers. Multiple controlled party members (rare for a roguelike but common for turn based tactics). Scope 3 Several classes/enemies. Roguelikeness 4 Turn/grid based Randomness Permafailure Abilities Not much tactics/strategy Multiple party members
JingkeRL
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
Neat little historical assassination simulator. There's not a lot of depth to it, and it's fairly easy to beat on your first try, but I appreciate the historical context. Everything works well and the colour palette is pleasing to the eye.
It felt a bit limited on what you should do. The enemies didn't seem to bother with me much, so I was free to run around and do as I please. Needs something more unique.
Tank Control
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
The idea of the game sounds good on paper, but implementation and, more importantly, balance are not really great. You expect to drive impenetrable tank and seed chaos. But what we see here? The tank is as fast as enemy soldier. Each enemy solider deal 1 damage per turn to the tank! Do they all have rocket launchers? OK. It's very fragile and slow tank. But... Shells and bullets are lying around in quantity 1. You can only pick 8 items/map and you need to rescue some civilians... Let's say we rescue 2 civilians/map. 6 remaining slots are for bullets and shells. That's 6 shots from either. There is no way to reach the exit with this many shots! Including the fact, that you don't know where the exit is. And you can't leave the map if there are enemies in sight! So rushing to the exit is impossible. Picking items from the ground is very strange. It shouldn't be on wait key and it should be picked when touching by any tank part. There were roguelikes where you control something that is bigger then 1x1. Like spaceship. Part of being multitile entity is possibility for modular setup. And some detailed damage distribution. Like your left side is heavily damage, rotate 180 degrees and move backwards to take damage to the right side... This game doesn't really plays like rougelike at all... Yeah, there is random terrain that doesn't add really much. All maps plays very samey.
Exactly what it says on the tin. Had trouble getting used to being able to drive over obstacles, and it's not exactly clear why certain shots weren't valid.
muxRL
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
4
There isn't much to say or recommend about muxRL as it seems unfinished and buggy, but has an interesting idea. The idea being that every time you run into a certain block (%), another console appears and lowers visibility on your other consoles. The more you run into, the more fill up the screen. Instant death is achieved if you bump into enemies (g) and that console disappears and when your last one is gone, it's game over. There's no restart button or anything so you're forced to close and open the game again. I ran into lots of problems with dungeon generation in that I'd run into impassable walls, causing me to quit and restart. There were a lot of cheaty rooms too, that had way too many enemies and made it impossible to win or even descend a single level, so I felt that the balance was quite off in this regard as well. The game, which has no sounds or anything, looks and controls okay and feels kind of like a roguelike, but I'd pass on this one due to it being unfinished and not really playable.
Neat concept. There were a few issues which would usually be viewed as problematic, such as unreachable rooms/exits and entering a new floor completely surrounded by enemies. However given the nature of the game these seemed like less of an issue. I felt like any one “universe” was unlikely to make it through the dungeon so I had to produce an abundance of offspring in the hopes that they would survive. As a game-game it is functional but small, I think any additional features to liven up each play through would be helpful. Quality of life things like a restart button, or indication of current floor would be nice. As an art-game it seems like an appropriately minimal experience, and an interesting way to use a roguelike to talk about roguelikes, or life, or baby sea turtles trying to make it to the ocean. (futility, no guarantee of success, permadeath with no restart button)
BloodCrypt
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
4
2
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
BloodCrypt has a really nice look and feel to it and plays quite well for a 7DRL. Some of the first things I noticed that I didn't like were how dark the game was, the lights flickering too erratically, and the auto-adjusting camera not working well. I also had an instance where my character was somehow trapped in between two rooms and I couldn't move anywhere to get out. There were some scaling problems with my window and no way to exit the game except alt+f4. The game has a very unique look to it and feels kind of like a board game. There were no sounds, but the 3D graphics and aesthetic alone were impressive enough being a 7DRL. Clicking around felt a little clunky at times, especially with the frustrating camera, but that's all there was to the movement and camera control so I liked the simplicity. The main goal of the game is how much gold you can collect before dying. Enemies are present and will shave off your health pretty easily, however it is regained whenever you generate new squares/rooms or by eating cheese that is randomly spawned on tiles. New rooms and corridors are added when you reach the end of the current square that you are on, and the generation for the most part was decent, with hallways and some rooms that are blocked off or have objects in the middle that are impassable. I can recommend checking this game out and had some fun throughout multiple playthroughs to see how high I could get my gold count.
There is a firmly established tradition in 7DRL of every year having a game with beautiful 3D graphics which took the full 7 days and left absolutely no time for anything even remotely approaching gameplay. This is 2018's. COMPLETENESS Does not seem to have been fully finished and should not have been marked a success. Seems to be impossible to win the game - having found the key and opened the trapdoor at the end of the level there seemed to be no way of going down it. First-person mode is very buggy and often either will not let you turn right or will spin you 180 degrees if you try to turn left. All gold in a room seems to vanish as soon as one piece is picked up. Numerous small graphical glitches such as flickering trapdoors. AESTHETICS Gorgeous 3D graphics with a beautiful pseudo-tabletop aesthetic, realtime lighting and weather effects... which ends up being a massive detriment to the game as a whole. There is no clear visual indication where adjacent rooms exist, meaning you have to trek to the edge of the room to see if you can move off it. Controls are awkward and make moving around very tedious, requiring you to click on the tile you want to move to and wait for the animation to complete... every... single... turn... kill... me... now... FUN The game is fairly bare bones and there's not much depth to it. Move and attack are your only real options. Enemies do not have much to distinguish them and have very basic behaviour (and do not seem to exist at all in the 7DRL version). INNOVATION Nothing I haven't seen before. SCOPE Barely a game at this point. ROGUELIKE The foundations of one, but not enough depth to fully qualify.
Fuzzy Wuzzy Hunters
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Nothing exciting jumped out at me, this is just a simple implementation of basic roguelike gameplay.
Fuzzy Wuzzy Hunters is a classic style Roguelike that offers you three starting classes to choose from. None of them bring anything new to the table, but they are pleasingly distinct from one another. The game is short but feels fairly well balanced – I made it to the end, just. I had fun, but I encountered a few technical/UI issues: – Items can (and for some seem to prefer to) spawn inside of wall tiles, making them inaccessible. – Dropping an item crashes the game – ESC closes modal menus but also quits to title screen – I found the blue on black text quite hard to read
Hell is other people
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
2
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
Hell Is Other People is a game about going to a house party and awkwardness that naturally ensues. HIOP looks and controls pretty much like a roguelike, but the gameplay is lacking most of what you expect. Obviously there's no combat, but also no items, emergent behavior, or complexity. I'm all for pushing the boundaries of what roguelikes can be, especially by dropping combat. But there has to be something to replace it with. This game seems like it was on the tip of doing something quite interesting with the whole dialogue, drinking, and dancing systems, but then was left unfinished. The dialogue never goes anywhere, the drinking is simplistic, and I could never figure out how to dance. I did find several ways to lose, but no victory condition. Perhaps the point is just to point out the absurdity of college parties? If so, it does that well enough. Hell Is Other People has an interesting premise and a couple neat moments (e.g. the drinking effect and people swarming), but I was hoping for a lot more.
Nice intoxication mechanic. It's not bad but is too much reading for my taste.
Shadow Ledger 7DRL
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
4
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
2
3
No idea how this can relate to roguelikes. Even looking at it as a game not related to roguelikes - no idea how I'm supposed to make assumptions about some items... There is not enough information! Well, I can just memorize... But then there are only 3 levels. This game leaves "Uh? What was that?" feeling...
A very intriguing attempt to subvert the roguelike genre! I really enjoyed the variety of neat reasons provided for the unusual transactions. Completeness: Solid and stable Aesthetics: An interesting thing to judge. The "bad" UI is part of the charm of this sort of work-game. My complaint here may be it wasn't taken far enough - the g-codes allows highlighting, but I was looking for weird meta-g-codes to allow flagging, or to allow teleporting to other lines via search (to avoid grid bugs) or what not. This could make it suddenly a multi-dimensional game of how to flag what you see with fewest commands. Currently it is very one-dimensional as you have the solitary axis of movement. Fun: Unfortunately, the game is balanced way too easily. The bad transactions are obvious. Too much time is available to complete it. While the elbereth/grid bug interaction is interesting, you don't require it to finish the game. Innovation: Very cool departure from the norm; but holds back enough to let us still see the roguelike source. I like the whole idea that the current line is "me", but I'm also the operator... Scope: Very limited set. I would have loved to have more RNG in the items to make it harder to tell correct from fake, and more g-codes. Roguelikeness: Lack of 2d motion really prevents it from being a true roguelike disguised as a ledger. The grid bugs, though, bring it from the abyss of non-roguelike into a roguelike world by causing the spreadsheet to suddenly become a 2d cave complex....
Space Getaway
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
2
4
Liked the game, but felt more like a little puzzle and not a roguelike. Didn't feel the influence of randomness or any challenge. Tough the time-stop mechanic is a good addition, makes it too easy for the player.
Interesting combat mechanic! There are time pressures operating on different scales: at the short time scale there are the area-of-effect attacks that are about to land, or the time-freeze meter running down. On a longer time scale there is the loss of air from the level. I liked the Newton's cradle effect when pushing a line of monsters. The graphics are clear and functional. The overlapping attack displays work well, for instance, and the time-freeze tints the whole screen which is good. One minor polish I would have liked is for keyboard input to interrupt turn animation. Balance-wise, I felt like the time pause and damage were the most valuable upgrades, with the health and air supply being relatively unnecessary. Once I got some practice with the combat it felt a little bit monotonous, but it's still a solid 7DRL!
Space Station TDA616
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
Space Station TDA616 puts you on said space station with a simple mission: pick up explosives, find an alien ship 9 floors from your starting point, and "blow it straight to hell." You can't actually kill aliens and have to rush to your objectives while they attack you. You have a randomly generated name and there are randomly named wandering crew mates too. This is a nice premise but doesn't turn into much. I have a lot of feedback: Having to go into an inventory system to pick up items is quite odd. There are *a lot* of controls for a 7drl. This game could be just as effective with only the arrow keys. There's a targeting system that appears to do nothing. Was this game adapted from something else? The ASCII is mostly fine, though a little dark. The unorthodox choices confused me a bit (e.g. Z for doors). Having all items represented as 'q' with no way to identify them other than entering a separate look or inventory mode is not great. It's never explained why all items other than the MacGuffin are clothes. This whole thing (dinner jacket, polo shirt, thong) is pretty wacky compared to the tone of the rest of the game. There's quite a bit of lag when holding down movement keys. I would guess this is a first attempt at making games and if so, seriously congrats!, because we definitely have here a fully functional game that isn't particularly buggy. I could forgive all of the above criticism if there were just some meat on the bones here, some interesting mechanic or something to occupy my time. My advice is to keep making games and aim for finding that interest mechanic.
Space Station TDA616 feels very basic and light, even for a standard 7DRL. There is some fun to be had though, and it's worth giving it at least a quick playthrough or two. The goal of the game is to ascend ten floors and find the "high explosives" along the way, where you will then plant near the Alien Ship at the very top level and wait a few turns for it to explode. The only threat present are aliens that will follow and chip away at your health. There are NPC's present but they don't do anything except wander around. There are also items present, mostly in the form of clothes, but these too also serve no purpose. I couldn't really find a way to attack the aliens either, so I just ran to the next level and tried to avoid them as best as possible. The game looks pretty standard for a roguelike and has no sounds, but is easily controlled and the console looks nice. I didn't encounter any bugs and the dungeon generation was quite solid. It took me four tries to finally ascend and blow up the Alien Ship and although it was quite simple, I still wanted to play and felt motivated to beat it.
Tower Of Pain
Completeness
4
2
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
Nice little game, which is, however, closer to tactical puzzles than roguelikes. Retro style is fine, possibility of playing with gamepad is nice addition. But animation of enemies that can move across the screen in one player's turn could be faster. Several such enemies can delay a turn by uncomfortable amount of seconds. As for combat/turns system - not the most popular system, but already used in some roguelikes.
It felt incomplete and buggy. Didn't understand the mechanics nor the purpose of the squares under the hears and the sound ques. The tutorial gives no clue on the controls. The graphics are pretty, but playing is not a pleasant experience.
Zealot's Curse
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
2
2
The game is primitive arcade shooter prototype. No abilities, very basic enemies. I really liked the visual style, but gameplay is easy and the only time my character was loosing HP right after the start of the level surrounded by enemies. While levels are random, this randomness have no much sense. They are very samey.
Zealot's Curse is a fast-paced twin-stick shooter with a rad phosphorescent aesthetic. The controls are slick and intuitive and it's easy to pick up and play. Although the maps are procedurally generated they tend to be very similar and there are no new challenges to face as you advance through the floors. As a result it doesn't feel particularly "roguelikey", but it's still a lot of fun to blast away at stuff.
Duck Tape Hero
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
4
The game has an interesting idea of crafting useful items from various ingredients, but, unfortunately, implementation failed to keep with the premise. First of all - the game often generates impossible combination of levels/items. You simply cannot progress any further with items given. Second - walls without any visuals is very strange solution. Player simply cannot distinguish an edge of the explored space from the wall! That's so annoying. This makes exploration very painful. And third - main thing of the game - crafting, is very bugged. And as a final nail into gameplay experience - you have to traverse quite big levels, but there is no autotravel of any kind. And press and hold direction button creates queue of commands that are processed slower than they are generated and as a result player might have to wait quite some time before he will be able to control the character again.
For a game with ASCII-like aesthetics, it's easy to catch on. Still has bugs that affect the experience, but overall a good execution.
Haunted Mansion
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
2
2
Completeness No bugs, no obvious UI issues or anything. 4/5 Aesthetics Thematic graphics, creepy sound effects, intro story...great! 4/5, best aspect of this game by far. I honestly think this game might have turned out better, though, if you had done ASCII renderings of the mansion instead of the blurry photorealistic images. Fun Here's where we run into trouble. This game is basically a long, confusing maze. I won by always turning right. It took 20-30 minutes and nothing happened the whole time. I started out drawing the map on paper, which is something I NEVER do but felt very natural for this game (congrats!), but when it became clear that it was just a maze with nothing else going on, I didn't bother anymore. It felt impossible to keep my bearings, even though every room was unique. There are clearly some promising directions this could go. I'd be partial to a procedurally generated murder mystery adventure game, or maybe some simple combat. But the promising stuff hasn't been reached yet. 2/5 :-( Innovation Reading slashie's blog and seeing the ASCII rendering of the floorplan I did get a little excited, but in the end, it is a maze in a creepy house. 2/5 Roguelikeness A roguelike is more than a maze. This could be considered turn-based, I guess, but there's nothing to take your turn against. It doesn't have any roguelikey features other than procedurally generated levels. I can't even call it a roguelite, because there are no other mechanics besides exploring. 2/5
A cool concept but not sure what it has to do with roguelikes - if anything? The sound is very well integrated into the game and the controls are smooth and work as expected. I'm sure there are a lot of cool mechanics going on behind the scenes to generate the adventures but it's very sparse from a gameplay perspective, so it's hard to appreciate the end result.
LPN9
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
3
Played fine in browser, bonus points for controller support. Didn't have what I'm looking for in a RL (turn-based tactics, exploration, mystery), but it does what it sets out to do. Only frustrations I had were sometimes getting stuck in "pits" and the attack range seemed unpredictable. Whether that's just a UI issue or something deeper, I don't know.
This was a fun little proc-gen platformer, but missing a few key features that kept me from really enjoying it. Probably the biggest issue for me was there was no real sense of progression. I made it through 6-7 levels without finding the end of the game. My coins and enemies count reset every time I made it to a new level so I wasn't sure if I was actually progressing or if the level was starting over at every door. If the game is meant to be an infinite descender then some way of emphasizing that would be helpful. Easy fixes might be: -A floor counter in UI -Don’t reset coin count and enemy count on new level -Graphical/color changes as floors progress Another thing that might give it a bit more depth is Items, enemies, or abilities that might change how I approach each situation. Despite being procedurally generated the way I handle each platforming section or enemy placement is largely the same. This kind of ties into my first point about having no user feedback that I was progressing. -Minor buggy things- -A few times I died when I touched walls, I feel like it was intended but I wasn’t sure why I died. -The climb/”fling yourself up walls” button did not work on the controller, keyboard controls worked fine though. Overall, I think this is a good foundation that you could build off into a more fully featured game.
NoMad
Completeness
2
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
4
Completeness It has no win screen; when I beat all the towns, I'm just stuck in the desert. The message log doesn't render in any resolution I try, even on version 1.2. I gave it a 2/5 for these issues. Aesthetics It looks OK. The controls make sense. 3/5 Fun I got bored very quickly. There's no variety or progression. 2/5 Innovation It's pretty basic. The desert theme is promising, but it isn't really used in the mechanics. 2/5 Scope The scoring rubric says 2/5 is "not much more than a tech demo," which I think matches this game. Roguelike It's turn-based, you hit things, it might be procedurally generated. So while it fits those roguelike criteria, it doesn't really have anything else going for it. 3/5
I played version 1.2. Escape 4 towns to win. I beat it. Completeness 4 I ran into an issue once where I was unable to move while inside the towns. Aesthetics 3 Controls are OK. Arrow key movement. Tiles are OK. Fun 2 Easy. Not much to do. Innovation 2 Pretty standard. Scope 2 Not much here. Roguelikeness 4 Turn/grid based Random maps Permafailure Some RPG stats No items Not much tactics/strategy
Superhotlike
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
4
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
A small roguelike taking inspiration from Superhot, though largely only in the sense that shots move when you do. This concept has the potential to result in some interesting gameplay, however in this case the implementation is a bit too bare-bones for any interesting interaction to happen and the game is marred by bugs and control irritations. COMPLETENESS Has a high degree of visual polish, but the game itself is very buggy and froze up multiple times. AESTHETICS The tiles are nicely drawn, though seem to have nothing in particular to do with the theme of the game. Controls are awkward and unintuitive, especially for such a simple game - it took me a while to work out that the game expects you to click the fire button and then click on one of the highlighted tiles around you to select a direction rather than one of the arrow buttons right next to it. This results in a lot of irritating mouse movement and there appears to be no keyboard shortcut for this. The facing direction of enemies is represented by a tiny red dot, which is OK when you get used to it but could have been made a lot clearer. FUN Gameplay is fairly tedious and largely consists of firing off a projectile along a row of tiles and then jiggling backwards and forwards somewhere safe while it bounces backwards and forwards and wears down the enemy's health. Shoot another projectile to cancel out the existing one. Rinse and repeat over and over again until the level is cleared. The powerups which allow you to shoot through walls only make this even easier. The only occasions where you are in any real danger is when the level generation has you trapped in a small corner of the screen with limited room to maneuver. This demonstrates the potential for more tactical gameplay, but the game needs to have more going on (such as more mobile enemies or resource limitations) to really start to become interesting. INNOVATION The shots-only-move-when-you-do mechanic is atypical, though has been done before. The directional enemies are fairly novel. SCOPE A very limited scope, with hardly any variety in gameplay. ROGUELIKE Qualifies as a roguelike in my view, albeit a fairly simple one more akin to Desktop Dungeons or similar.
Defeat all enemies for 5 waves to win. I was unable to beat it. Completeness 2 Enemies sometimes show up in between squares. In every game where I didn't lose I eventually ran into a situation where I inexplicably couldn't move and/or shoot. Sometimes maps which start you out forced to move onto an enemy are generated. Aesthetics 3 Looks blurry. Controls are OK. Arrow keys to move, click to shoot. Fun 2 I couldn't figure how enemies decided whether to move or not. There was nothing interesting in the parts of the game I could understand, just don't run into your own bullets. Innovation 3 Ranged attack focus. Walls in between squares. Scope 2 Several enemy sprites, a few minor shot effects. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based Random maps Permafailure No RPG stuff Not much tactics/strategy
The calling
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
3
Nice attempt at making turn based platformer. Unfortunately combat system is quite abusable and enemie's damage scales way too fast. At some point single hit of an enemy can kill you from full hp. And since amount of enemies grow too, it is impossible to not take that hit with a bit of bad luck. Levels seems to be randomly taken from a pool of pre-designed levels and one level might repeat several times. Shooting with a bow could be significantly improved with single change - next shot should have placed target marker on the previous position. As it is right now, shooting requires waaay to many key pressed for a comfortable gameplay. IMO turn based gameplay is not enough for the game to be called even roguelite, not to say roguelike.
Kill enemies to continue. If there is an end goal I didn't find it. Completeness 3 When I exit the game, then click restore game, the game is frozen (reloading the web page fixes this). The instructions swap "W" and "D". The dialogue system is basically nonexistent. Aesthetics 3 Tiles are OK. Controls are OK. QWEASD for movement, ZX for attacking. Fun 2 I couldn't find any strategy other than spamming arrows. Innovation 3 Side view platforming. Scope 2 Stationary or moving enemies in a limited number of level shapes. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based A few different map/enemy combinations Permafailure No RPG stuff Not much tactics/strategy Side view
Prophetlike (gamejam)
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
2
3
2
Fun
3
2
3
Innovation
3
2
3
Scope
3
2
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
2
Via the power of DOG and REVIEWBRAH I ascended to the heavens...but it was rather tedious to get there. I appreciate the idea of having an open area rather than dungeon crawling, but with an open desert and huge patches of not very much variety or things to do, it doesn't make for a fun playthrough. The lack of a dash or "keep moving until I let go of the key" made the tediousness of exploring for more followers to convert to my cult of an all powerful all loving deity's perfectly reasonable religion more prevalent than I'd like. On the other hand, I like the fact you can choose to either convert or smite the roaming enemies. DOG loved all and converted all. REVIEWBRAH smote those who would oppose his chosen prophet without mercy. Overall, the grip this game has on the concept of a roguelike seems a bit loose to me, and the area is just too empty.
Completeness Pretty much works, but it's possible to take damage by moving toward an enemy that is in the smite animation. 3/5 Aesthetics Small amount of MS Paint-style art, easy to read, easy to see what's going on. Meets expectations, no major issues. 3/5 Fun The concept of this game is fun to role play and think about, but getting to 100 followers is a slog with basically nothing to do. Once I had 30 followers, I had seen every mechanic in the game and it felt like work to trek around the map repeating the same thing over and over. If there wasn't a gif of the win animation in the sidebar, I would never have bothered trying to reach 100. 2/5 Innovative Although the features were unusual for roguelikes , they didn't really have any gameplay effects or interesting decisions. Just walking and sometimes pressing a key to trigger some instantaneous effect. 2/5 Scope The scoring rubric says 2/5 in the Scope category means "not much more than a tech demo," which I feel exactly describes this game. It's a world, and you can inhabit it mentally and role play a bit, but it mostly feels like a bunch of mobs running around at random in an empty sandbox. Roguelikeness Not a roguelike. 2/5. I do hope to see more games with creative themes like this, and I do think there are some good places this game could go!
Had fun playing it. Sure it still need a lot of polish but is a good start.
The Blight
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
3
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
4
Well done on finishing the challenge. I could see potential in this game with its crafting system and world building. Unfortunately, I struggled hard with the user interface and the visible incompleteness (such as only having Kobolds, unimplemented features that were shown in menus, and all wands functioning as fireballs). The interface could use with some streamlining. Having to type long commands (such as 'incantation') is a really good way of discouraging me to use them. Consider too whether you could use the .net version of Ncurses or something to limit the refresh issues. I realise that it's tough to work to finishing something in 7 days - and I'm impressed with everybody who can. If I may offer advice for future challenges: work on constraining the scope of what you make. Making something small and polished is often better then making something with the seeds of greatness that falls short in other areas. I look forward to seeing what happens if you continue to work on it. Well done on creating a successful entrant.
The Rogue Gem
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
3
Being cute without being annoying is hard. The music loop is almost immediately grating but thankfully you put in a volume slider at the beginning of the game (but it unfortunately comes back when the gameplay starts). The cuteness should come from feedback to the player's actions and the character's reactions, which are missing so the player relies on the status window. The little slim & monsters should squeak, emote and animate when attacking, being hit or fainting. The feedback is important again with the absorb mechanic. The skills need some visual & audio cues when used to indicate what they do instead of having to read the status window for clues. The mechanic itself is intuitive to grasp and with some puzzles or other monsters in the level requiring certain skills this could be a great selling point. The game needs a quest from the start like "find the MacGuffin" or "defeat the big bad" to prompt the player to search for each teleport. Currently the quest is "don't die" which doesn't give incentive to explore, especially in a turn-based game where monsters only move when the player does.
It's a pretty basic roguelike with minor mechanical changes. The bugs make it hard to play sometimes. Need more to make it unique.
Trial by Fire
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
4
4
Completeness Sounds like this dev had some really unfortunate luck with some corrupted code close to the deadline so I'm just trying to judge this objectively. Though the game seems to have a beginning and end, the game description page doesn't do much to help the player understand that. I'm thinking it was either intentionally cryptic, or the player is supposed to actually be helping the developer troubleshoot some issues with the code base before the deadline. That being said, everything seemed to work as expected, with fog of war and FOV implemented. Aesthetics Seems to be just a few deviations from the libtcod python roguelike tutorial. None of it looked bad, but nothing too crazy pretty either Fun This one was tough for me, i may have missed a mechanic in my ~45 minutes of play, but the 2nd level being a totally blind wandering level may have looked good on paper, but it was absolutely excruciating to play through. You cant see anything except spaces you've travelled, but you cant even see what's on those spaces or enemies that are attacking you or where they're attacking you from. Semi-cool idea that the god makes you go blind for setting them on fire, but very painful execution on the idea (or maybe it's ultra-realistic?) Innovation Nothing terribly new to report here, other than the "neat" factor around the shrine puzzle Scope Doesn't stray too far from normal tropes. Gear, monster, potions, shrines all fit the bill of typical roguelike play Roguelikeness Tis a roguelike!
A simple first chapter in a "how to program a roguelike" saga. I hope the developer keeps going!
Between Games
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
4
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
Maybe the scope was too ambitious for the time (giving the execution). The unfinished dialog system (e.g, showing placeholder texts instead of the user's input such as the hero's name) is a detriment for immersion. The onscreen windows with data (HUD) give a good vibe of RPG; but the lack of visual feedback makes very difficult to know if there's any action happening around the player, to the point you can die without even knowing you were in the middle of a battle. The need to click the square next to the player where you want to move, get's tedious very quickly. Overall the game looks promising , but the lack of completion gets too obvious resulting on a very poor user experience .
This game seems ambitious but very incomplete. There are a lot of different kinds of monsters, each with numerous stats. There is a varied landscape with water, rocky areas, trees, and so forth. There's a transparent windowing system. About half of my games ended by dying on the first turn, because I spawned adjacent to a monster. Many more ended as soon as I stepped adjacent to a monster. I eventually found one kind of monster I could sometimes defeat. The main character can move off the map by a couple of squares, sometimes. Terrain types do not seem to matter, apart from trees; player and monsters traipse across the water. The interface is a bit odd; you have to mouse-click on squares adjacent to the player to move or attack. I think perhaps the level of ambition was a bit high for what can be accomplished in a 7DRL. It's tough; I know that from personal experience! My game this year was an incomplete. Hopefully the author will be back again next year with a game that is scoped down to something that can be completed and tuned in a week.
RDDL
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
Very simple, very barebone prototype where movement animation kills desire to run this game again. It looks nice the first time you see it. After couple minutes it is starting to irritate. A few more minutes and you absolutely hate this animation. There is very little to do in this prototype. And for some reason enemies are healing you instead of damaging, so you can't even loose. Info bar often obscuring entrance to another room leaving player in frustration. The only good thing I can mention is level gen. It looks decent. But white color of walls is too bright. It doesn't look like caves. Actually there is nothing that helps you identify where player is and what he need to do.
No win condition found. Completeness 3 No bugs found. I couldn't find an end goal. With only a small bit of extra defense all enemy attacks add health. Aesthetics 3 ASCII is OK. Numpad controls are OK. Obnoxious and hard to read menu twirl effect. Status indicator shows over the map, sometimes obscuring open pathways. Fun 2 Trivially easy. Obnoxiously slow movement speed. Innovation 2 You need to find the key before you leave each room. Your health is also the food clock. Scope 2 Not much here. Roguelikeness 3 Turn/grid based ASCII Mostly inconsequential randomness Permafailure Not much tactics/strategy RPG stats
EldritchRL
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
Completeness Other than a general "get to floor 3" the game lacked too much of an endgame or goal. This is admitted on the game description page itself so i wont belabor it too much. The behavior of the game felt quite off at times too, i would attack enemies who seemingly didn't attack me back, and when i attacked enemies no other enemies would move. I imagine there are a few bugs in the turn-based mechanism of the game in that regard. Aesthetics Despite the developer being hard on themselves in the description, i actually quite liked the original tiles and thought they carried a more-than-good-enough eldritch feel to them. The snow level was pretty jarring though. White background with a white character and mostly white text was pretty rough. Fun The game had potential, but with the enemies only differed by sprite and the loot-pool was pretty shallow so there wasn't too terribly much to it. Flavor here or there would add a lot to the game. Things like more or different look and enemies that perhaps behaved a bit differently. Innovation Not too much being added outside of the usual roguelike norms Roguelikeness The game is definitely a roguelike!
Crash and level generation bugs made it this somewhat frustrating to review. The items are very repetitive, as is the combat.
Olijkerd (7DRL)
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
2
I don't think random levels and a powerup system really qualifies a game as roguelike. The separate vertical scrolling shooter for the hacking/powerup system is a neat idea. Having more visibility where you were instead of where you're going is a weird design decision.
P.A.P.A. roguelike
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
3
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
P.A.P.A. seems to be a ghost hunting roguelike, with the emphasis on hunting. I wasn't able to find a damn ghost anywhere. From the mission select screen I can see that there are only one or two ghosts on each level, but the levels are enormous! There are some interesting ideas – a scanner (presumably for paranormal activity), a flashlight (presumably has an effect on your ability to find/see a ghost) and some kind of action point allocation system. None of these systems are explained, which is not always a deal breaker if the player is given ample chance to experiment, but in this case my experience was mainly walking around the huge city-blocks style maps.
The long gun
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
2
4
To be fair - there is very little game in there... And even this "very little" manages to hang the browser tab. Food limit gives you no choice about maneuvering. If you try to outsmart the pirate by hiding behind the island, you won't make it in time to the port. It's too barebone and too simple to be called a complete game.
Completeness Enters an infinite loop in JavaScript seemingly at random, which forces a refresh and loses all game state. Losing by starvation is hard to notice at first because the food counter keeps moving and the message text changes, but not the image. Aesthetics The scoring rubric says a 2/5 maps to "Confusing colours/symbols/graphics. Incomprehensible controls." I'm scoring this game 2/5 because the left map is out of sync with the image whenever a pirate ship dies (confusing), and it's not clear at all what a 1-5 range means in the context of the game. Fun I was mostly frustrated while playing this game. I couldn't figure out exactly what it took to kill a pirate ship. It seemed like 4 hits, but if I didn't start hitting them until range 4, I would die 100% of the time. It seems cheap and unfair to have a pirate ship board you after 4 direct hits. The food clock is extremely tight without a good reason. There isn't much to do. So I have to give it a 2/5. Innovative 3/5 is "a neat twist on the usual mechanics," so you get a 3/5 here. Nice concept! Scope There isn't much in terms of "game" here, so I think a 2/5 is appropriate. Roguelikeness 4/5 definitely a roguelike.
the Dark
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
You can move around, there is a MacGuffin to find, a time limit, and an exit, but that's about it. Cool lighting and water effects, though!
Dragon Dive
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
Completeness I was able to do the falling part of the game. I got to the bottom and the game told me what i got. Other than that the TONS of information in the side bar all seemed superflouous. My apologies if i've missed something but it seemed very incomplete. Aesthetics I really enjoyed the palette and color choices. I had no idea what all the diamonds represented while falling, so I took a few marks off for that Fun The falling was fun....and all the sidebar stuff made me wish i could do more. Innovation Nothing of note, other than what appears to be an attempt at a combination of real-time and turn-based elements. However, i was unable to get to the turn-based part of the game, if it existed. Scope Unless i've missed something, it appears to just be a standard pitfall game Roguelikeness More of a pitfall game. No combat, no turn-basedness, nothing other than falling
Reminds me of old flash games or similar short dexterity games but with ascii graphics. To that end it is relatively complete. I encountered a few general usage issues- such as the help screen not showing up, and the UI being a little confusing and distracting. Graphically this is quite polished, especially for an ascii game. The impact effects when colliding with walls. I liked the color scheme. I’m not so sure about the “hover” feature. In this sort of game I dont get alot of strategic value out of pausing and I think the fun here is in fast paced, dextrous gameplay. Additionally I think an endless mode, or at least a more comprehensive end-game score screen would add to the fun quite a bit. I had trouble comparing the success of my runs without a more concrete scoring mechanism. In terms of “roguelikey-ness” this does not rate very highly. Graphically and thematically I appreciate it as a nod to the genre. In terms of gameplay the core strategy is to press buttons faster than the environment around you can change, which does not really capture the ethos of the genre.
Roguelike Cowboys
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
The high point of this entry is the graphics, followed by the audio. The actual gameplay is, however, lacking. I hope the author keeps working on it, some variety would really spice it up!
There isn't much roguelike here, but the game looks good and plays well.
The Untitled Action Tolkien Show
Completeness
1
1
Aesthetics
1
1
Fun
1
1
Innovation
1
1
Scope
1
1
Roguelikeness
3
1
It looks like you've got a nice start to a game here. Controls are responsive and things more or less work as expected. Stairs are in the game but don't seem to do anything yet, so that's a bit misleading. No UI representation of health or any real indication that combat is happening other than orcs disappearing as you walk over them and sometimes you dying if you manage to move in such a way that gives them hits. From reading your devlog it sounds like you understand most of the things that are absent.
I couldn't go down a level. There wasn't much feedback from the game to tell me what was happening. Also, enemies would stack on top of each other and I couldn't survive a fight with 2 at once. I wandered around a bit, killing orcs to get a feel for it, but there is only so much I can do on level 1.