Temple of The Roguelike: 7DRL Shrine : 2015 7DRL Challenge Evaluation

The 2015 7DRL Challenge Evaluation Process

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Click a category score number for details, or the average score for additional comments.

Name	Author	Play	Completeness	Aesthetics	Fun	Innovation	Scope	Roguelikeness	Average
Seven Day Band	Jeff Lait	Play	3.00	2.67	2.67	2.67	3.00	3.00	2.83
Rogue Space Marine	Brett \"TheSleeve\" Gildersleeve	Play	3.00	3.00	3.00	2.33	2.67	2.67	2.78
RoyaLe	Flend (and ShroomArts)	Play	2.33	2.67	3.00	2.33	3.00	3.00	2.72
DUMUZID	jere	Play	3.00	3.00	2.33	3.00	2.00	2.67	2.67
FireTail	Darren Grey	Play	3.00	2.67	2.67	2.67	3.00	2.00	2.67
SEVEN CELL	Ian Snyder	Play	2.67	2.67	3.00	3.00	2.33	2.00	2.61
Dead Blinger	Aaron Steed	Play	3.00	2.67	2.33	2.33	2.00	3.00	2.56
Here Be Dragons 2	watabou	Play	2.33	3.00	3.00	2.00	2.67	2.33	2.56
Into the Darkness	Tim Saunders	Play	2.67	2.33	2.67	2.67	2.00	3.00	2.56
Lost Valkyrie	Andrew Wright (@roocey)	Play	2.67	2.33	3.00	1.67	2.33	3.00	2.50
RUNNER_PUNCHER	Trystan Spangler	Play	2.00	2.00	2.67	2.67	2.67	3.00	2.50
Fern Gully 3: Hexxus-quest	hi / winner	Play	2.67	2.00	2.33	2.67	2.00	3.00	2.44
MALLEUS GOBLINFICARIUM	NikB	Play	3.00	2.67	2.67	2.33	2.00	2.00	2.44
Rollgue	Anton Hand	Play	2.33	2.67	2.33	2.67	2.33	2.33	2.44
Space Hellion	Paul Jeffries	Play	2.67	2.33	2.00	2.67	2.67	2.33	2.44
The Promised Land	Snail_Man	Play	2.67	2.67	2.67	1.67	2.00	3.00	2.44
Academy Rogue	psy_wombats	Play	2.67	2.00	2.33	2.00	2.67	2.67	2.39
Fall Girl	Ise	Play	2.67	2.67	2.33	2.33	2.33	2.00	2.39
Phage	Risto Saarelma	Play	2.33	2.67	2.67	2.00	2.00	2.67	2.39
Chitinous Crooks	Matt Walsh	Play	2.33	2.33	2.33	2.00	2.00	3.00	2.33
Quaff	Jonah Roux	Play	2.00	2.33	2.00	2.67	2.00	3.00	2.33
A Rogue Harvest	AquaTsar	Play	2.00	1.67	2.00	2.33	2.67	3.00	2.28
Beware the Space Bears	Tapio	Play	2.67	2.33	2.00	1.67	2.00	3.00	2.28
Heavy Axe	Heroic Fisticuffs!	Play	2.00	2.00	2.67	2.00	2.00	3.00	2.28
Second Stepper	Patrick Kenney	Play	2.67	2.33	2.33	2.67	2.00	1.67	2.28
Synthesizer	graspee	Play	2.00	2.33	1.67	2.67	2.33	2.67	2.28
The Dungeon	Engin Mercan	Play	2.33	2.00	2.33	2.33	2.67	2.00	2.28
Warden's Duty	ondras	Play	3.00	2.67	2.33	1.67	2.00	2.00	2.28
Goblin Gold	James McNeill	Play	3.00	2.67	2.00	1.67	2.00	2.33	2.28
STRIVE	supperdev	Play	2.67	2.33	2.00	1.33	2.00	3.00	2.22
Edwin's 7DRL 2015	Edwin DeNicholas	Play	2.00	2.00	2.00	2.67	2.00	2.67	2.22
The Chase	Lachlan Kingsford/Wade Dyer	Play	2.67	2.67	2.00	1.67	2.00	2.33	2.22
lightless (and library rl.js)	Scott Grant	Play	3.00	2.33	1.67	2.67	1.67	2.00	2.22
Combat Chess	rust	Play	2.33	2.00	1.67	2.67	2.00	2.33	2.17
Feeding Frenzy	IBOL17 (Bob Saunders)	Play	2.67	2.33	2.33	2.00	2.00	1.67	2.17
MineClimbeR(L)	Jeff Ripley (666v4nz)	Play	1.67	2.00	2.33	2.00	2.00	3.00	2.17
Roguelikeishness	Mike Stout	Play	2.00	3.00	1.67	1.33	2.00	3.00	2.17
Six Way Wanderer	Michael Wynne	Play	2.33	2.33	2.00	1.67	2.00	2.67	2.17
Sneak	Spferical	Play	2.00	2.00	2.00	2.67	2.00	2.33	2.17
scroll	Joey Hess	Play	2.33	2.00	2.00	2.67	2.00	2.00	2.17
Dusk of a Shattered Kingdom	stewsters	Play	2.00	2.33	2.00	1.33	2.00	3.00	2.11
Eientei	bakabbq	Play	2.00	2.00	1.67	2.33	2.00	2.67	2.11
Rogue Sector	Adam Perry	Play	2.67	2.33	2.00	2.00	2.00	1.67	2.11
Anoxic Depths	Kevin Harris	Play	2.00	2.67	1.67	2.00	2.00	2.33	2.11
I'm the Burglar	handCraftedRadio	Play	2.67	2.67	2.33	1.67	1.67	1.67	2.11
ducksoup dungeon	Richard Lems	Play	2.67	2.67	2.33	1.00	2.33	1.33	2.06
Forlorn Four	Richard Schneider	Play	2.67	2.00	1.00	1.67	2.00	3.00	2.06
Salvage Crew	Jonathan Brodsky	Play	2.00	2.33	2.33	2.00	2.00	1.67	2.06
knock-down drag-out	steev	Play	2.00	2.00	1.33	3.00	2.00	2.00	2.06
Rogue AI	Numeron	Play	1.67	2.00	1.67	2.33	3.00	1.67	2.06
Conservation of Ninjutsu	Chiguireitor	Play	1.67	2.00	1.67	2.33	2.00	2.33	2.00
Please the Island God	plomlompom	Play	2.00	1.33	1.67	2.33	2.33	2.33	2.00
Ponzu	horaguchi	Play	2.00	2.00	3.00	2.00	2.00	1.00	2.00
Scattered Dungeon	Patrick	Play	2.50	2.00	2.00	2.00	2.00	1.50	2.00
Loguerike	ratking	Play	2.00	2.67	2.33	2.00	1.00	2.00	2.00
Monster Supremacy	Omar Mustardo and Brian Stottler	Play	2.00	2.33	1.33	1.67	2.00	2.67	2.00
Deathdealer	Geek of Geek & Dad	Play	2.33	2.33	1.00	2.00	2.33	1.67	1.94
Heart of Morning	thp	Play	1.33	2.00	1.67	1.67	2.00	3.00	1.94
XENOWARS	purestrain	Play	2.00	2.00	1.67	2.00	2.00	2.00	1.94
Huge	Patrick Lipo	Play	1.67	2.67	1.33	1.67	1.67	2.67	1.94
Hurt Yoghurt	ArchBang	Play	2.00	2.00	1.33	2.00	2.00	2.33	1.94
AAPA2	John Keyworth	Play	2.00	2.00	2.00	2.50	2.00	1.00	1.92
Down There	Marco Giorgini	Play	2.50	2.00	2.00	1.00	2.00	2.00	1.92
Garbage In Garbage Out	Jonathan Whiting	Play	3.00	2.00	1.50	1.50	2.00	1.50	1.92
Isometric ASCII Roguelike	Metaldemon	Play	2.00	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.00	2.50	1.92
No Way But Down	ccapo	Play	1.50	2.00	2.00	1.00	2.00	3.00	1.92
Omicron	Michael Trupkin	Play	2.00	2.00	2.00	1.50	2.00	2.00	1.92
That's okay, you've got explosives.	Kevin van der Velden	Play	1.50	2.00	2.00	2.50	1.50	2.00	1.92
Vamps N Wolves	Thom Robertson	Play	2.50	2.00	1.50	2.00	2.00	1.50	1.92
Theseus	hilbert90	Play	2.00	1.67	1.33	1.67	2.00	2.67	1.89
Stygian Abyss	Team Krash (Kram+Slash)	Play	2.33	2.33	1.67	1.33	2.00	1.67	1.89
Booty Seekers	Team Toasty Pants	Play	2.00	2.50	2.00	1.00	2.00	1.50	1.83
Cinnamon Fins RL	rubybliels	Play	2.50	2.50	1.50	1.50	2.00	1.00	1.83
Die Rogue	Rarykos	Play	2.50	2.50	1.50	2.00	1.50	1.00	1.83
Evig Vinter	Andrew Stewart	Play	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.50	1.83
Goblin-COM	skeeto	Play	1.50	2.50	2.00	2.00	2.00	1.00	1.83
I Need To Go	DogShitEmpire	Play	2.00	2.00	1.50	1.00	2.00	2.50	1.83
Infinite Energy	Jacob White	Play	2.50	1.50	1.00	2.00	2.00	2.00	1.83
Never To Tell	Niall Moody	Play	2.00	2.50	1.50	2.00	2.00	1.00	1.83
RobberyRL	Team Kalamakkara	Play	1.50	2.00	2.00	1.50	2.00	2.00	1.83
Stay Strong	Ashley Pringle	Play	2.00	2.50	2.00	1.00	1.00	2.50	1.83
Void Sanctum	Pål Trefall and Alan Charlesworth	Play	1.00	2.33	1.67	1.33	1.67	3.00	1.83
cboy	edvb54	Play	1.50	2.00	1.00	1.00	2.50	3.00	1.83
little warrior	kyle	Play	2.00	2.50	1.50	1.00	2.00	2.00	1.83
Rogue Caravan	Ian Andersen	Play	2.67	2.00	1.67	1.00	1.33	2.00	1.78
Copy Frogue	Cap Petschulat	Play	2.50	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.00	1.00	1.75
Famine Rogue (working title)	danyoutohell and barkeegan	Play	2.00	2.00	1.50	1.50	1.00	2.50	1.75
Gore Grounds	Badscribbler	Play	2.00	1.00	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.50	1.75
High Tech Survival	Konstantin 'Xecutor' Stupnik	Play	1.00	1.50	1.50	2.50	2.50	1.50	1.75
KORZ-RL	Vincent	Play	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.00	1.75
Nebulous Infinity	Virtually Competent	Play	2.00	2.00	1.50	1.50	2.00	1.50	1.75
NoirRL	VedVid	Play	1.50	1.50	1.50	1.50	2.00	2.50	1.75
Outlaw Space	Team Escalation Studios	Play	1.50	2.50	1.50	1.50	2.00	1.50	1.75
SalvageRL	Arowx.com	Play	2.00	2.00	1.00	1.50	2.50	1.50	1.75
The Hero Usually Dies	David Smit	Play	1.50	1.50	1.00	2.50	1.50	2.50	1.75
Ardennes	Lone Spelunker	Play	2.00	2.00	1.50	1.00	2.50	1.00	1.67
Evil Robot Basement Cleaners	Found Time Games	Play	2.50	2.00	1.50	1.00	1.50	1.50	1.67
RNG	dashrava	Play	1.50	2.00	1.50	2.00	1.50	1.50	1.67
RoguePac	Legend of Angband	Play	3.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	3.00	1.67
To the West	Df458	Play	1.00	1.00	2.00	1.00	2.00	3.00	1.67
Cloak & Tower	interdimensional_ and neurotic pastures games	Play	2.00	2.00	1.67	1.33	1.33	1.67	1.67
Challenge Accepted RL	José Orlando Correia	Play	2.00	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	2.50	1.58
D[e]ad: Trading Card Rogue Like	CEET 7DRL Team 2015	Play	1.00	1.00	1.00	2.00	1.50	3.00	1.58
High Upon The Mountain	Oreyn	Play	1.00	1.50	1.00	2.00	2.00	2.00	1.58
TradewarsRL	mad sorcerer	Play	2.00	2.00	1.50	1.50	1.50	1.00	1.58
Alien World	Dennis	Play	2.00	2.50	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.50	1.50
Chess+	Alic Szecsei	Play	1.50	1.50	1.00	2.00	1.50	1.50	1.50
Cipher Trials	CaptainKraft	Play	1.50	2.00	1.00	2.00	1.00	1.50	1.50
Curse of Dry Hills	jlv	Play	1.00	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	3.00	1.50
Randomized Action Arena	Steve_Yorkshire	Play	2.00	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	2.00	1.50
RogueMan	Kristian Pilegaard Jensen	Play	1.50	2.00	1.00	1.50	1.50	1.50	1.50
Transfix	Pink Koala-Tea	Play	2.00	1.00	1.50	1.50	1.50	1.50	1.50
UNRoguEALike	Gabriel Veiga	Play	2.00	2.00	1.00	1.00	2.00	1.00	1.50
Cadaver Country	Andrew Perrin	Play	1.00	1.50	1.00	1.50	1.50	2.00	1.42
Rhyacian	Lokathor	Play	1.50	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	2.00	1.42
Space Scavenger	WetDesertRock	Play	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.50	2.00	1.00	1.42
Sting Quest	Gravity Games Interactive	Play	1.00	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.50	2.00	1.42
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN	Luke Whiston	Play	2.00	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.33
Hebrac's Dungeon 2015	Thjalfa	Play	1.50	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.50	2.00	1.33
Rogue For Hire	Alex Midgley	Play	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.50	1.00	2.50	1.33
Roli	David Blosser, Pamela Vargas	Play	1.50	2.00	1.00	1.00	1.50	1.00	1.33
Gem Acquisition Operative	Jason Pickering	Play	2.00	1.50	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.25
Koobas	wasar26	Play	1.50	1.50	1.00	1.00	1.50	1.00	1.25
R@gueX	Satvik Borra	Play	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	2.00	1.17
We have a Bug	Escort Studios	Play	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	2.00	1.17
You Only Have One Dog	0Bennyman	Play	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
Zoo Tycoon RL	erlehmann	Play	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00

Reviews

Seven Day Band

Completeness

3 - As far as I can tell it's fully featured and bug free. General polish is up to a good standard too.

3 - Feels solid and bug-free. Lots of nice polish too.

3 - * No obvious bugs\ * Lots of polish with the menus, transitions, etc

Aesthetics

2 - Slick, smooth ASCII presentation with little animations. A bit too much text, perhaps, but that's a side effect of the game's function.

3 - Clean ASCII with simple controls, though not as pretty as some of Jeff's other ASCII roguelikes.

3 - * Sensible keybindings\ * Colors contrasted well\ * Menus easy to navigate and clear\ * Sliding along cardinal walls with diagonal movement works nicely

Fun

3 - I'm glad I got to experience this bold and surprising take on game design.

2 - Er... well this is where reviewing gets hard, as technically you could make a very fun game and technically you're more likely to make a terrible one. Overall the process of entering details is not that fun, beyond giving things silly names. The permanence of change means that if you're serious about making interesting content you will ultimately be frustrated, as you have to wipe the slate every time you give a monster too high HP or similar.

3 - * Designing and tweaking the game is compelling\

Innovation

3 - Astonishingly original. I've never seen anything like this attempted before.

2 - Tecnically developers have been doing just this for years ;) In truth it's interesting and unusual, though it doesn't significantly affect gameplay. Some of the design elements you can apply to creates in the game are interesting and can combine in novel ways too.

3 - * I haven't seen this approach to data entry before, and it works very naturally here\ * Would be interested in seeing some meta-properties (or I haven't encountered them yet!) to, e.g., say that I don't want any new monsters/etc.\ * The game itself appeared very hack and slash, but I don't know if it's possible to vary this later

Scope

3 - Remarkable amount of content, in terms of how effectively the customisation works.

3 - Though you can make a tiny game from this you can also make a huge one, and the structure that is in place to allow that is humongous. I'm thoroughly impressed by just how much detail there is in the 7DRL, and I imagine that most players will barely scratch the surface of what this game really has to offer.

3 - * Impressive scope assuming that development included the editing features and the game itself

Roguelikeness

3 - It's definitely a roguelike, no doubt about it.

3 - Traditional roguelike with extra bandiness.

3 - * A bit tricky as the \"game\" is the editor/prompts + the resulting game, but the result is very much a roguelike.

If there's one thing Jeff Lait seems to be able to do with 7DRL, it's to create games which catch me by surprise. Seven Day Band is one of the most novel game ideas I've seen in some time, to the point that it makes me laugh just thinking about it. Essentially, you create the game as you play it. The mechanics are all there, but when you first see an enemy you get to name it. Gradually (or all at once if you use the 'examine' command) you get to create the enemy - its attacks, its behaviour, rate of loot drops - everything. The whole game is like this, even down to how many floors the dungeon has. All of these settings are saved so that over multiple plays you gradually create a game which was crafted by Jeff Lait but then customised into whatever you prefer it to be. A truly bizarre idea but almost a work of genius. What do you want from a 7DRL? You decide!

Want to make a game? Well now you can using just a bunch of menu options. As new game elements are encountered you choose how you want the game to treat them, including hit points, attacks, special abilities, and so on. This is of course incredibly tedious, but it's also curious and fun.

What makes Seven Day Band interesting is that it prompts the player to customize the game just-in-time: Encounter a new creature, and it asks for a name. See a few more, and the game prompts for damage information. Later prompts will provide opportunities to customize the creature's damage, AI, and more.\ The look command is especially powerful as it allows the player to change all of a target's attributes through an easy-to-use menu. It's a great design that lets players tweak in real time without changing to an editor mode or compiling, and the results are immediately apparent. And after all the tweaking is done, the resulting worlds can be shared with others.\ I'm not certain if it's possible to tell the game to stop generating new content for customization, but don't let that stop you from trying out Seven Day Band and making your own Angband variant. Making roguelikes has never been as interactive, simple, and fun as this.

Rogue Space Marine

Completeness

3 - So far I haven't seen any bugs. Good balance, well presented, and controllable with either mouse or keyboard (mouse is needed to aim in either case, but movement can be done with QWEADZXC on the left hand, so it works). The level of polish is very impressive all round.

3 - I found only a single bug and it was not really even much of a thing. This game is complete in all ways as far as I can see.

3 - Has a lot of neat abilities and opponents in it. Very polished.

Aesthetics

3 - Excellent visuals and appropriate sound. Good UI which complements the gameplay, and smooth control. Top notch work.

3 - Everything about the game flows together and the controls include very nice mouse support.

3 - Looks and sounds great.

Fun

3 - Goes beyond the qualifier \"worth playing for a 7 day project\"! This would be a good effort if it had been in development for much longer than a week.

3 - A must play in my book. Quite amazing and a great time all around. I would have missed out completely if I hadn't played it.

3 - I will definitely play more of this.

Innovation

2 - Most of the game is nothing particularly innovative but having the ability system double as a health system is a very imaginative touch.

2 - Lots of great twists though nothing completely new.

3 - The semi-real time turned based mechanics make for some very interesting strategies, like teleporting to avoid mid-air projectiles, using the melee attack to kill multiple enemies filing towards you, etc.

Scope

3 - I don't say this often but it feels like a game that took more than 7 days to create. Game Maker lends itself to good presentation but it isn't just that - the game is also very well balanced and neatly designed.

2 - While I say it is what I expect from a 7drl it is on the edge of it. Honestly with how polished it is I can't think of anything else to expand upon which in and of itself is amazing. To make something that feels like it fits in 7 days yet doesn't feel like it needs more is a great accomplishment.

3 -

Roguelikeness

2 - It does away with a lot of the conventions such as inventory and resource management but it definitely has prominent roguelike features.

3 - This is a roguelike, nothing much more to say about it.

3 - Interesting take on RL mechanics, while still retaining the basics of a RL.

Rogue Space Marine is easily one of the strongest entries from this year's 7DRL. The idea is simple - roam a space station activating computer terminals and defeating enemies in order to move to the next level. To this end, you're equipped with 3 abilities which operate on a cooldown timer. I know many roguelike players don't enjoy cooldown timers in things like ToME4 but it works well here, because you don't have a huge suite of abilities which you just rotate through (as you do in ToME) but instead only 3 - shoot, melee, teleport. It's possible that more abilities can be gained but, if so, I haven't got that far in a couple of hours of play! \ \ This small range of abilities means that you have to carefully manage your use of them. If you shoot an enemy then for the next several turns you will have only a melee attack. If you shoot an enemy and melee another then you will have NO attacks until one of them recharges. This ties into the game's most inventive feature - having the ability system double as the health system. When you take a hit, one random ability will be removed. A second hit, a second ability. When all your abilities are gone and take another hit, it's game over. \ \ Managing your ability use is one of the main features of the game. The other is taking cover. There isn't a formal 'cover system' but you will hide behind workbenches and engineering consoles frequently, as enemies blast at you with weapons far superior to yours. \ \ The most impressive thing about Rogue Space Marine is its balance. It's challenging but surmountable. Each time I play, I learn a bit more about good ways to approach certain enemies or situations - which is exactly what roguelikes do best. It's not a 'pure' roguelike and dispenses with a lot of the conventions of the genre, but it certainly contains strong roguelike features. \ \ I can't even criticise the control. Usually I find it irritating when a roguelike's keyboard control scheme still requires some mouse use, but here you can either do everything with the mouse or use QWEADZXC to move, 1-2-3 to select abilities and mouse to aim. No awkward moving your right hand back and forth between numpad and mouse! \ \ Rogue Space Marine is a very strong game and a great achievement for a 7DRL. Definitely check it out.

Just to note, this is a must play in my book. Anyway for those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8pRkiYx3QM

This is a great game. It already has a lot of content, and could probably be sold on steam if more content was added (a la Spelunky HD). Very impressive for a 7DRL, and very enjoyable. I would recommend this to friends as a way to get into roguelikes.

RoyaLe

Completeness

2 - Definitely feels polished. One thing I did not like, however, was the acid blobs. They didn't seem to add much to the game, but caused a bit of headache. The biggest problem is that an explosion causes nearby acid blob sprites to replaced with damaged floor tile sprites, yet the acid is still there and will surely burn you. Also, it's possible to advance to the next level with low health and have the entrance so surrounded by acid that you have a guaranteed death.

2 - Complete and mostly bug free. I played the 1.02 version, and don't fault a point release as I may never have seen the bugs in the original. Nonetheless, I found Q to quit would get me to a screen I couldn't escape from. I'm also suspicious some of the aesthetic failings result from running out of time, killing the bad boss seemed very anti-climatic, for example (he just disappeared)

3 - The real deal. Polished, with lots of features such as difficulty settings and even a rogue-lite difficulty that lets you continue after dying (at a price).

Aesthetics

3 - Amazing. I was little unsure about the art style at first, but it grew on me quickly. There's a lot of character in the sprites, most of it rather goofy. The hologram-style HUD is so cool. Even the status indicators on characters are quite clear. Controls are smooth.

2 - The graphics are very well done and polished. The music is excellent. But the same sound effect is used for all combat, making swarmers sound like they are shooting you? There seems not to be a full screen mode, so I couldn't pixel-double it, as the chrome would push 1440 > 1600. All enemies you can target are blue. But your current target is also blue, making it very hard to tell where you shot is actually going in the big crowds. There is no obvious sign that the last enemy died, there should be cheering or something to let you know you transition. Special effects leave a lot to be desired, the same bullets recoloured, etc. The same generic corpses - surely the laser blasted foes should look different than the shotgunned?

3 - Beautiful art. Nice ui, Keybindings work great. Sounds are passable and the music works well with the tone of the game.

Fun

3 - The reason I like this so much is that it makes turn based combat feel fast paced. There are times when I stop to think, but there's no huge inventory, so I can make choices quickly. Also, melee is usually resolved in a single turn. This lets me line up enemies and just knock them out one by one. The game throws enough at you that you eventually need to get efficient at ranged weapons though.\ \ Swarmers are kind of annoying. I lost countless times because I appeared to have a positioning advantage and the swarmers basically teleported all around me instead.

3 - There are a lot of interesting items and creature interactions here, but they are rather hard to parse. It is certainly worth spending the time digging through all that is happening on screen to figure out the tactics that are possible.

3 - Think DoomRL meets Smash TV. This game is fun, and can be played in short sessions.

Innovation

2 - Plenty of games make you choose between upgrades and healing, but the choice here between score, leveling, and healing is somewhat unique.

2 - With Monster Slayer Show to compare with, where we had a live studio audience, it is a tough act to follow. This does bring a bunch of colorful enemies, however, along with the interesting choice of trading healing against leveling.

3 - To me, the most innovative feature here is the fame system. Each monster slain yields some fame, which builds up your fame meter. When it is at least half full you can spend it to replenish your HP. But if instead you let the fame meter fully fill, you can level up, increasing your hp maximum and your damage output. Choices!

Scope

3 - Lots of enemies, three playable characters, plenty of weapons, and a boss. If you include the shiny presentation (which I do) the scope is definitely well above average.

3 - With three separate player classes and quite a variety of items and monsters, this is an impressive job for seven days.

3 - There's is a lot of content here. Lots of items to experiment with, different weapons work differently, and monsters that force you to react in different ways to their behaviour.

Roguelikeness

3 - No doubt, RoyaLe has all the staples of a roguelike. The only question is: does it feel like one? I'm going to say yes, but barely. Because you have to kill all enemies on a level, escaping or avoiding enemies is not something you really do. Rogue makes you feel weak, but RoyaLe makes you feel like a bad ass. A low 3.

3 - Tactical combat, procedural generation, yep, it is very much a roguelike.

3 - There's no hunger clock, but likewise the arena is small enough that the player must always be acting and reacting. Like the best RLs tactical movement, positioning, and making use of line of sight are important aspects of the game. Monsters start out asleep, and depending on your stealth you will wake them by moving too close. This means you have a chance to explore the arena a bit and then plan how you will handle the encounters.

RoyaLe is the real deal. A turn based SmashTV that manages to be pretty roguelike yet still feels like an action game. The cartoony graphics are excellent. The in-game text is rather amusing too (I caught at least two references to cheesy action movies). RoyaLe is not super complex, nor is it very long. But it plays well. I'd wager this is going to be #1 for some people. Definitely check it out.

RoyaLe is an arena combat game in which you defeat enemies to gain viewership. It is a tile based game, not ASCII, which makes it an interesting comparison to the ASCII Monster Slayer Show that starred in the 7DRLs a few years back.

Yes yes yes! This game is fun, polished, and has a neat fame(exp) system that works as both your heal and your means of leveling up.

DUMUZID

Completeness

3 - Seems surprisingly well balanced for a 7DRL, including an emergency get-out clause for dire situations (with its own penalty). Pretty polished overall, and no bugs as far as I've noticed.

3 - The game is complete, and polished. No bugs encountered.

3 - Quite complete, no bugs or problems found.

Aesthetics

3 - Presentation is engaging and distinctive, and crucially it's fairly uncluttered - vital considering this game primarily concerns shapes. Control is smooth and intuitive.

3 - Ornaments of walls is very nice. Other graphics is simple, but recognizable and suitable.

3 - Wonderful aesthetics. The sumerian motif is well integrated. The melding of blocks is done very smoothly. Controls are limited to four way movement, making it easy to pick up (and reason about potential moves) When blocks are destroyed they fade nicely. One nit pick is the exit portal doesn't quite scroll in time with the rest of the screen giving a strange floating effect.

Fun

2 - Pretty good. It can be tough and unforgiving, which is entirely appropriate for the genre, but always leaves the impression that your own misjudgments caused your difficulties. I'm not sure I'd play it for long periods but it's definitely worth checking out.

2 - It's definitely worth trying. Can't say it's amazingly fun, but definitely very original. Attempt to fill score shapes is somewhat tedious.

3 - If it were just the combat layer, this would be fun, but not outstanding. After all, we've played 4-way movement timing games enough times, especially as you are given a free move every 10 to ensure a pillar-dancing victory. The victory shapes suddenly pull you away from the safety zone of 1x1 squares, but then you discover the spell system...

Innovation

3 - Very novel approach. The idea of making the size and shape of your character central to the gameplay is fascinating. It takes the emphasis of decisions away from resource management and makes it all about the consequences in an entirely fresh way. Impressive.

3 - Mechanics in this game is definitely novel. The bigger you are, the more spells you can carry, the bigger enemy you can take on. But by being huge you loose ability to enter narrow passages and can easily block yourself. Allowing enemies attack you to shrink yourself is not something you see in your average roguelike game.

3 - A sort of Snake-meets-rogue, this is a game all developers should play to see both the mechanics and the smooth interface.

Scope

2 - Good. The execution alone is fair for a 7DRL, but the game is surprisingly well balanced, so I'd say maybe a little beyond what might be expected for 7 days. It's still a small project though.

2 - On the higher end of that you can expect from 7drl.

2 - A very well scoped project for seven days.

Roguelikeness

3 - This game throws a bit of a curve ball. At first it seems like a departure from roguelikes, but actually it uses many of the same core qualities, just in an unfamiliar way. Your decisions really matter in the game, there's a lot of weighing up the consequences before acting. That's a roguelike to me.

2 - It's too minimalistic to be called true roguelike.

3 - Tactical turn based combat in a procedural enviornment? Inventory management? Yep, seems to have all it needs to be called a roguelike.

This one was a surprise and messed with my head a bit, for reasons I'll explain in a moment. Fundamentally the game is about trying to get to the next floor while dealing the changing shape and size of your character. Everything here is blocks - you play as a block, which can absorb enemies of the same or smaller size, attaching those enemies to itself like Tetris pieces. The larger you are, the more powerful you become, but the more your movement is impeded as you can no longer fit through some gaps. \ \ This is where the game starts to mess with my head. At first I thought it was a nice idea but more of a puzzle game than a roguelike. As I played more, though, I began to realise that the problems it presents are all very roguelike in nature. Do you want to absorb an enemy so that you'll be able to absorb more dangerous ones as you go progress, or do you want to stay small and mobile? If you absorb enemies you can survive multiple hits as your extra size gets chipped away, but you have to make sure your core doesn't take a hit. So being bigger is better, but it also means you can't dodge as easily since narrower passages will be inaccessible, which leads to you having face down more and more enemies. \ \ Additionally there are diamond-shaped blocks which you can use to knock off some your pieces, so the game becomes a constant tension between the benefits and drawbacks of different sizes, and every enemy encounter is about manouevring and positioning. \ \ For my money, those aspects are absolutely roguelike. The presentation and novel concept might mislead you at first but Dumuzid uses very roguelike ideas - it just applies them in a novel and distinctive way. For that, it should be applauded.

In this game you can absorb enemies and become bigger. But being huge has some serious disadvantages. It's hard to describe this game with words. But it's easy to pick once you try.

At first I thought DUMIZUD was yet another unpronounceable acronym, but then with a google looking for it I was pleasantly surprised to see it is a Sumerian deity. The game, despite being highly abstract, is still strongly themed around this, the use of the Sumerian for the level numbers is a nice touch. The game bills itself a 1hp roguelike, which is I feel a bit of a lie, it just is your hit points consist of additional squares attached to your core square. So while you can get a massive number of hit points, you find yourself unable to make it through corridors. Rather than let getting to big be a natural (but boring) end game situation, you can pray for help if this happens - and either receive succor or swiftly hit the end game through your core square being hit.

FireTail

Completeness

3 - Highly polished, generally well balanced, and feels like a full and complete game.

3 - I'm aware of one resolution bug that occurs for some people when they first run the game, but it's a non-issue after that. Otherwise things are very polished and complete, though it'd be nice if the game asked if you wanted to leave FireTail instead of the T-Engine.

3 - Complete, finished and mostly polished game.

Aesthetics

3 - The T-Engine lends itself to polished presentation but it's very much up to the developer to make that happen. FireTail is probably the prettiest T-Engine game I've seen, including ToME4 itself (the originator of the T-Engine). The ability activation UI at the bottom needs clarification but that's a minor gripe. FireTail looks stunning.

3 - Most of the sprites and effects are amazing, though some are just good enough to get the job done (I'm looking at you ice cube). Even the title screen looks great. I'm hoping Darren continues in this artistic direction. Controls are perfect: QWEASD/SPACE to move and hover over things to get hints. One nitpick: I'd like it if the bosses were a little more distinct from the enemies.

2 - On one hand, tiles are very nice, controls are ok and everything is smooth and well-done. On other hand, I must say that graphics sometimes looks like scaled bigger images, and there is harsh.

Fun

3 - Once you begin to wrap your head around what FireTail is doing, it goes from being a confusing exercise in bafflement to being a highly tactical game of positioning. Some might find it too much of a brain-burner, and I can certainly sympathise, but if you're willing to concentrate then FireTail is a very engaging and satisfying play.

2 - My biggest complaint with FireTail is that the combat too often becomes very tedious. You start a level surrounded by monsters, then more spawn in constantly, then bosses spawn monsters three times as fast as you can kill them, and then some monsters split off into two or three children. It's crazy! The second level is one of the worst and that's where you'll spend most of your playtime if you suck at the game like I do. I once counted how many monsters I killed on the second level: 78!!! This isn't just an annoyance. In most of my games I'm unable to kill the Titan King (because he has 12 HP and his minions each have 6), leaving me with one less ability. To top it off, meticulously clearing parts of the level of ice seems to be an optimal play and that's a troubling design. The game might be better on a smaller playing field with a lower rate of spawning monsters.\ \ Having said all that, the game is pretty fun. Getting surrounded can be tense. Choosing which abilities to acquire and when to acquire them is an interesting strategic decision and offers some replayability. Choosing when to deploy them is a never ending tactical problem. The game will appeal more to those with a lot of patience.

3 - Very good idea and well done game. Balance could be better, but it's roguelike (a bit weird, yes), it must be challanging.

Innovation

3 - I thought last year's DataQueen introduced some novel concepts but strayed a bit too far from roguelikeness. FireTail makes this integration work much more successfully. It brings in positioning-based abilities which revolve around how you move through the environment, in a way which is related to - but distinct from - DataQueen, and it reinstates some roguelikeness. Very fresh and very original.

3 - There's only one way to say Darren Grey's game is unoriginal: by pointing out that he stole the ideas from Darren Grey. This is definitely an evolution of ideas in DataQueen, but if you ask me, the mechanics here work better and complement the theme much better (ice tiles make quite a bit of sense). And the idea of having a separate ability for for each number of tiles you are surrounded by is very clever.

2 - Heavily inspired by Data Queen, 2013 Gray's entry for 7DRL. And FireTail is more traditional than DQ.

Scope

3 - Devising the implementation of the various abilities is a tall order for one week, and to then also throw in enemies which effectively disrupt your plans to use those abilities makes this very impressive work indeed.

3 - I'm conflicted on scope. On the one hand, the game has fairly static levels and little content besides player and monster abilities. No other progression and no items or anything like that. However, creating all the abilities and balancing them must have been a good bit of work. The thing that pushes it to a 3 is that each level has its own unique boss and its own flavor text.

3 - So big. Maybe it isn't impressive for 'standard' roguelike, but for game made in one week number of traits, abilities, enemies are surprisingly large.

Roguelikeness

2 - I'm going with a 2 on this one. I do consider FireTail a roguelike - certainly more so than its predecessor - but the progression from area to area is linear and thereby loses some of the roguelike feel for me.

2 - There is a lot of tactical positioning, but the game falls a bit short on procedural content. The only procedural generation is the ice and since that's destructible, you always feel like you are playing in the same rectangle.

2 - Roguelike spirit with non-roguelike mechanics.

I've come to associate Darren Grey's 7DRL entries with three things: hexes, the T-Engine, and trying out unorthodox ideas which we never see in other roguelikes. FireTail exemplifies this style and I'd say it's the apex of Darren's craft so far. It's certainly one of the standout entries from this year. \ \ My first play of FireTail was disappointing. I didn't really get it. I didn't understand how to attack enemies (you can't at first) and even once I picked up an offensive ability I found the display puzzling. The ability's name at the bottom of the screen lights up when you can use it, but it's not clear HOW you use it. I was frustrated. I ended up just avoiding everything, dashing for the exit from each area. Whether by luck or nimbleness of movement I got surprisingly far like that, just bypassing each area's boss entirely. I didn't even realise there were bosses around, I just ran and wondered why I wasn't finding any extra abilities. \ \ With repeated plays I began to get it. The game tells you, I just didn't wrap my head around it until I'd seen it a few times. FireTail's core mechanic is one of those things best learned by seeing it in action rather than by reading about it. You find one offensive ability near the start of the game, and as a side effect the ability sets one hex behind you on fire as you move. This is your 'fire tail'. You can move freely between the firey hexes - an idea returning from last year's DataQueen (though some later enemies interfere with this somewhat). When two hexes (including your current one) are on fire, you can use the first ability by bumping an enemy. Subsequent abilities, gained by defeating more powerful boss monsters in each area, require higher numbers of burning hexes in order to activate, and they seem to need them in a specific pattern. \ \ This is FireTail's strongest point. Behind the impressive gloss and smooth control, the gameplay is a tense, thoughtful test of tactical movement. Enemies teleport away, barricade themselves with ice, or dislodge you from your hex. Movement and positioning are crucial to playing effectively, and the enemies will do everything they can to disrupt your plans. It can be very tough at times, and patience is needed to chip away at some of the powerful bosses surrounded by hordes of minions, but it's just the right sort of challenge. \ \ It's not without its flaws though. Earlier I said that some abilities seem to need fire hexes in a certain pattern. I said \"seem\" because this is very unclear. The ability name lights up when it's useable, as I mentioned, but *how* it's useable is more opaque. So far just bumping an enemy has worked for activation, but the ability screen mentions that some are activated just by waiting. Which ones? I have no idea. What patterns are needed for activation and why? I don't know. The game doesn't say, at least not that I've seen. \ \ This need for clearer information on the use of abilities is a frustrating flaw but not a fatal one. Perhaps it's even conscious design choice, though based on the 'activation method' column which is populated entirely by 'nil' I suspect it's an oversight. FireTail is very much worth playing despite this occasional frustration, and it's certainly one of the strongest entries this year. Just expect it to tire your brain after a while!

FireTail plays much like Darren Grey's previous game DataQueen. You move on a hex grid and can only die when surrounded by enemies. This sounds easy, but enemies spawn very rapidly, often faster than you can kill them.\ \ The theme is somewhat Narniaesque. You play a fire spirit in a world of eternal winter. It didn't sound like a great idea when I first heard about it, but the theme is implemented very well. Each level has its own boss and an accompanying boss/level description that is well written.\ \ The game excels in its unique ability system. Are you ready to be DAZZLED? Well, buckle up. While moving, your previous steps generate fire tiles which decay over time. On any given turn, you will be surrounded by 0-6 of these fire tiles. You can acquire (by killing optional bosses) up to 7 abilities that each correspond to a certain number of surrounding fire tiles. The really interesting part is that the power and ease of use of each ability corresponds to *when* you decide to choose that ability. Wrapping your head around which abilities to choose and how to activate them takes some time.\ \ FireTail has tough tactical gameplay, great controls, a clean UI, and excellent sprites. It's one of the must-plays this year.

FireTail is sort of Data Queen's succesor. It's indicated by used engine, design of game and spiritually close game mechanics. In comparision with atecessor FireTail looks good. Graphics are better, mechanics is more interesting, abilities are more varied, game is more polished. Only main goal is less interesting.

SEVEN CELL

Completeness

3 - Is a complete game that accomplishes the goal it set out to.

3 - Everything ran smoothly and without problem.

2 - This game is very playable. however it doesn't have a lot of functionality beyond the game. There is a help screen at the beginning, but after you start the game there doesn't seem to be a way to view it again. I prefer to have some in game help to refer to. The game shows your best score for each session, but sadly doesn't save it between sessions.

Aesthetics

3 - Simple but effective graphics. Could use an increase in size maybe, and in my browser the screen was all the way at the top left, which was a bit distracting.

3 - Amazing in it simplicity.

2 - The tiles and presentation are nice. One suggestion would be to center the game window in the center of the browser window so it's not pushed up in the far left corner of my screen by default.

Fun

3 - Very fun, with deep, challenging mechanics. I will probably play this game more on my own time.

3 - While I won't call it a roguelike it is the best game I have played so far except maybe the space marine one.

3 - Very interesting and challenging gameplay. It took a while for me to really grasp how to survive longer than a few moves, but when it clicked I found the game quite fun to play. Gameplay length is short enough for coffee breaks, and the fail/retry cycle is quick and painless. Highly recommended.

Innovation

3 - Interesting mechanics that I personally haven't seen before. The isolation mechanic combined with the glyph-making mechanic gives a unique gameplay experience.

3 - I haven't seen these mechanics put out in quite this fashion before.

3 - Several really cool ideas to bring to the RL table. Shifting entire rows and columns of the dungeon, along with the monsters in those rows is mind bending and would be interesting to see even in a more standard dungeon crawl. The rule for killing enemies is a fantastic alternative to standard combat.

Scope

2 - Not super ambitious in scope or content, but does what it does very well.

3 - The shear simplicity of design makes it feel like the concept has been polished over a long period of time. Technically the programming of this game would fit into 7 days easily but the rest feels beyond it.

2 - The most ambitious aspect of this game is it's innovative ruleset, which works remarkable well.

Roguelikeness

3 - I'm going to call this a true RL, even though it is possibly closer to a puzzle game. It has permadeath, procedural generation and cell based movement. Interesting use of RL mechanics in a fairly non-RL game.

1 - In no way is it a roguelike, but that is okay.

2 - Survival is often more important than scoring, which is an aspect of roguelikes that's rarely really mimicked well in 7DRL.

A fun, challenging, interesting puzzle game. The isolation mechanic combined with the glyph mechanic means the player has to strike a good balance between just staying alive and trying to get points from the glyphs. Very well designed.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY0M0rupyeY

Borrows a lot from roguelikes and mashes them into a compelling puzzler about altering the dungeon to defeat enemies and gain score. Oh an it takes place in a 7 x 7 grid, this game is amazingly minimalistic and extremely good.

Dead Blinger

Completeness

3 - Game is complete. Feels like a lot of polish went into this, especially the little sounds and visual effects.

3 - Nothing major was missing (nor even minor things).

3 - I didn't find anything wrong with it nor bump into any bugs.

Aesthetics

3 - Looks great. No knocks for ASCII because this is a roguelike challenge! Another great-looking ROT.js game. Controls are very intuitive and spelled out nicely below.

3 - Despite being minimalist, the UI was very effective at providing useful information.

2 - It has a nice flow to it and looks decent to me.

Fun

3 - Yes! This game is so much fun. After this review I am going to go back and play some more and try to get that damned dragon.

2 - This was a fun game. Nothing that I would spend days playing, but I wanted to try again after each death. That’s a sign of a good RL.

2 - The twist is has is quite interesting and worth playing though not quite at the level where I would have completely missed out if I hadn't played it.

Innovation

2 - There are some very interesting tactics that are brought out by the overall game design. They mainly consist of running away, but doing in an intelligent manner, and utilizing your resources effectively. Nothing super new but Dead Blinger is a very good implementation of many under-utilized ideas.

2 - None of the mechanics are new, but they are uncommon in RLs. Their inclusion here makes the entry more innovative than most RLs.

3 - The goals and mechanics put in are completely different from the usual while the game still keeps its roguelike nature which is somewhat rarer then not.

Scope

2 - A very solid 7DRL attempt. Not overly ambitious but in a good way. The perfect coffeebreak roguelike game.

2 - It’s a short game, but there’s still plenty of depth to it.

2 - This fits into what I have come to expect from a 7drl though on the top of that pile admittedly.

Roguelikeness

3 - Definitely a roguelike. So much dying! And the tactical movement/combat is top-notch.

3 - It’s procedurally generated with permadeath and very tactical. That’s primarily what a RL is to me.

3 - This is a roguelike through and through even with the interesting twist to the way you play.

A great traditional roguelike with lots of polish and some very novel mechanics. You play as a treasure imp, tasked with 'pimping' all of the monsters in the dungeon with gold. This inevitably pisses them off, and with only one hit point, the game is very much a game of stealth, misdirection, and tactical movement. One of the best 7DRL entries I have played so far! Plays in the browser so there's no excuse to not go play it right now.

This was a fun little game. The main goal of this game is to bump into monsters once and then run away. This makes for a tactically focused play style, even before you add the monster mechanics (e.g., some monsters will stun you rather than kill you). The monster mechanics and spells adds the depth that makes this feel like a RL despite the short gameplay time; short assuming that you win of course, which I have yet to. I keep going for a high score rather than a plain victory. Death also encourages me to try again, which is a good thing for a RL. None of the monster or spell mechanics are new, in my opinion, but they are unusual and work very well together here. The theme certainly is new though, and is definitely appropriate for a 7DRL. The UI is very clean and provides all of the information needed. There is also the ability to look, but it uses the mouse (and that important fact doesn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere). This is a very solid and complete entry into the contest, and is an excellent example of what you can do for a 7DRL.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nyGLwBujYg

Here Be Dragons 2

Completeness

2 - Though it generally feels polished, I have occasionally run into either graphical bugs or placeholders, I'm not sure which.

2 - A few things appear incomplete. Several crew abilities either do nothing or have no indication that they are doing anything (e.g. the Angler who is supposed to catch fish). Monsters and combat are so simple that I'm convinced more was planned. In game instructions are sorely needed as well.

3 - Complete, debugged and polished game.

Aesthetics

3 - Pleasant visual style and information is about as clear as you could ask for.

3 - Some people have said they prefer the look of the original. Those people are wrong. The small scale pixel art in this game is BEAUTIFUL. It's very simple yes, but it's expertly executed. A little green and purple and suddenly I'm looking at a convincing Mystical Thicket. Subtle animations and effects are great. I think the previously seen \"map\" tiles are really good, probably the best attempt I have seen (e.g. better than Curious Expedition). Controls are pretty good, though you will be clicking a lot. Also, I would much prefer right click over ctrl-click for monster descriptions. Would be nice to be able to click on and move to unexplored tiles too.

3 - Pretty nice graphic tiles, smooth movement and good controls.

Fun

3 - Definitely worth playing. Feels less deep than its predecessor due to the removal of the party mechanic, but actually contains more stuff.

3 - Lots of fun if you like exploration games. The distribution of monsters can sometimes aggravate you (spawning next to 3 tough monsters), but you can usually overcome.

3 - Very entertainment game, a bit casual, but I had a lot of pleasure with playing.

Innovation

2 - Not groundbreaking but does one or two things, like the landscape features, which mark it out.

2 - One challenge in designing an exploration game is rewarding the player for actually exploring. This baked right into the game in the most fundamental way with the map% -> HP. Good idea! The telescope is also a nice mechanic.

2 - '1' or '2'. Then '2'. Because goal, because allies.

Scope

3 - It does feel very well designed and balanced for just 7 days.

3 - Though many parts of the game are quite shallow, this is still a surprising effort because of the plethora of characters, monsters (even though they mostly all behave the same), and various biomes all with unique art and sounds.

2 - More than I expected from 7DRL. Upper limit of '2', but still not '3'.

Roguelikeness

2 - Adds more of a survival element than was present in the previous year. Still, it doesn't quite capture the whole of the roguelike feel, for me.

2 - There is some basic resource management, hunger clock, and you'll experience tight situations, yet there's simply not enough complexity to be considered a true roguelike.

3 - Roguelike. Maybe roguelite. More roguelike then roguelite. Then '3'.

The first Here Be Dragons made my top 5 7DRLs of 2014 so I was eager to try this sequel. HBD2 is to HBD1 as Skyrim is to Oblivion - larger-feeling, more streamlined, but less RPG-ish. The improvements are mostly for the better. The slightly fiddly party management has been replaced by just picking up party members as you explore, and losing them at the end of each area (unless you find enough loot to entice them to stay). A few features have been added, such as ruins and telescopes, which bestow minor but welcome benefits as you roam. There's also a hunger system driving you forward in true roguelike style, and that seems to be the main danger in this game. At times I miss the RPG trappings of the previous game - party management made it feel deeper than maybe it was - and I actually preferred the original visual style, but in many ways HBD2 is a progression while still sticking with the same essential core gameplay. Worth a play.

Here Be Dragons 2 is a fun little exploration game with amazing pixel art. In fact, it's the best looking 7DRL I've seen this year.\ \ The game has an interesting mechanic that encourages you to explore each level as thoroughly as possible: the amount of the map you explore in one level is your starting health in the next. You encounter monsters, which can be incredibly devastating and your health (a representation of your health, supplies, and energy) continuously decreasing as you move around. This simple exploration mechanic sets the tone for the whole game because you need health to explore and you need to explore to get health. If you do poorly on a single level, you've likely crippled yourself and will die shortly.\ \ I was sometimes frustrated by the randomness. Though the combat is described as \"deterministic\ the number of monsters you run into is often luck based. Since two monster encounters can take off half your health

Interesting game. Scope on exploration is rather unusual in roguelikes, and this aspect is brilliant done. HBD2 use nice and eye-catching, colorful (but not infantile) tileset. Controls are ok, but there is hex grid, not typical roguelike's grid. Player can join allies, fight enemies and explore terrain - discover castles, camps and others. Sounds trivial, but it is made in such a way that makes you want to play.

Into the Darkness

Completeness

3 - The game feels complete and I haven't encountered any bugs.

3 - Bug-free, feels feature-complete, though could still do with a bit more polish and balancing. In particular some of the abilities are next to useless, such as those triggered against multiple opponents.

2 - Very playable and almost bug free. My first run lasted two hours, so it could use a save system.

Aesthetics

2 - Dungeon is a little too sterile I think. Also some enemies are too dark for a black background.

3 - Simple and fluid aesthetics and controls. The ability selection has the nice feature of previewing your attack/defence values to help you plan your round.

2 - Mostly easy to look at. A few monsters are in dark blue, against the black of the floor this makes them hard to spot. The mouse driven controls are welcome, easy to use and make sense. There is an issue with clicking to move onto stairs which forces you to use the keyboard.

Fun

3 - It's fun for sure. You have to think a lot during each turn of combat. It's quite satisfying to pull some good combo and kill dangerous enemy without taking damage.

2 - Combat provides a really interesting mental challenge to stack the right card abilities to kill the enemy most efficiently. However it also gets very tiring after a while, and in particular can feel like a struggle just to get any damage against some enemies when you have a bad hand. It could do with some windshield enemies to help break the pace, or perhaps just do with being a shorter game. There's some interesting strategy in saving up certain cards for bosses, though there's also so many overpowered combos that the bosses offer little challenge. In general I never felt properly threatened by the game as HP recovery is so easy. Well worth playing, but it needs more work to meet its full potential.

3 - Very high marks here for pure enjoyment of the card combining system. I find pulling of awesome combos to get by is fun and gratifying. Each encounter is meaningful and potentially run ending. The levels are not too big, thus encounter density is excellent and downtime is kept reasonable.

Innovation

3 - It's very interesting and unique combat system. Different enemies require different approach. And positioning is also important in some cases.

2 - The card mechanic I've seen in other games, but this is the first time I've seen it applied to a roguelike. I'm not sure it works that well with the usual roguelike pace, and the implementation here takes little advantage of roguelike tactical positioning, but it still makes for an interesting twist.

3 - The deep system of combining seemingly simple abilities in specific order to make each turn during combat meaningful and different is inspiring.

Scope

2 - It's impressive entry, but not out of 7drl scope.

2 - A good range of player abilities, but the dungeons and monsters mostly feel samey. A bit more individuality to monsters and bosses could have pushed this higher.

2 - Hits all the bases while keeping its unique twist at the forefront. Good variety of abilities which synergize in interesting ways.

Roguelikeness

3 - It's roguelike for sure.

3 - Classic turn-based roguelike style with a bit of a twist in combat. However the geometry of the levels ends up having almost no factor in combat, since most of it is 1v1.

3 - No doubt about it. It's a roguelike!

Combination of tactical roguelike combat with elements CCG. There is no deck building, the deck is fixed, but there are things like discarding and shuffle. Very interesting twist is that many of cards have no value of their own, but in combination with another card they might suddenly become very powerful. The only type of cards that, I think, is missing is mobility/repositioning. There are some cards that are affected by number of enemies that are surrounding you, but it's very hard to gather them, at least without taking a lot of damage. Also, if you are locked in a corridor from, you have no other choice but to fight.

In this game you can't just bump into enemies, you have to play cards from your hand to deal damage and defend. You can play up to three cards at once, and the way they interact makes for some interesting combos. Should you play the armour-piercing card with the double effective damage card to one-shot the enemy? Or swap its high defence value for your own and play the card that deals counter damage equal to your defence? Each turn of combat ends up with some strained arithmetic and logic order problems. This is compelling, but also very intense, and when applied to every small monster can become tiresome. I'd love to see a system like this but with the intense combat limited more to difficult enemies, whilst regular enemies can be dealt with more quickly.

Fantastically fun and innovative, this game has a great combat system and no throwaway encounters.

Lost Valkyrie

Completeness

3 - A very good amount of content for a 7DRL. Plenty of enemies, items, spells, etc.

2 - The game is more or less complete. But there are balancing issues and at least one critical bug.

3 - Finished game. And polished. And perfected. One little bug doesn't change anything.

Aesthetics

2 - Standard, functional ASCII

2 - The game looks more or less standard for a libtcod game. Controls are slick.But it's really really hard to see anything when wearing cursed belt.

3 - Very nice old-style looking ASCII graphics. Maybe not very beautiful, but just cool.

Fun

3 - I enjoyed playing this a fair amount, and it's the sort of RL I will probably come back to, so I can figure out what the various items and enemies do. Could be a little bit arbitrarily difficult at times, when you run into a very deadly enemy with a bunch of other enemies around early on in the game.

3 - The game is fun. It's that kind of game where you die and think 'Ohh... Come on! I won't make this stupid mistake next time.'. And after each 'last time' you think 'ok, this one will be REALLY LAST TIME'.

3 - I like that whole game. Absorbing mechanics (ranged combat priority - with spear), excellent enemies with special attacks (herald of storm can wreck walls and push PC by cold winds), interesting theme of game...

Innovation

2 - Nothing too wildly new here. I like the simplicity of not having to keep track of stats and inventory, while still retaining a hardcore RL flavour.

2 - Automatic spear attack one tile away is very nice finding. Other that that 'glass cannon' theme was explored in 7drls before.

1 - Definitely not innovative. Maybe the general idea is quite original, but the gameplay has not.

Scope

2 -

2 - Very solid 7drl entry.

3 - Exacly what I expected in 7DRLs. And more. A lot of different enemies, very atmospheric design.

Roguelikeness

3 - 100% roguelike

3 - Genuine roguelike, despite minimalism.

3 - Roguelike. Almost archetypal.

This is a fun, straightforward RL with a good amount of challenge. It takes the spear throwing mechanic of Hoplite and applies it to a more traditional roguelike, to good effect. I ran into a few game crashing bugs, one where moving made it crash, and another that occurred a few times where pressing 't' made it crash. Other than that, an enjoyable experience.

Lost Valkyrie is all about positioning and tactics. At first it feels completely unbalanced. You die a lot. But the more you play, the more you learn monsters and items, the deeper you can descend. The only complain about this game is lack of visual feedback on ranged attacks of monsters, Sometimes you just don't understand what and how killed you.

Briefly. One of best entries in 7DRLC2015. Very stylish (and oldschool) look, a lot different enemies, pretty nice story... additional simple but interesting mechanics associated with the use of the spear. Well-balanced. Don't miss this game!

RUNNER_PUNCHER

Completeness

3 - As polished as you could ask for. I haven't noticed any bugs or missing features, and although the game is brutally punishing it doesn't feel imbalanced.

1 - The game is obviously incomplete. It works, you can win it. But something really essential is missing. Things weren't put together to form a solid game experience.

2 - The game feels complete and relatively polished. The mouse over help for items and monsters is a fine feature. One small issue I did have was that occasionally mouse clicks seem to do nothing the first time and I would have to click a second time for my move to register.

Aesthetics

2 - I'm on the fence about awarding a 2 or a 3 here. The look is fine - enemies are easily distinguished by colour as well as letter designation, environmental effects such as webs are clear, the UI is reasonably simple, and the control scheme supports the gameplay well. There are a few reservations though - sometimes it can be hard to spot your @ when you enter a new level, it's not always clear whether an enemy has died or teleported. Small niggles but they prevent a 3 I think.

2 - The game looks nice. Ability to play with mouse is a plus. But playing with keyboard is really cumbersome. Which is a minus.

2 - Its not bad to look at. However, the whole level is shown on screen so the tiles are smaller than I would like. Some resolution options or zoom would be nice to have. I had no trouble controlling the game for the most part.

Fun

3 - I'm glad I had chance to play this game. Is there any stronger endorsement?

2 - I had some fun until I figured out the main flaw. I'm not entirely sure if it is winnable with different strategy.

3 - Very fun to play. There is a bit of learning curve at the beginning, but once you figure it out it gets real fast and fun to play. The difficulty can be steep, and unfortunately there are some unfair deaths, like the time I was ascending after collecting the amulet, and ended my turn right next to a newly spawned enemy. However I'll overlook it because the game is a fast play with a reasonable 7drl length (5 floors down, 5 floors up for 10 total).

Innovation

3 - I'm always wary of declaring that anything is \"fundamentally new\" but I've never seen anything like Runner Puncher attempted before, certainly in the roguelike sphere.

2 - Technically main point of mechanics it's not very different from generic roguelike where character has 'boost of superhaste' and 'club of megaknockback'. But attempt to create variety of enemies with abilities defined by suffixes/postfixes counts as innovation I think.

3 - Big ups for taking the diablo style item generation and applying it to the monsters. There are a few archetypes: archer, knights, wizards, etc that are modified by a prefix such as acid, poison, web, and others. The modifier determines what kind of damage they do in addition to what happens when they die. Acid monsters for instance will leave a puddle of acid behind when you (or another monster!) kills them. This makes each game really feel different from the last. another notable aspect is that picking up an item immediately ends your turn, which makes items into a new type of obstacle when you are just running for your life to avoid a pack of archers or such.

Scope

3 - Another borderline. It didn't make me think \"This was done in seven days? How?\" like some entries do, but the variety of enemy effects and they way they've been carefully designed to impact the efficacy of the core mechanic shows an attention to detail and, presumably, playtesting which is surprising in a 7DRL. This snags the game a 3 here.

2 - Looks like 7drl deadline has cut game development process somewhere in the middle. What's left is quite impressive, but not really out of 7drl scope.

3 - The innovative monster generation system is ambitious and works great. The item generation is less successful but works well enough to provide a good amount of interest.

Roguelikeness

3 - Definitely a roguelike. Unforgiving, merciless, full of tension and desperation from its first moments, and laden with agonising tactical decisions as you try to salvage some semblance of victory from a situation which is rapidly spiralling out of control. It might be hugely unconventional in its mechanics, but its spirit is pure roguelike.

3 - It's roguelike for sure.

3 - Feels very roguelike. There's no hunger, but to counter this no area is safe as monsters spawn near you all the time, so you've gotta stay on the move. You'll have to make a lot of decisions as to when to grab gold and items or when to just dive deeper.

A surprise gem! Initially I was unimpressed with Runner Puncher - you run, you punch, whatever. But there's a lot of tactical variety and roguelike ferocity just beneath the surface. \ \ The control scheme is odd at first. \"Why can't I just walk around normally?\" I wondered, frustratedly. Well there's a good reason. Runner Puncher is all about movement. You don't stand still or confine yourself to a small area when doing battle. There's no luring enemies into bottlenecks in order to wear them down one at a time. No, Runner Puncher is full of movement, and everything affects that. \ \ The control is simple but seems odd at first. Using either the mouse or the keyboard (I favour the latter) you drag a line of movement out from yourself to a destination point. When you either click or hit Enter, you move towards that point. If nothing interrupts you, you'll get all the way or most of the way to that point. It feels cumbersome at first but once you begin to get the point of the game, it makes sense. \ \ There are no other controls to speak of. Items you walk over equipped automatically, whether they're good or bad. Many of the effects of the items come down to more than a boost to defence or damage - instead they add to your movement, or slow you down but prevent knockback, or various other effects which impact the way you move around the levels. \ \ Even enemies are geared towards this aspect. Some teleport or pepper you with arrows, forcing you to move in a direction other than the one you wanted, but the most galling foes are the ones which have 'on death' effects. These include knockback, pools of acid, and poison touch. Much as an enemy might trouble you while it's alive, it might be more dangerous to actually kill it! \ \ These traits seem to be assigned more or less randomly to base enemy types which their own powers - e.g. wizards can teleport, but Embiggening Wizards teleport around while alive and then enlarge nearby monsters on death. An Acid Wizard, on the other hand, will teleport while alive and then leave a pool of acid on death. This means that the exact enemies featured in the game very from one run to the next and always keep you on your toes. Simply moving your cursor over an enemy will list its health and powers, so make sure you check them out. It's vital to know what you're up against if you want to make informed decisions. \ \ And therein lies the roguelikeness. More than the ASCII visuals, the turn based movement or even the fierce difficulty, Runner Puncher is a roguelike to its core because every decision has weight and meaning, and the more you know about your situation, the better decisions you will make. \ \ I expected to dislike Runner Puncher. I was mistaken. One of the standout entries this year, and well worth your time to play.

At first Runner puncher overwhelms. Unusual mechanics, enemies with variety of abilities, many items, money, shop. Main character is fast like a wind and his punches are strong like an anvil. And brutal difficulty. But the more you play ... Here should be 'the more you learn'. But unfortunately ... the more flaws you see. There are money to collect (with risk!). But shop offers shitty items. But if you stop collecting money then you'll stop fighting enemies. It's safer and faster to just run past them. If you stop fighting enemies then you don't care about gear with attack/defense. The only item in the game that has value is boots with +2 to running. And suddenly all this different enemies are loosing their diversity. I won the game without loosing single hp or killing single enemy.

Fun game with a lot of enemy variety due to a neat monster generation system that makes each new playthrough feel different from the last.

Fern Gully 3: Hexxus-quest

Completeness

3 - It seems as though all the components of the game are here, and I didn’t encounter any bugs. I don’t know about a victory screen since I never got that far, but restarting after death is easy enough.

3 - I had no problems using Firefox to play the game. Not a bug nor snag to be seen.

2 - Game is fairly complete. Could be more instructions for player and should be standalone build, but there are little things. That which lowers the score is 'underdevelopment' feeling and lack of polish.

Aesthetics

2 - Minimalistic but effective. My only complaint is that I often missed messages, and without a way to see a listing of past messages I could only guess what they were. Important messages are rare though.

2 - There are some niggling things which prevent me from giving it a 3, so close yet so far.

2 - Not very beautiful, but very clear and roguelike-ish. Maybe I would like give '3', but the lack of walking the diagonals is unacceptable for me in roguelikes.

Fun

2 - If it was a bit easier I would give this a 3, but it is definitely a fun game. Some may complain it’s unfair, but I would disagree: you just have to be very aware of your surroundings and act carefully. The later levels are very resource tight.

3 - An amazing idea which was implemented in a satisfying way. Would have completely missed out if I hadn't played this game.

2 - Entertainmental. Gamplay is simple and rather shallow, but interesting mechanics of HP/Mana system attracted player to the game for a longer time.

Innovation

3 - Having your character’s attacks, and the strength of those attacks, being dependent on the surrounding environment is very innovative in my mind. Since you also destroy the environment in the process, this makes for interesting and very challenging gameplay.

3 - The mana system that this game uses is quite an interesting change from the usual sorts. In fact if not for the Dark Sun setting in D&D I would say it was completely new to me.

2 - Not very innovative - gamplay is very standard but the previously mentioned mechanics is something rather unusual in the roguelikes.

Scope

2 - There is plenty here for a fun experience.

2 - I noticed some things which point out there where time constraints that had to be held to but the right choices where made. This is what I expect from a 7DRL.

2 - Exacly what I expect from 7DRL's. Content is sufficient - primary stuff and main game concepts are made. It's enough for game made in seven days.

Roguelikeness

3 - This game has all of the necessary features of a Roguelike.

3 - This is without a doubt a pure traditional roguelike.

3 - Definitely roguelike.

Hexxus Quest is quite a challenging game. It has the basic RL premise (get to the bottom of a dungeon, find some item, bring it back) but the main innovation is that all of your attacks require mana. You get mana by drawing it out of the surrounding plant life, which means the strength of your attacks (and even the ability to attack) depends on having plants around you. But attacking kills those plants, so as you go through the dungeon you regularly exhaust your mana sources. Combine this with plenty of rooms without plants to begin with (in the later levels at least), enemies that can swarm you or prevent you from using mana, and you have a fun yet difficult game. At best, I got to depth 4 and just could not proceed further; I haven’t figured out the best tactics for it yet.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my YouTube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcqcT1-adbE

First impression was bad. Fern Gully 3 is only on-line game, without possibility to play it locally. Palette is too similar to Rogue's and lack of corridors is a bit odd. To make matters worse, in this game impossible is diagonal movement. But the longer I played the more I liked it - mainly due to the interesting mechanics. Combat is based on draining mana from tiles beside player. When PC drains mana, the grass withers away, trees are falling, etc. Very nice idea. And good, simple game with simple but good mechanics.

MALLEUS GOBLINFICARIUM

Completeness

3 - Didn't encounter bugs though I was initially tempted to think there were several bugs because I didn't understand what was happening. Very polished. The addition of a nice tutorial is a huge win.

3 - A few minor bugs, but game is complete.

3 - Even the 7DRL version was very playable and complete. There's a tutorial even.

Aesthetics

3 - The look of the game is great. I love the dancing sprites with very tiny resolution pixel art. The icons are all very simple, but they work. Controls are nice. The use of the mouse wheel for selecting targets is appreciated. I wish I could see all the different types of targets at once. It's a bit annoying to have to scroll through all of them to see, for instance, when face stabbing is available.

2 - Simple graphic, based on boards, but everything is clear and aesthetic. Control is good.

3 - I really like the minimal look and the way the UI was laid out. The controls worked perfectly.

Fun

3 - Once you get a handle on what's happening, it is very very fun. Initially it's confusing. The tutorial really helps mitigate the confusion, but there's just so much going on, especially the enemy actions that happen automatically. For the longest time I didn't consider that my opponent could also use stamina and I didn't always catch the split second animation where their stamina is added in.\ \ The gameplay is very challenging, but I was able to beat it after a few runs. You've got resource management to deal with and the wounds you can take are serious liabilities. At first I was annoyed by how most turns ended in a parry for both parties, but that's really the point. You've got to solve the puzzle of how to get around the parrying. \ \ I don't expect a lot of replayability with this one (though with the new version the developer is working on that may change).

3 - Gameplay is great! It doesn't looks like roguelike, but is full of roguelike's spirit. Game is well-balanced, but loot issue is too random.

2 - I had a moderate amount of fun with this. It's fun for a bit, but a too cerebral for me, it being more of a puzzler than anything.

Innovation

3 - Definitely very innovative. The deterministic dice system is a neat idea. The wounds, with their dramatic effect on your abilities, are quite unique as a mechanic. Drafting is also a great mechanic that should be seen more often.

2 - Hard to say. On one hand, it is hack and slash and no more. On other hand, mechanics of MG is very interesting and uncommon, especially in roguelike world.

2 - I like the wounds system in the game, and think something like that might be adapted for a standard roguelike.

Scope

2 - While the systems are very complex, it's not a big game. There are a handful of monsters to beat and that's it.

2 - Sufficient scope. Enough content, but games like this needs MOAR content. And more. And more, more, more.

2 - About as ambitious and content filled as I would expect for a 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

2 - Plays like a board game. Even the developer admits it's nothing like a traditional roguelike in the tutorial. I'm cool with that. It does what it does just fine without needing tactical positioning or maps. Still, there is enough here to easily call it roguelikelike.

2 - Roguelike. A bit weird, but roguelike.

2 - Depending on your luck, you might get some really good item at the very beginning of the game that gives a nice advantage early on. This feeling is exactly like rogue. The rest of the gameplay, not so much. But it does capture some of that \"every game is a new adventure\" spirit.

Let's cut to the chase: MALLEUS GOBLINFICARIUM is the best 7DRL I have played this year. You should stop reading and go play it now. The basic idea of the game is that you augment four stats (accuracy, speed, damage, defense) with dice, which are drafted between you and your opponent. Additionally, you can use your limited stamina to augment these stats and you can use items in various ways. Calling them \"dice\" is a bit of a misnomer because they typically aren't rolled. Instead they function more like flat bonuses. The draft is such a cool mechanic because you have to consider not only what you need but what your opponent needs You'll often take a die to keep it out of your opponent's hands. I was very impressed that the AI was always smart enough to take the dice that I *didn't* want them to take. There are enough overlaying systems in MALLEUS GOBLINFICARIUM (dice, stamina, items, wounds) that the combat is always interesting. It'll be confusing at first, but it's well worth diving into.

MALLEUS GOBLINFICARIUM is a great game. It was a sort of surprise, because when I saw screenshots I though that this is not roguelike. Also capitalize title doesn't encouraged me. Fortunately I decided to play this game. First conspicuous thing is graphics. It doesn't looks like roguelike, but has strong roguelike spirit. Based on boards, reveal most interesting mechanics which I spotted in 7DRL2015. It reminds modified d20 system. Player has some 'start-dice' (accuracy, strenght, speed, defense) what depends on weapon in hand. Next dice for draft are randomly drawn. Each player choose dice and fight begins. Is possible to aim different parts of the body of the opponent, what gives various effects (for example, when you harm enemies chest you can re-roll enemy die). It very innovative and absorbing system, especially in roguelike. I recommend MG and I regret that I cannot give better mark for this game.

Very interesting duels that combine puzzle solving with some very strict resource management. It's even slightly roguelike!

Rollgue

Completeness

3 - Very polished and as far as I can tell it's feature complete.

2 - The game feels quite complete but runs badly on my computer.

2 - For the most part complete and bug free. There are some collision problems that coupled with the controls, which I rant about in the aesthetics section, make the game feel unpolished.

Aesthetics

3 - Good. The rooms are a bit drab but that's a very small criticism in a genre which primarily represents itself through punctuation. Although controlling the die takes a bit of getting used to, the UI does everything it can to make things accessible.

3 - Oh my goodness. This game has it in spades. The look and feel of it are sublime, if only it would run better on my computer

2 - The graphics are beautiful and support the theme of being a little die in a plastic model dungeon. Sounds are well implemented and the music track is nice and unobtrusive. For a game that relies heavily on camera control, there didn't appear to be a way to change it from the default controls, which are INVERTED. The controls for moving/rolling the dice work OK, but combined with the absolutely wrong camera control make the game near unplayable. Luckily there are keyboard bindings to move and turn the camera in a sane way.

Fun

2 - Definitely worth trying out for a novel interpretation of the dungeon crawl theme. Some moments can be vaguely frustrating - there's no reason for doors to be as fiddly as they are - but it's generally an enjoyable, if shallow, experience.

3 - I would have missed out if I hadn't played it. While it didn't run well for me it was still worth my time.

2 - There's enough fun to be had to recommend checking it out, but it didn't last long before I wanted to stop. Collision problems cause your die to move in many unexpected ways. This game makes me feel like I'm suffering through QWOP or Surgeon Simulator again. Like those games, there is not much to keep me playing more than a playthrough or two (for this review I had to play for at least an hour. Which I diligently did while counting the minutes until I could be free).

Innovation

3 - It's not just the novelty of using a die as a character, it's the way that's been implemented - retaining 'bump to attack' while also blending it with dice rolling and attempting to give the player some degree of agency in the roll.

3 - I haven't seen this sort of thing before. Not saying it hasn't been done but it feels fresh to me.

2 - Roguelikes in general don't do much with physics as an aspect in the gameplay. I think using the physics engine as a gameplay device has merit, but unfortunately I can't recommend this implementation as bringing something fundamentally new to the table, but it is a nice twist.

Scope

3 - It's hard to say how big a task it was designing this, but I will say that I've seen far less polished games developed in far longer. It almost feels like a Steam game. I'll say it just about scrapes a 3 here.

2 - If the game had run better on my computer it would rate a 3 but you can't optimize everything in only 7 days.

2 - There's a fairly large dungeon to explore with a few room types.

Roguelikeness

2 - Very much a roguelike-like. It doesn't have the depth, thought, control, tactics, or decision consequence of a roguelike but it does make for a pleasant enough little dungeon crawl which references some roguelike ideas here and there.

3 - If you strip away all the glitz and such it really comes down to exploring a dungeon and bumping into monsters to kill them. While the look and feel might not instantly scream roguelike it definitely is.

2 - Firmly in the roguelike-like category.

Rollgue is a dice-based dungeon crawl but not in the Hero Quest style of old - this one literally uses (representations of) dice as both the player's character and any monsters encountered within the dungeon. It doesn't try with the theme, either. There aren't orc dice and kobold dice, just your die and then all the others. It's a novelty game through and through but in this case that isn't a criticism. A novelty game can be just fine as long as it's done well. \ \ As far as production goes, Rollgue is very impressive. Visuals and sound are both very good, control is smooth and responsive, and I've yet to run into any bugs. It can be a little frustrating at first because it's not entirely clear how to actually control your die - what makes it leap upward or skid across the floor - but once you get it the game becomes more fun (tip: starting your move-drag on the bottom edge of the die keeps you low, and starting it on the top edge throws you upward). \ \ There isn't a lot of depth here. Rooms are either empty (or almost empty, with maybe a health restoring crystal present) or they contain an enemy/enemies. Like accurate movement, combat took some figuring out because the game doesn't really say anything about it. As far as I can tell, the current attacker has to collide their die with the enemy die, and whatever number they roll is the attack value (from which any armour or debuffs are deducted). If you roll a high number but don't bump the enemy die, it seems you inflict no damage. It's amusing nod to the 'bump to attack' convention of roguelikes. \ \ When it comes down to it, Rollgue is too fickle and superficial to have staying power. Roguelikes do involve a lot of luck, but the art of becoming good at a roguelike is learning how to stack the odds and make the most of your lucky breaks. There's none of that here. You roll a die and hope for the best. The entire appeal of the game is in its novelty rather than its depth of gameplay. \ \ In this case, novelty is enough. Not a long-lasting time investment, it's true, but worth a play to see something different. Rollgue stops just shy of being gimmicky and incorporates enough little nods to the genre to suggest that the developer knew what they were doing.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr20SLXAxHo

All the control frustration of QWOP mashed up with a basic dungeon craw.

Space Hellion

Completeness

3 - No bugs and the game is very clearly well polished. Even the readme is very detailed with a surprisingly elaborate backstory.

3 - Looks complete and quite polished. No bugs encountered.

2 - Complete and relatively bug free. I think there's a bug where the bosses hit you after you kill them, had a few unfair deaths. Sessions tend to last more than 5 minutes, so it would be nice to be able to save/resume the current session.

Aesthetics

3 - I totally love the pixel art. The way the 100% turn based combat is blended with a real time representation is impressive: the levels open with an enemy flying around laying down bullets, your ship rotates as it banks side to side, and everything animates smoothly. The sounds are nice too. I found a hybrid control scheme worked well: mouse to manage the ship settings and use items and keyboard to move.

2 - Pixel art is nice. Position checking of objects could be better. If you aren't sure about position, you have to scan tiles until object in question is highlighted.

2 - I found the look mostly pleasing, reminiscent of the 16 bit era. Due to this however, a nice music track felt missing (no points taken off for lack of, mind you). The controls were well explained and easy to use.

Fun

2 - I could see Hellion being very polarizing. If you're very patient and you want to study all the game's systems and then carefully plan every move, you will love the game. If you want to jump in and kick ass, you're got another thing coming. It is really damn difficult. You can take up to two hits and you're on a very cramped playing field. I never fully understood why, but very often the entire screen (all but perhaps 1 tile) turned into a kill zone and I could not make it to safety. Also, I tended to ignore enemies that were close by because they can't really be destroyed anymore, yet they can also suddenly smash into you or blast you without warning (and you'll grow dependent on having that red warning). I think the 3D is handled in the best way possible, but it's still very time consuming to have to highlight tiles to figure out where enemies *actually are* (not where they appear to be). And the fact that they can just change directions will nilly makes it a bit worse.

2 - It's interesting to play a few times. But then games become too samey. And main difficulty comes from confusion of perception. Checking whole grid each turn is somewhat tedious.

2 - Avoiding bullets and obstacles is fun, and can be rhythmically soothing, although a few inconsistencies arise and I died when depending on the warning marks alone, so its not just rote repetition. There's room for some strategic decisions as to when to channel energy where and when to active/deactivate weapon systems. The perspective takes getting used to and led me to many a stupid death. Sometimes feels like the player ship hinders visibility a bit too much.

Innovation

3 - Just wow. A rail shooter roguelike would be enough, but the way this explores a 3D space yet on a tight 4x4 grid is really cool. I've heard about earlier 3D experiments (EmoSquid) where the third dimension made it absolutely unplayable because of information overload. The 4x4 grid is a great choice because I feel like that's the boundary of how much information can be reasonably processed with the extra dimension involved.

3 - Bringing 3d dimension into roguelike that actually have sense is hard. But this game succeeded.

2 - Takes some nice risks that pay off. Captures the dodge and shoot aspect of the STG very well. Area of denial is often untouched in roguelikes, and this game shows an interesting and clever way to incorporate this mechanic.

Scope

3 - There's a lot here. Multiple levels each with distinct settings. Several items. A fuel/power management system. Bosses. I'm not sure if I should, but I will include the length of the readme as counting towards the scope as well.

3 - It's quite weak 3, but there is definitely more in this game than in your average 7drl.

2 - Not a huge game, but has a fine variety of enemy types and attack patterns.

Roguelikeness

3 - When I heard about Hellion, I assumed it was one of those increasingly common enemies-only-move-when-you-do jobs. No sir. Though there's animation and a real sense of momentum, this game is 100% grid and turn based with discrete time steps. The resource management pushes it over the edge.

2 - It doesn't feel like roguelike, more like roguelike-like. Too few actual choices.

2 - Solid RL-Like.

Hellion is a rails shooter that pulls off several feats. First, it takes a fast paced genre and gives it honest to goodness turn based gameplay (along with a plausible explanation for the turns). Second, it's one of those rare roguelikes played on a three dimensional grid. And it pulls this off better than many that have come before. While you'll be overwhelmed at first, the amount of information presented is actually quite reasonable. The play space is small, just 4x4x16. You're given an overhead \"mini-map\" of sorts that lets you know the horizontal position and depth of enemies, obstacles, and projectiles.\ \ The game is initially confusing. You'll need to read the readme, especially the tips section at the bottom, and play it several times before you have any clue what's going on.\ \ But it's definitely worthwhile to figure out. There are a lot of really neat things to discover: the boss battles, the resource management, the way you *literally* weave in and out of a stream of bullets while firing off a fatal shot that makes you feel at least a little like you're firing into a vulnerable exhaust port.\ \ Hellion is easily one of the standouts of 2015. Play it.

Very brave attempt to combine 3d and tactical combat. Result? I'd say - controversial. There are good points and bad points. I think it's hard to fully explore this theme in a 7drl.

A solid Roguelike-like that utilizes the staple RL turn based tactical movement while hitting all the marks for close calls and lucky shots in a classic shmup.

The Promised Land

Completeness

3 - Feels very complete. Did not encounter any bugs or obvious missing components.

3 - The game feels more or less complete. No bugs found.

2 - Fairly complete game.

Aesthetics

2 - Looks great but the colors all seemed a bit dark to me, for some reason. Movement controls are no problemo, but the interactive controls were a bit counter-intuitive (or at least not 'roguelike standard' so I had to keep looking them up).

3 - Nice looking ascii art. Level generator is really impressive. River with creeks, bridges. Houses, fences, fields. Looks very nice and natural.

3 - Very aesthetic ascii/unicode graphics, keybinding is intuitive. Nice sense of colours.

Fun

3 - Has a nice feel of impending doom. Grabbing a knife for the first time felt very empowering, which is not something you get from a lot of roguelikes. Theme and extra historical color make all the difference. NPCs are lots of fun as well, and the game does a great job of letting you know what is going on and who is about to make your life miserable. Definitely worth a play through.

2 - It's moderately fun. But the fact that often enemies can see you without you seeing them kills fun factor by a lot. I'd like to see additional stealth options or at least means to distract npc to force him to walk away from the only bridge across river. Sometimes there is no other way, but to fight. And fighting on later levels is almost always game over.

3 - Interesting idea/plot, good implementation and pleasant gameplay.

Innovation

2 - Nothing incredibly new here, gameplaywise but extra points for using a strong theme and implementing it in a respectful and meaningful way.

1 - Other than theme it's pretty generic and simplistic roguelike.

2 - Not very innovative, but there are ideas which make differentiate it from many typical roguelikes; for example - possibility to use non-lethal weapons.

Scope

2 - A solid 7DRL attempt, albiet a highly polished one.

2 - There are a few items to equip, a few drinks to drink, several npc and interesting level generator. What you would expect from quality 7drl. On the higher end of 2.

2 - Everything needed in roguelike and everything expected from 7DRL. Maybe little more.

Roguelikeness

3 - Definitely a roguelike. I loves me some ASCII.

3 - Definitely roguelike.

3 - 100% roguelike

A surprisingly deep ASCII roguelike based on a runaway slave. Weapons are tempting but your least product way to proceed, as fights will easily bring many enemies onto your trail. Try to stick to cover and progress through each level. The maps are rather large, but does a great job of gently nudging you in the right direction. Plenty of stuff to explore.

In this game you play as 'negro man', runaway from plantation. On each level you need to reach safe house. It's more about stealth then fighting. You cannot win by fighting. But, unfortunately, there are no game mechanics that support stealth.

I'm not a big fan of this game. It's browser roguelike, without possibility to playing locally, gameplay is based on doing a missions, what moves us further in the story. However, is that I'm not a fan of 'The Promised Land' doesn't mean that I can not appreciate 'good things' in the game. And there is a lot of 'good things'. First - plot. It's not very extensive, but start the game from escaping from the plantation is quite impressive. Moreover, the game looks just really nice. Clear ASCII/Unicode with good sense of colours attracted to game.\ Summarizing, it's not game for me - mainly due to lack of possibility to play locally. But it is a very good, well polished game.

Academy Rogue

Completeness

3 - Seems polished and feature complete. No noticeable bugs.

3 - No noticeable bugs. Runs smooth.\ \ The staircases are somewhat of a problem, but not enough for me to mark down. Staircases are built into the wall, but the inventory slots partially obscure this. It took me a while to even realize there *were* stairs. In the worst case, the staircase is totally hidden by your HP. Also, attacking a monster on a staircase takes you up to the next floor (quite annoying since you spend extra turns walking back down and letting the monster get free hits).

2 - Bug-free, but unpolished. Has lots of little niggles like exit placement under the graphical interface, and generally feels lacking in balance and pacing.

Aesthetics

2 - Not dazzling but a solid graphical visual style which is easy on the eye and imparts information well.

2 - The controls are keyboard only and work fine. This one is a tough call. While the game has a lot of nice details (fog of war, text typewriter effect, spells), the artwork looks uneven as if thrown together from various sources. The pixel art looks decent enough, but I'm not a fan of the style.\ \ There's nothing in the game that hints at a theme (Academic Rogue means...?) and if you want a dungeony feel, this ain't it. I did get a kick out of the \"Legendary Statue of MacGuffin\" though.

2 - Graphical, though I'm not a fan of the artwork style myself and the particle effects get in the way of following the gameplay. The menu screen is unintuitive and there are some niggles like Escape confirming an action. The icons for items are really inappropriate as telling ice bolt from ice ball is almost impossible - an icon-based style would have worked much better. Tooltips would have also helped a lot as the ability effects are hidden in an obscure part of the inventory.

Fun

3 - I suspect not everyone will get on with the way this game handles attacks and items but it's worth trying for yourself. Personally I enjoyed it.

2 - It's fun for a few runs. Like I said, the amount of fun you have depends on how much you like choosing from limited use items.\ \ One obstacle to me getting more into the game was lack of numerical values. The spells don't have numbers in their descriptions and the enemies don't have health bars. So I spent a lot of time frustrated and confused wondering if I was getting anywhere.

2 - Balancing the different resources is interesting, but not enough to sustain it over the length of the game. Could do with having less levels (and maybe less items) to make it a more satisfying experience, or a better pace to the game (weaker enemies and less item slots at the start, for instance). The fact that the level exit is always at the bottom also makes exploration bland, especially since one wants to minimise exploration to reduce resource usage. Might be more interesting if there is one specific camp/recharge site to find in each level.

Innovation

2 - The way items work provides a twist on the familiar.

2 - The camping mechanic is neat. Choosing an upgrade per floor is certainly not new, but I really like that you can choose to do it at your leisure. Unused items are supposed to be teleported along with you but I'm not sure I experienced this in my playthroughs.

2 - The heavy reliance on consumable items is an interesting twist, and combines well with the strict inventory limit.

Scope

3 - Very good for seven days.

2 - About average. There are many items, upgrades, and enemies, but there's not much depth of interaction.

3 - There's a big amount of content here - lots of spells, weapons, items, enemies. Obviously a lot of work went into this! However it is very generic. Colour-swap elements and enemies, number-tweaked abilities, very simplistic levelling system. And the pacing of the game remains constant throughout. Still, the sheer amount of content is very impressive here for a 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

2 - Doesn't feel entirely roguelike but it's close.

3 - Sure. A little more complexity would be nice, but it's got all the hallmarks.

3 - Totally roguelike, though the level design is fairly simplistic.

Academy Rogue feels kind of like a console game, and that's not a criticism. It has a nice little camping system which reminds me faintly of SNES RPGs and maybe even something like Azure Dreams. Something in the movement and presentation kept bringing to mind Zombies Ate My Neighbours. It's a style I find charming and I warmed to the game quickly. It's definitely more on the action end of the roguelike spectrum but employs a limited item use/inventory management system to make things more interesting. Each item (weapon, spell book, etc) has a different effect and a set number of uses which recharge when you camp - which can be done once per floor when you're not being hounded by foes. This means the game provides constant pressure to get the most out of your uses each day. It's not prefect but it does make for a pleasantly entertaining game which, crucially, doesn't outstay its welcome.

Academic Rogue has a focus on what I call \"wand combat.\" That is most of your time is spent picking up limited use items and trying to use them as efficiently as possible. There is a \"camping\" mechanic where you get to heal up and choose an upgrade once per floor, which is a nice twist. You can also resort to bump attacks, but they are often weaker than the items. Other than that, it's simply about running from the north side of a floor to the south side for 13 floors.

A game of wands, in a way. All items in the game act like wands do in most roguelikes, having a fixed number of uses, and all generally providing some special effect. Even swords and axes work like this, with specific effects for each. You get a recharge to all items each dungeon level, and you can improve the power of some abilities as you progress. With lots of items to find this quickly becomes a game of class customisation, choosing which abilities and items to hold onto in a limited inventory. An interesting play with the usual roguelike ability system, though with 13 levels it does get a bit samey after a while. Still well worth a play with - just make sure to press tab twice in inventory to find out what everything does!

Fall Girl

Completeness

3 - Feels fully complete and has an incredible amount of polish: menus, tutorial, cut scenes?

2 - Occasional layout bug where it's impossible to reach the exit, but otherwise good.

3 - * No obvious bugs (assuming that movement is supposed to work this way!)

Aesthetics

2 - Very typical looking libtcod game. Very tiny but maybe that was just my screen. (Or maybe I am just old) Controls are intuitive, although numpad didn't work, only arrow keys.

3 - Colourful, clear and suited to the game.

3 - * Well chosen colors\ * Cut scenes worked well and looked great--could be annoying if the game was harder and required more restarts\ * Easy to understand control scheme\ * Music fit the game well

Fun

2 - The combination of seemingly turn-based-but-actually-real-time is definitely fun. Keeping it on a grid was a great choice. The story is also a lot of fun - worth checking out.

3 - Definitely worth playing, for the setting as much as the gameplay.

2 - * Movement controls feel very unresponsive, though I think it's desired\ * Movement was particularly annoying climbing to the 9th floor and felt broken in the final boss fight\ * Gameplay is repetitive, as are the floor layouts\ * Still compelling and fun to play given its length\ * Narrative helped explain why I was stealing everything

Innovation

3 - Interesting realish-time combat that manages to (mostly) stay tactical and appropriately roguelike-ish. Too many times realtime combat can turn into a mash-fest or exercise in extreme twitchiness. This game does not fall into either trap with it's well-crafted enemy design and powerup time-slowing mechanic.

2 - The gradual bullet time idea is unusual and makes for a much smoother flowing game. Impressive.

2 - * Controls were an interesting hybrid of realtime Binding of Isaac controls and turn-based games, even though I wasn't a fan of the result\ * Gameplay is otherwise fundamentally hack and slash

Scope

3 - Seems like the game had a very well defined scope that allowed the author to really polish up areas of the game that are not usually polished. A very solid accomplishment. Extra point for

2 - Good scope.

2 - * Solid entry\

Roguelikeness

2 - Not a traditional roguelike because of the real-timed-ness, but way better than other real time roguelike attempts I have played.

2 - Definitely roguelike-like.

2 - * Binding of Isaac controls with procedural but linear levels\ * Didn't find the layout mattered significantly

A very well polished game with a great story. The game is technically real time but it plays out in a way that does not necessarily feel frantic or too divergent from traditional turn-based roguelike. Also: hoverboards!

While it has its flaws, Fall Girl tries something interesting with both gameplay and setting. It's heavily cyberpunk themed and casts the player as some sort of teenage cyborg hacker chasing down an AI she created which has now escaped. The setting works well and justifies the mechanics of the game. Mechanically it's straightforward but unusual - a real time 4-way shooter, but instead of a standard levelling system, you grow stronger by picking up dropped processors which incrementally cause you to becomes faster relative to everything else, which means that the early enemies gradually become too slow to harm you, and so on. Between its imaginative concept and its gameplay twists, Fall Girl is worth playing - just make sure you persist past the slow early game stages.

As Fall Girl begins, you learn that the AI you developed has escaped and is threatening to cause havoc. The missions that ensue are always the same and linear with procedural details, so the neighbor's house is generated but you're always there to steal batteries. There's a surprising amount of physical theft in a game where you're supposed to be playing a hacker.\ The gameplay is semi-realtime and is semi-successful. Movement and combat operate on different time scales, with movement being possible on a slower clock than shooting. The main drop in the game, chips, further accentuate this time discrepancy. This has the consequence of making movement feel unresponsive, a major issue for an action game.\ Fall Girl shows its narrative emphasis with its full-screen and in-game cutscenes. The writing is serviceable, helps establish a sense of place, and frames the game missions; however, it does commit the sin of making them unskippable.\ I'm not sure if Fall Girl's movement system could be made more responsive or not with its mechanics, but overall it was a charming experience that didn't overstay its welcome.\ \

Phage

Completeness

2 - Generally polished. Spawns can be a bit quirky - it's possible to spawn right next to enemies which will obliterate you as soon as you move - but those games are over quickly and it's easy to restart, so it doesn't get too frustrating.

3 - Phage is a complete, but basic package. The player is dropped directly in the action with the most basic of instructions but within a few seconds, and an equal number of deaths, the goal of the game, and how you might achieve it, is apparent. I didn't notice any crashes, bugs or exploits.

2 - There are no bugs (that I could find) and the game is definitely balanced, once you get the hang of it. It might be too easy at times though. The game also doesn’t quite end, it just gives you a loss or victory message and let’s you keep playing. I found that somewhat confusing.

Aesthetics

2 - Nice visual style, which reminds me of early console games (in a good way). Lots of purple, plus creatures in vivid turquoises and yellows. It's easy to see what's what for the most part, though the pink/pale purple enemies sometimes blend in with their surroundings a bit too much.

3 - Phage delivers a near-future setting effectively via an isometric tile set and set of colour choices that aptly depict an alien but familiar world where a group of unfortunate colonists have made their home. You, the phage have apparently been delivered to wreak havoc but must do so subtlety and piece-by-piece. The bold purple fog-of-war adds a claustrophobic feel to the open-world setting which fits in well with the stealthy gameplay.

3 - The controls and display are simple, clear, and work well for the game. You may not recognize your health bar right away, since it’s the only statistic displayed, but it is there. Even the graphics feel appropriate for the game.

Fun

3 - Initially seemed like a more basic version of Possession from a few years back, but it's actually an arguably more subtle take on the idea. Enjoyable.

2 - At its core, Phage is a simple game where you kill monsters then possess them and use their reanimated bodies to find and kill your next target. Monsters seem to differ only in health and lack special abilities which limits the interest of the core mechanic. The phage can normally outrun the monsters, allowing some degree of hit and run gameplay. The game is fun but I didn't find it held my attention.

3 - I quite enjoyed the game. I was able to find a pretty good strategy for winning, so the replay value might be limited in that sense, but it still has its challenging parts.

Innovation

2 - Not groundbreaking - a few games, and even a few 7DRLs, have dealt with the idea of possessing fallen enemies. Still, it's a mechanic worth exploring and Phage puts its own spin on it.

2 - Possession is a mechanic which has been explored in a number of other 7DRLs, often to a greater degree than in Phage. The hex-grid presentation works well in the sci-fi setting and I think the fusion of graphics, setting and mechanic is worthy of praise.

2 - The main mechanic (taking over killed enemies) is unusual and uncommon for RLs, but not completely unique. However, it works well here both mechanically and thematically.

Scope

2 - Fair scope.

2 - Phage's scope is limited and, whilst it delivers within its apparent scope, I feel there's a lot more than could have been done with the game and its mechanics.

2 - There is a good variety of enemies, though they tend to differ only by health. That’s enough for the short game length though.

Roguelikeness

2 - Not hugely roguelikeish but certainly roguelike-influenced.

3 - Although limited in scope, what we do have here is definitely roguelike - positional combat, permadeath (or deaths) and monsters which toe the line between significant and windshield kills. Give the Phage a two-handed sword, screw up your eyes and you could be playing Rogue! (not really!).

3 - It has all the necessary features: tactical gameplay, permadeath and procedural generation, and turn-based gameplay.

When I first played Phage, my reaction was twofold - I was pleased by the retro (but graphical) visual style, yet simultaneously disappointed with what seemed to be a simplified version of an earlier 7DRL called Possession, which was itself hardly complex. Kill enemies and possess their corpses to then kill stronger enemies and possess *their* corpses. Why? No idea. \ \ Well, that mistake was mine. \ \ Firstly, the game does tell you (though discreetly) why you're going on this spree. You have to destroy all terran life. That's not a lot to go on, but it does give you an objective. Reading the developer's remarks, it seems you're a bioweapon which has been unleashed and is now fulfilling its programmed purpose. None of this is communicated in the game itself though - the game just tells you you're weak and you need to destroy terran life. \ \ You can't kill much in your initial serpentine state - a couple of hits and you're finished. Kill a weak creature, upgrade, kill more, and basically work your way up the chain. Bodies take damage over time while you're in possession of them so it's in your best interests to find a new target as quickly as possible. A bit of exploration will lead you to a human colony and that's where you work really begins. \ \ The game mechanics are very simple, and the controls are just movement (hex movement performed using QWEASD or the numpad). Although it's not complex and the idea has been attempted with some success before, Phage does put its own spin on it by having the aim be to eliminate the human colonists. You can't take out more than one enemy, maybe two if you're at a serious power advantage, before your current body is destroyed, so the game forces you to use the alien lifeforms in the jungle as a combat resource. It's an intriguing interpretation of the concept. \ \ Phage isn't deep but it is fun. Worth checking out.

Phage is a straightforward game at its current stage of development and one where a moody future setting is delivered through well-designed isometric graphics. Although too simple to warrant much play it does provide a few moments of distraction.

Similar in concept to The Thing, in Phage you play as a lifeform that assimilates corpses and uses them as its primary form. Since the initial form is very weak, you have to be careful at the beginning of the game until you find a strong enough form (or a steady enough supply of back-up corpses) to take on the other challenges. Even later in the game you can quickly lose since bodies degrade over time. Your ultimate goal is to kill off all the humans (including their guard dogs), and they are among the strongest creatures in the game. Since any form usually doesn’t last more than two combats, you are regularly moving between body forms and having to manage your time carefully. This makes for a game that requires a careful and tactical approach to play, which I found fun and tense at times. Overall, it is a very enjoyable game.

Chitinous Crooks

Completeness

2 - About what you'd expect from a 7DRL. Has a variety of enemies that behave differently, an endgame, and bunch of spells.

3 - All aspects of the game are here, and I wasn’t able to find any bugs. The game is balanced, though possibly on the easy side.

2 - Complete game, but not very polished.

Aesthetics

2 - Very roguelike ASCII graphics. Simple and effective.

3 - Details regarding the game are clearly and cleanly visible, and the controls are straight forward. I tried the browser version though (with the latest patch), so your experience might be different using the mobile version.

2 - Looks like standard roguelige. Quite aesthetic, but empty corner tiles are unsightly. Inability to move diagonally bother me.

Fun

2 - Pretty enjoyable, though it was a bit on the easy side. Accumulating spells means you usually have what you need to deal with any dangerous groups of enemies. Beat it on my first try.

2 - I quite enjoyed this game. It was easier than I would have liked (I won several times), but since I died more times than I won it is not a trivial game.

3 - Interesting game and rich gameplay. A lot of PC's abilities provide a lot of fun.

Innovation

2 - What you'd expect from a 7DRL. Nothing crazy new here, but the different enemy behaviours were interesting.

2 - Other than an unusual theme, there isn’t anything too unique here. The abilities available, how you get them, and how they interact with the enemies are uncommon so that is definitely worth some points.

2 - Not very innovative, but some features - like acidic traces - are rather unique

Scope

1 - Pretty limited scope. Could use more content (enemies, different level, unique enemy mechanics) to help differentiate it from other roguelikes, and maybe some different enemies, spells and environments as you progress.

2 - The game is short but it still has a good amount of content.

3 - Very rich gameplay, a lot of content.

Roguelikeness

3 - 100% Roguelike

3 - Definitely a RL, no doubt about it.

3 - Definitely roguelike.

A nice little game that would be a very solid roguelike with some balancing and more content. I liked the simplicity (no experience, no items, just spells and enemies), and the different enemy behaviours were a good touch, much more interesting than enemies that are just a bunch of stats. Good theme too. Would be interesting to see some water mechanics (rivers, swimming, something like that). Though it doesn't try anything very risky, it is a very solid 7DRL and a great base to work from if the author wanted to continue work on it.

Chitinous Crooks is a short RL that is based on managing a limited number of random powers. Each level you are given a set of 3 new powers and restored to full health. You can only use 3 powers per floor, though you could use less, and typically they are either instant or only last on that floor. So you treat each floor as a separate dungeon, but you can save powers for later floors by not using them. Since the enemies each have their own quirks (special movement or differences in health or attack), you need to manage the powers carefully while navigating your way through the dungeon. The developer recommends not killing everything, and avoiding combat is definitely a benefit at times. My only real complaint with the game is that it might be too easy if you play carefully or conservatively. The game length is otherwise very good. This is definitely a good game to check out.

One of best 7DRL2015 entries. First impressions are not very encouraging - lack of possibility to move diagonally, empty tiles in room's corners... Although inconveniences are compensated by a lot of content (enemies, abilities, items) and really rich, a bit tactical gameplay. Chitinous Crooks's scope is effective - I didn't expected such a 'wealth' from game made in 7 days!

Quaff

Completeness

2 - Feels solid, but could use a bit more polish in some areas, like making potion effects more obvious.

2 - Seems stable, but badly lacking polish.

2 - Uses the TE4 so it's got all the niceties. One weird bug/quirk is that you have to rename your pig every level.

Aesthetics

3 - It's a T-Engine game, so it looks great. Interface is clean and straightforward.

2 - Simple controls. The default T-Engine elements are incredibly glaring - the game badly needs some more individual charm in its interface and general look/feel. Menu-based potion-making is very fiddly.

2 - Basic non-tiled TE4 look and feel. Nothing wrong here.

Fun

2 - It's fun. The potion mixing and crafting is not my particular cup of tea but I can see the appeal. Lots and lots of options here. Optimal strategy seems to be avoiding enemies while collecting and making as many potions as possible before your pig gets into real combat. Definitely worth checking out.

2 - Managing the pig indirectly is quite fun and challenging. The potion-crafting is somewhat interesting, but battling the interface is not.

2 - Combat is interesting if a bit passive. Your pig will occasionally aggro monsters, who you cannot directly attack. The game is over if the pig dies. So what you must do is craft potions using ingredients found throughout the dungeon. Its a workable system, although it means you have limited options in what you can actually do.

Innovation

3 - It's a nice twist to have the main combat taking place with an NPC. Definitely innovative. Go pig go!

3 - Indirect control of battle through a potion-pumped pig is very new and interesting. Worth playing to see how original this system is.

2 - This most reminds me of animal taming in Ultima Online. As a tamer you had few direct damage abilities beyond your pet, and could only lead them around and let them kill stuff while you healed the pet. This is kind of a nice twist to the usual roguelike combat, not terrible innovative as many others have pets, but in combination with the potion crafting mechanics, this is a nice exploration of the theme.

Scope

2 - A very solid and thorough effort for a 7DRL.

2 - Medium scoped 7DRL.

2 - It's not got a ton of content, but its decent for a 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

3 - Definitely a roguelike!

3 - Turn-based, randomised levels, tactical combat/interactions. Not entirely traditional but still a very solid roguelike to me.

3 - Good resource/inventory management going on here with the potion crafting. You'll want to make good choices in how you spend your materials and potions. There's even a bit of item identification going on in the crafting system, as you don't really know what you are going to get until you've gained some experience with it. It's short lived though since the ingredients aren't shuffled each game.

Craft potions from random ingredients in order to give your pig magical properties. That's right, in quaff you cannot directly attack or be attacked by enemies. All combat is done by your truffle-hunting pig. Use your potions to buff him up. The combinations seem a bit overwhelming but the gameplay is pretty straightforward. Uses the T-Engine so presentation is very nice.

A roguelike in which you can't attack and enemies don't attack you - instead you power up a pet pig and enemies attack it. The powering up is via potions which you brew, with an interesting little system to that. The whole game is fun and tactical, but there's some severe lack of polish and the potions interface is very tedious.

A funny little RL exploring indirect combat through buffing a truffle sniffing pig with potions.

A Rogue Harvest

Completeness

1 - Unplayable due to a bug that crashes the game to desktop every few minutes. That means restarting over and over, never making any progress or learning much about how to play the game.

3 - Crashed on me after 2 hours play :( Otherwise seems like a very complete game, aside from potentially a bit of balance and pacing.

2 - Overall the game is very well put together. The in game help is informative. Unfortunately, I encountered a crash which nuked an hour of progress, so proceed with caution.

Aesthetics

1 - The visuals and displayed information are fine but the choice to do almost everything with Shift-letter commands is a bizarre control decision.

2 - Very pretty ASCII game, though it's let down a bit by capital letter control keys (ew) and tedious shooting mechanics.

2 - The screens are clear and well laid out.The controls for the most part make sense. there was some slight annoyance with the most common action keys in the inventory needing to be input as capital letters. It seems the choice was made to support lowercase letters as item selection keys, however I was content to use arrow keys to move the selector around and found the capital letter input for things like Use and Equip to be a source of constant annoyance.

Fun

1 - The unwieldy interface and total absence of either tools, useful information or the ability to run consistently make it an ordeal I can't recommend.

2 - The harvesting game is pretty interesting! However it gets tedious after a while. The levels are very big, the harvesting repetitive (I suppose that's realistic) and the sleep mechanic annoying.

3 - I greatly enjoyed exploring my little village, reading the descriptions for the items and characters. Learning to plant and harvest was simple and straightforward. Discovering new items is quite thrilling in this game too, as items such as Sacred Fruits and weapons are quite valuable. Combat is fairly deterministic, with some enemies being out of your league until you gear up a bit, which is just how I like it.

Innovation

2 - I haven't seen this attempted before, though there are some other games that incorporate agriculture.

2 - Interesting harvesting sim elements added to the roguelike setup.

3 - Balancing my time between exploring and tending to the harvest is a nice twist on resource management that ties well into the hunger clock. You aren't just gathering food for yourself, you've got a whole village to think about. This is an aspect that I really think brings something new (to me).

Scope

2 - Potentially good scope.

3 - This is a big, lengthy game with a lot of detail.

3 - I'm very impressed with the amount of content that works together in this game.

Roguelikeness

3 - I'd say it counts as a roguelike, weirdly enough. Somehow it's there.

3 - Got traditional roguelike monster-fighting alongside the harvest mechanics.

3 - Definitely feels like a roguelike to me, the developer did a good job molding influences from a different game into a roguelike. Keeping all the major aspects that I expect from an RL.

Nice idea ruined by bugs and illogical design. I have little experience of Harvest Moon but I'm vaguely familiar with how it works, and this is a roguelike interpretation of the concept. Grow and harvest food to keep the villagers (and yourself) fed while you quest in the caves for special fruit which will cure the illness that prevents anyone in the village from helping you out. The way you're meant to do this is incredibly obscure - I managed to plant a bulb once but otherwise I can't figure out how to farm. Apparently tools are needed but I've never found a single tool, only a sword. Nor do you start with any. To aggravate matters further, the interface mainly uses capital letters (e.g. Shift+i for inventory, Shift+e to equip) which is needless and irritating. Just to round things, off the game crashes to desktop every few minutes, forcing you to start over and preventing any progress being made. The idea is good but the execution is sorely lacking.

A game of dungeon crawling and harvesting! You can hunt animals too if you feel like it. Harvesting is done by ploughing a field (walk over land with plough equipped), planting seeds, watering the seeds (walk over with watering can equipped) and then waiting a few in-game days. This is interesting at first, but soon gets tiresome. Though perhaps some will find it has a zen-like feel to it.\ \ The dungeon crawling element is fairly simple, and large levels make it boring. With a bit more structure and streamlining this could become a far more engaging game. As is it's an interesting game to play with, and perhaps makes a statement about the repetitive things we do in games or in life.

A nicely put together RL with a good amount of content. It's a fun mix of inspiration from Harvest Moon and roguelikes.

Beware the Space Bears

Completeness

2 - Playable, winnable, even fairly polished, but has some important quality-of-life issues. At least with the current mechanics, all the extra complexity of item management is superfluous - since using items does not take a turn (at least for oxygen tanks) and neither filling your suit up from an item nor filling an item up at the base waste any resources, items could just straight out increase your suit's resource cap and the only difference would be that the player would have to click around less. The only straight out bug I ran into was that if your suit is out of oxygen, you'll still keep asphyxiating even inside the base.

3 - Seems like it does what it set out to do and I didn't encounter any bugs.

3 - * No obvious bugs assuming that water ice is being generated.\ * Nice polish with instructions, look messages, etc.

Aesthetics

2 - There's some odd icon choices but overall the game does a lot with what it has. The icy, sandy, and rocky variants of caves, the rust-red surface with its occasional piles of usable sand, the metallic base with its automatic doors and strange futuristic equipment - all of it evokes a lot for just a few characters and icons.

2 - Clean ascii graphics and simple UI. Clicking and arrow keys do what you'd expect to do. Nice little details like using the recycle symbol and radioactive symbol in a meaningful way.

3 - * Very playable with the mouse.\ * Good keyboard support with VI/arrow keys/numpad. Only WASD is missing.\ * Palette looked good, as did the glyphs chosen

Fun

2 - Rounding a corner and coming across a cluster of caverns, wondering what you might find in there - that's the best part of this game, exploration that feels fun. Combat lacks interesting tactical options, though. The game goes from very hard to fairly easy over half an hour or so of figuring out how it works.

2 - Deciding what resource to go for and how long you can go on what you have is tense and interesting.

2 - * Fun aside from the niggle about water ice\ * Would like a more compact ship layout, possibly standardized unless there's a gameplay reason to generate the layout.

Innovation

2 - The design focus here seems to be mostly on extending the concept of a hunger clock with the suit oxygen and its various interactions.

2 - Trying to juggle different stats and consumables isn't explored very often in 7DRLs but this one does a really good job. Being stranded on an alien world and trying to find resources to stay alive is also different an interesting.

1 - * Basic hack and slash mechanics\

Scope

2 - What you'd expect of a 7DRL.

2 - Several different resources, items, and associated stats. It definitely gets the job done. This could be a 3 with a bit more variety in enemies, weapons, items, and locations.

2 - * Well done 7DRL scope

Roguelikeness

3 - Roguelike through and through, in letter and spirit. Not only is the game a turn-based hack-and-slash with resource management on a character grid, but if you like, you can whack space rats with a patch kit.

3 - The combat is simplistic compared to most roguelikes (at least as far as I could tell), but exploring the world, looking for resources, avoiding enemies, and trying to figure out how much of your supplies you should use all have a strong roguelike feel to me.

3 - * Strong roguelike experience, especially with the titular bears being something to avoid

Journey out from your base on a red planet populated with various hostile space animals, in order to bring back resources to be processed into supplies to keep you going further. Over your explorations you're also going to hit upon alien artifacts - collecting three and bringing them home wins the game.

A really neat and easy to play (but not easy to beat) game of searching for resources, avoiding fights, and hoping you don't run out of oxygen. Do you try to find more supplies for oxygen, supplies for energy, or materials for crafting? Can you afford to look around the next corner or should you head back to your base? And once you have the materials, what should you make? I never managed to find all three alien artifacts but usually got farther than I did the previous time. Oh, and, beware the space bears!

I enjoyed playing Beware the Space Bears and plan to dabble with it more. \ Its main innovations are interface related—it supports mouse, keyboard, and touch for mobile—and are well done. The gameplay comes closest of the 7DRLs I've played so far to create an experience where you can't hack and slash your way through the world and expect to survive. It's a harsh world and all of your resources are rapidly decreasing.\ The primary issue I've had while playing so far has been difficulty finding the water ice needed to generate more oxygen. I'm not sure yet if this is a small issue that's addressable with more gameplay or a game-breaking problem, but I'm happy to play a few more games to figure it out.

Heavy Axe

Completeness

2 - Has an end game and a few enemies and items. Variety of enemies could be a bit wider, so there are more tricks you have to use to defeat them.

2 - A couple of annoying bugs. On using a scroll it often does not register that you now have an empty inventory slot. When standing on top of a scroll that you can't pick up you cannot regain stamina by resting. Could do with a bit of refinement.

2 - Lack of minor bugfixes and improvements, but game is finished.

Aesthetics

2 - Functional ASCII graphics. Screen got a bit busy sometimes, with different shading all over the place that (I think?) didn't really convey much info.

2 - Standard ASCII. Communicates what needs to be communicated and controls are simple enough. The help page gives good clear instructions.

2 - Simple and proper graphics, intuitive controls.

Fun

3 - I really enjoyed the clever mechanics of this game. With more content and difficulty it could be a really enjoyable RL with staying power. Will probably play this again and try to beat it.

2 - A low 2. The central conceit is interesting and fun for a while, but I found that ultimately it didn't translate into much tactical depth. Killing most enemies is a case of standing in a hallway, resting to get maximum stamina, then yelling for them to come to you. Rinse and repeat. Later on there are tougher enemies which take more than one hit which need a little more preparation - you have to drop your axe, call them over and then recall it (it will hit them on the back of the head as it flies back to you). This is trickier to pull off and requires a little more thought, but not really much more varied.

3 - Very interesting gameplay due to tactical fighting system.

Innovation

2 - The basic roguelike mechanics are pretty straightforward, but the variety of moves available (recall, teleport, big heavy axe, dropping the axe, etc) made for a really interesting combination of simple ideas.

2 - Even though I don't think it really paid off as well as it might, the heavy weapon gimmick is something I haven't seen much before.

2 - Typical roguelike with non-typical combat.

Scope

2 - About what you'd expect from a 7DRL.

2 - A fair range of scrolls, runes and enemy types.

2 - Heavy Axe has everything what I need in 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

3 - 100% roguelike.

3 - Yep.

3 - 100% roguelike.

First: any game with a reference to The Sword is bad ass as hell. The concept of having a giant heavy axe that is both powerful and limiting is entertaining. Would like to see maybe some sound effects or screen shake or something to convey just how massive the axe is, so when you do an attack with power of 6 it really FEELS like a super heavy axe is destroying monsters. Maybe some more monsters filing in at you all the time would help too, to give it more of an action movie feel, where the player is constantly killing tons of enemies and barely holding their stamina up. The sentinels are a neat enemy, but sometimes it felt like I was just cleaning them up after the rest of the enemies were dealt with. Overall a well executed RL with neat, simple ideas and a good theme.

Heavy Axe has a novel modification to the standard roguelike rules - your main weapon is very heavy and dragging it around costs stamina. Unfortunately, the net effect of this is to reduce your tactical options rather than increasing them, which means that while initially interesting, the game eventually devolves into repeating a few sound tactics over and over again.

Heavy axe is nice roguelike, near ideal fusion of pure roguelike and nonusual improvments or features.

Second Stepper

Completeness

2 - Bug-free and solidly function on a technical front, but some design errors let it down a bit.

3 - Has an endgame, a good variety of enemies, some different weapons and items.

3 - Very complete, very playable. It's winnable (in theory, I haven't played well enough to get there yet!) and very nicely polished.

Aesthetics

2 - The UI and on-screen information are clear and easily parsed. I find the visual style a bit wearing on the eyes over time, though. It's a bit too bold and garish for me.

2 - I really like the low-fi aesthetics, could use a bit more polish to make it look great.

3 - I love the visual design, it reminds me of early 80s arcade titles like joust and lunar lander. There are nice bleeps and bloop sounds which are equally arcadey and support the visuals. The control scheme is a standard WASD and mouse and works just fine. The weapons have a nice weight when fired as they recoil and force the characters back a few pixels with each shot, an excellent aesthetic touch that has implications in the gameplay, as i describe in my innovation comments.

Fun

1 - This is a tricky one. It's not horrendously un-fun but I'd have to say skip it. It's not engaging enough to warrant going out of your way to play it, thanks mainly to the recurring irritation of constant friendly fire.

3 - This is a really fun game, and I will play it more.

3 - This is a really fun game to pick up and play for short bursts. Every 5 levels you'll get some random choice of items, for example you might find a long range rifle that you can swap out your default pistol for. There are good amount of enemy types that I saw. My highest level so far was around 15, so I wonder if there's more to discover.

Innovation

2 - The simultaneous control thing is novel.

3 - Very interesting use of pauseable realtime mechanics.

3 - What I found most innovative here is the dual player character setup coupled with a 1 hp system. You need to help your partner get up after they've been hit. If both are down at the same time it's game over. You control both characters at the same time using one set of controls. The actual position of each character relative to each other varies, for instance if one character has an SMG equipped, the recoil will force that character further and further away each time its fired. You can also make fine adjustments to their relative positions by using environment to push or pull them farther or closer. Its a very simple system that leads to some interesting gameplay moments.

Scope

2 - Reasonable.

2 -

2 - A decent amount of content and variety. The base mechanics are all executed very well.

Roguelikeness

1 - Not really. Although I can see where the dev has pulled in one or two roguelike-influenced aspects, it feels nothing like a roguelike to me. The criterion for a score of 2 is \"significant roguelike features\" so I'm afraid Second Stepper gets a 1 on this front.

2 - Has roguelike features, but is more of an arcade game. (No cell-based movement)

2 - Psuedo turn based action games are becoming a genre in their own right, and this a wonderful addition to the family. It's lacking in traditional roguelike combat features, but definitely feels inspired by earlier roguelikes that experimented with the pseudo turn based theme. Side thought... Is this similar enough to tactical positional gameplay on a grid? It's close, but the feel is significantly different. Either way, it gives us old timers with failing reflexes a taste of classic arcade action in a way that's accessible and fun.

I wanted to like Second Stepper because the idea of controlling two characters with the same key presses intrigued me. And that part is fine - you can push one of the characters against bits of scenery to adjust their position relative to the other character. It works well enough in that respect - but there are some serious flaws. \ \ Firstly, the game falls into the trap of believing the procedurally generated level layouts make a game a roguelike. That's not to say there's zero roguelike influence but it's a very tenuous connection. There's pushing the boundaries of the genre, and then there's pushing at them from a great distance outside using a long stick. That's not inherently a deficiency in a game, but this is a roguelike challenge. Roguelikes should at least be the starting point - the core. \ \ Secondly, friendly fire is on. That means one of your characters can shoot the other. At first this seemed like a logical extra challenge - not only survive each level but avoid shooting your ally. The problem lies in how easily this happens. All it takes is for both characters to nudge against the same wall or obstacle, and suddenly they're in a line and one is shooting the other in the back. This isn't a game ender - you can revive the fallen character as long as the other is still standing - but it's frustrating. The frustration is exacerbated by the fact that you revive a character by walking over them. Do you see the problem? You walk over the character and they jump to their feet - and begin following your button presses again. Now both characters are clumped together and shooting each other, and every time your revive one, you gun them down again, only the revive them and shoot then... You can separate clumped characters by pushing one against another object but it's still frustratingly easy to keep shooting each other by accident. Friendly fire seems like a mechanic which needed to be re-thought a bit in this case, especially in conjunction with the way revival works. \ \ Second Stepper is fundamentally an arcade game. The fact that time proceeds only when you take action lends the faintest hint of roguelike but it's still basically a retro arcade game which would have felt at home on an Atari of yore. We seem to be seeing a lot of these this year.

This is a really enjoyable game. The projectile mechanics combined with the semi-realtime mechanics make for a great blend of chaotic bullet hell and go at your own pace strategy. The different weapon combinations are a very clever way of allowing the player to try different play styles, and the enemies were varied and unique. I liked using a shielded shotgun for one character and a rifle for the other. I didn't manage to beat it, but will definitely play more later and try to win.

A fantastic pseudo turn based action game that reminds me of arcade classics of the early 80s. The game takes a risk with its dual player character setup that really works out well and provides some good fun. Play this now!

Synthesizer

Completeness

2 - It works. It didn't crash. But it's damn hard to figure out how to play even with instructions. Also, as far as I can tell it's high score game without high score table. And sometimes the game might start with enemies attacking you right away. Without you even making a turn.

2 - * Didn't run across any obvious bugs\ * Instructions incredibly helpful\ * Lack of substantive audio very noticeable given the theme

2 - \ So many mechanics for a 7DRL living in relative harmony that it delights the soul. No redundant bits on the synthesizer screen. There is a variety of enemies with different behaviour and none of them feel overpowered, the waveforms feel fairly balanced. This is a mad machine of many parts and I didn't encounter any crashes as I poked and prodded it. I did notice some bugs and imbalances, however:\ \ Because the actual gameplay area is rather small (8x8), player placement at the start of levels seemed to be too punitive. Often I would be born right next to an enemy or two and be forced to take damage before I could do anything, which might have killed me (had I not managed to make myself practically immortal). More than once I was hemmed in at an edge of the map by a few enemies right from the get-go and wasn't able to make use of any of the tactical niceties of the arenas. I'm assuming that the 8x8 grid is paying homage to some feature of actual synthesizers, but nonetheless I would recommend expanding the game area a little, or else improving the initial placement algorithm. A bigger arena might make area-effect bonuses more useful as now I didn't really find them worthwhile. \ \ What ultimately brought the challenge-level to near zero, however, was a two-part exploit I came across fairly often: First, it is possible to lure enemies onto tiles that reduce their damage potential to zero. Even on its own this is fairly powerful, but doing this on levels with a healing tile elevates it to the next plane. On such levels I was able to spend as much time as I had patience for waiting for the wave-form score to be negative whilst being on the same tile as the healing Gain special tile. Since there is no hunger clock, effectively this meant I could keep on increasing my HP forever. Thankfully, level progression does seem to address this a little as the waveforms reset now and then so enemies don't forever remain impotent. Hopefully this is easy to remedy - perhaps the FX tiles could disappear from a level after a given amount of activations?\ \ On top of these reasonably fixable things there was one more element which made the game feel less than complete for me: the low- and high-pass filter mechanics which take a third of the screen and tie in logically so well with the functioning of a synthesizer and the wave form behaviour unfortunately had such a limited impact on gameplay that I was able to ignore them completely, or to be more gracious: all I needed to do was to avoid picking up the filters on the gameplay area. Since this mechanic is woven so tightly with the other ones it's not immediately clear to me how you would improve it without breaking the link with actual synthesizer operation. \ \ I thought about this for a while since the game is such an impressive achievement overall but given the combination of these balance issues I can't bring myself to give full points. It does feel that it won't take much more development to get the game up there (barring the filter issue). Let it be clear though: the game is definitely complete enough to play and have fun with!\

Aesthetics

2 - Interface is imitating some kind of sound processing device and it's nice. But in order to calculate enemy damage you have to count small light grey spots on greenish background which tires eyes significantly. It could be much more convenient and safer for eyes to just hover mouse over enemy and see column of waveform when it will act.

2 - * Interface looked like a VST synthesizer!\ * Sound effects were harsh and didn't fit the synthesizer theme\ * The knobs are confusing---they look like they should be draggable with the mouse

3 - The whole of the visual outlook is neat, appropriate and consistent pixel art. The way the UI is the synthesizer is marvellous! Volume is HP, pattern is the level, etc etc. The UI is clear and the gameplay lucid (once you've understood what everything means, which does require consulting the video/documentation, but that's FINE). The sound fx are horrific as must befit a glitching retro synthesizer. In truth, I expected there to be much more in the way of sounds and music in a synthesizer game but I understand that is asking for quite a lot. Minor gripes: Since the player character is the @-symbol, I would have preferred enemies to be traditional symbols as well as some of the enemies are not very clear. It is excellent to be able to hover over elements on the game area to find out more about them. \

Fun

1 - IMO the game is too unbalanced to be fun. You might start next to enemy. The enemy might start near AMP+ and no matter where you move it will pick it up. On numerous games I had absolutely no possibility at damaging enemies without taking damage myself. Majority of effects have so high beats rate that it's practically impossible to use them.

2 - * Experimental interface attractive but not directly usable\ * Gameplay felt unbalanced, especially replicating glitches on a small board with time-dependent damage and destructible exits

2 - Different enemy types! Moving special tiles! Different waveforms! This is fun! \ Fooling enemies into tiles, fun! Balancing beats and turns to optimise damage and effects, (often enough) fun!\ \ The same things that made the game feel a little incomplete to me were also the ones that sapped the enjoyment. And perhaps there was not quite enough of a sense of progression to keep me coming back.

Innovation

3 - I've never seen sound themed rougelikes, And whole 'external factor affecting damage' idea has some potential.

2 - * Hack 'n' slash mechanics with more waiting for the oscillators\ * Synthesizer graphics are innovative but functionally serve as a twist to gameplay

3 - Want to give a 4! To me, these types of games are what 7DRL is really for. Really creative endeavours that stimulate and inspire admiration whilst affording decent gameplay too. The wave-form damage mechanism and the beats vs turns system are good and novel to me. The theme is good and the way things are tied together in the life-world of a synthesizer is splendid. \

Scope

2 - At first it looks very big. But if you think about it... Effects and pickups are all trivial 'stats' manipulation. There are a several enemies with different behaviors, but not enough to impress.

2 - * Lots of work on the graphics!

3 - Very impressive achievement in terms of scope for 7drl! My first thought when I saw this project being worked on during the jam was that this was way too ambitious, but I am glad to have been proven wrong! A testament to the power of a dedicated, talented developer (and Unity). This game has neat detail too that I haven't touched on yet, for example enemies overwriting exits. Go discover! As mentioned above, the sound-world is mainly noticeable by its absence, maybe this is the next step of development? The thought of making actual music while you play the synthesizer is tantalizing. \

Roguelikeness

2 - In my opinion 8x8 size of level is more suitable for puzzle. And it feels more like some weird randomly generated puzzle than roguelike game.

3 - * Roguelike elements are present

3 - Tactical. Turn-based. Tumbling together various mechanics to generate interesting interactions. Beautifully ugly. => Feels like a roguelike to me.

I guess this game might be interesting for people who are into sound editing, composing and so on. It uses a lot of specific terminology. I've read instructions. I've watched a little bit of video. And it's still confusing as hell.

My sessions of Sythesizer generally ended by blue glitches (the mobs) multiplying out of control surrounding and killing me. My inexperience playing is one factor, but the exit mechanics are another. Advancing to the next level clears the board of glitches, rebooting it with a fresh selection of patches, glitches, effects, and walls. But glitches can also destroy the exit, requiring you to destroy all the glitches on the level before another exit spawns.\ I never had much success dealing with the multiplying blue glitches. Beelining to the exit worked if I happen to spawn close to it. Otherwise, my only hope was to wait for my oscillator to be positive (letting me deal damage)…which almost always coincided with the glitch's oscillator being positive as well (letting them deal more). With no way to escape and having less damage than the mass of glitches, my games ended soon after.\ Despite the synthesizer-inspired gameplay, Synthesizer is largely non-musical, with no background music and only cacophonous sound effects. With so much work going into making Synthesizer look like a synthesizer, it's a shame that the audio didn't receive more attention.

Finally, I can fulfill my fantasies of being a grand synthesizer! This wonderfully coherent game transports you into the lebenswelt of a retro machine beset by some glitches that you need to fix. I won't go into depth on the rich mechanics here since the instructional video covers that well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy37WbU62qw), but in basic terms: You move around a small arena and defeat glitches in the synthesizer progressing from pattern to pattern, but to be able to do this you need to be very aware of how the synth works, what stage of the waveform you and your enemies are at, and where you and other elements are in the sequencer. Everything is tied together: The knobs and switches on the synthesizer can be manipulated by picking up certain items on tiles and they set the size and shape of the waveform, while FX tiles also move around the board adding tactical depth. The sequencer shows when different elements are due to act and it is important to tactically skip beats to make the most of your turns. Does that sound fun? Because it is fun! \ \ For me this is THE highlight of the few dozen 7drl entries I've seen so far this year. So TRY THIS GAME (and watch the instructional video / read the docs first to understand what's going on and avoid frustration. The 10 minute investment will pay off).\

The Dungeon

Completeness

3 - No bugs that I noticed, polish is good (nice title screen) and although it can feel imbalanced at times, it's actually pretty fair. Impressive.

2 - Seems to be complete, but I see some issues which should be fixed.

2 - Very rough around the edges but still playable.

Aesthetics

2 - Adequate ASCII presentation, though the title screen is excellent. Controls are generally pretty intuitive, though switching from arrows to numpad and back when possessing monsters is a bit awkward, and there seems to be an error in selecting abilities (8 does nothing).

2 - The Dungeon isn't good looking game, but screen is clear and controls are well-done.

2 - Looks decent. I found the control scheme unpleasant to use and confusing, in particular the targeting for ranged attacks of a controlled monster is easy to goof up and end up targeting the monster itself. I would prefer pressing the use command and then going into a modal target mode than how it is implemented currently.

Fun

3 - Enjoyable. The gameplay itself is simple and there isn't much in the way of strategy or even tactics beyond trying to pile your spawned monsters onto the adventurer at the most opportune time and hoping for the best. Pretty fun though, and most enjoyable take on this idea I've seen from a 7DRL yet.

2 - High hopes, middling effect. Game is very well projected, mechanics is just ok, but balance should be better. When I used my abilities two to three times, I was bored because I had nothing to do until the AP has restored. And AP regen ratio is too low for me.

2 - It's quite enjoyable to watch the AI controlled adventurer explore the dungeon, and wipe out a lot of your defenses. The actual actions you can perform are a bit fiddly,summoning monsters in particular. The defense aspect has a lot of room to grow.

Innovation

2 - This idea has been tried a few times, so 'innovative' seems a bit strong, but it's certainly a deviation from the roguelike norm.

3 - Great idea. There were some games which tried to pretend be 'RNG simulator', but these attempts usually were pathetic, trivial and unsuccessful. I think that no one had the idea to make the player takes the role of a dungeon as such...

2 - It's a fine twist on the standards.

Scope

3 - It's an ambitious project and although it's quite simple at a fundamental gameplay level, it's still impressive for a single week.

2 - Adequate.

3 - Very ambitious, and I'm very impressed by how much was actually done in those short 7 days. The game has a lot going on.

Roguelikeness

2 - It's not a roguelike but it definitely leans on roguelike tropes.

2 - Roguelike-like with strong roguelike spirit.

2 - A nice inversion.

Every now and then someone attempts something like this - play a roguelike from other side, as the one controlling the monsters. This one does it better than most. \ \ There isn't really much strategy to it, or even much in the way of tactics. You use your action points to spawn a group of monsters or a single stronger monster. Alternatively you can spend a few points to take control of a monster personally, which drops you briefly into roguelike gameplay as you try to take down the hero. Unfortunately the hero is much stronger than anything you can throw at him, and your control won't last long. It's not really a very productive use of your action points most of the time. \ \ In general, the game feels as though you're rapidly burning through your action points and not even making a dent on a hero who is just getting stronger and stronger. All you can do is try to time your monster spawns so that they catch him when he's already fighting some pre-existing monsters and ideally when you can get him surrounded. This can be a bit hit-and-miss though - the group spawns don't seem to be consistent in number, with a group sometimes numbering as few as two monsters but still costing full price. The powerful monster option is scarcely better. It's more consistent - one monster alone, always - but the strong monster is really just a standard monster with better kit. Think goblin with a healing spell rather than berserk minotaur lord. \ \ Also, the AI is a bit wonky. Sometimes you'll spawn a group as close as you can to the hero, who is already pinned down by other monsters, but the new guys just mill around aimlessly. This is exacerbated by the spawn locations. You can't spawn monsters in view of the hero, but what constitutes 'in view' seems to be variable, and sometimes your new group will be simply too far away to notice that he's there. It can feel like you're making no progress and I was about to give it up as unwinnable. \ \ That was when I won. The hero ran into a large-ish group of monsters a few floors down, I threw in a quick group and a strong goblin, and he went down. I didn't feel like I'd played particularly well or cleverly to make that happen, but it was still satisfying. \ \ Once you've beaten the hero, you probably won't play again. You don't feel you have enough control over the outcome for it to be worth experimenting with different approaches. Still, it's a fun diversion while it lasts, and the most accessible and polished form of this idea I've seen from a 7DRL.

The Dungeon is one of most unique 2014 7DRLC entries. Player takes a role of Dungeon. Although his features are very limited but it's sufficient to have fun.

An ambitious attempt at mashing a dungeon master game and roguelikes.

Warden's Duty

Completeness

3 - Definitely feels complete. Intro text and little 'PS' notes are entertaining, non-intrusive, and useful, the perfect combination.

3 - Looks and feels like a complete game. No bugs encountered.

3 - The game certainly feels complete.

Aesthetics

2 - It's a very simple presentation but it is done very well.

3 - Nice use of ascii, nice transition effects, nice 'action prediction' display.

3 - I love the look of the big ascii monster facing you in a FPS perspective, surrounded by faint # walls. The transitions between rooms are well done, and the use of WASD, HJKL, and arrow is very well appreciated. The problem, however, is the enter to continue. There isn't enough feedback on successful attacks (the monster disappears), but sometimes you are frozen due to needing to find an arrow. This inconsistency breaks the mood. Likewise, if you didn't carefully watch the blinking health before attacking you don't realize that the chest actually damaged you. Part of the prblem is your stats disappear with the monster, making it feel like they were the monster stats. And meaning when you drink from a pool you don't know what changed. I'd like to see the result of the combat leave my stats highlighted until I switch rooms, ideally with flavor text.

Fun

3 - Yes! It's super fun, you should be playing it right now instead of reading this review. It basically boils down to pure roguelike \"tactical decisionmaking\". It may seem simple at first, but once you get into the deeper levels you will be comparing, contrasting, analyzing, and wishing you hadn't spent that last arrow.

2 - It's fun to play it a few times. For me showstoppers are traps. Why I have to set them off at the cost of my health??? I have prisoners to dispose! And I always die on them. Because they do ridiculous amount of damage. And when there are 2 of them on the (later) level, it's almost always game over. Also there is not enough variety for replayability.

2 - Quite addictive as one wants to see what is around the next corner. However, its balance is much more to a war of attrition than any immediate rewards for clever action. The monsters are all similar level, it would be nice if there were more obvious huge hit point monsters so I know to use the arrow on them, for example, rather than the spread being 1 or 2 hp. Similarly, the elemental nature is intriguing, but unclear. I can use a fire attack on a fire elemental, but not a fire worm?

Innovation

2 - Very interesting! The actual combat and gameplay itself is not necessarily innovative, but the presentation and 'stripped down'-edness of the game is not anything I have seen done this well before.

1 - Nothing new here.

2 - A nice take on the pick-your-foe games that have been popular. I like the skinning as a series of cells.

Scope

2 - A very solid 7DRL entry.

2 - Just about right for a 7drl.

2 - An excellent achievement for seven days.

Roguelikeness

3 - I'm going to call it a roguelike, Probably more like a 2.5 but I will round up because it does give you a lot of that same feel in that 'every decision counts'. But don't expect lots of dungeon wandering and loot.

2 - One element of a good roguelike implemented in this game in it's purest - resource management. But basically it's the only element.

1 - Room based combat is the anathema to roguelikes. The dungeon theme and ascii dress is all this inherits from the genre.

A surprisingly deep browser \"roguelite\" (or roguelike?) with lots of interesting tactical decision making. Actually, the entire game is tactical decision making. It strips out all of the dungeon-exploring item identification stuff. It's just you and a bunch of monsters, with various affinities and damage levels. It's actually a little like desktop dungeons, but the combat plays out more like an old BBS game, where you pick actions from a menu. Does that make sense? No.. just go play it. You will enjoy yourself. Another winner from the author of the amazing ROT.js library.

You play as a warden of a prison that is full. You need to clear the prison by ... killing prisoners. All of them. In a nutshell it's a resource management game. You have health, mana and some consumables. And need to min/max to progress as long as possible. Level up fully heals and refills you. You have list of cells and can select order in which you fight enemies and use some special cells. Battles are resolved automatically.

Warden's Duty is a fun inversion of a dungeon crawl. A suitably humorous collection of ascii foes await you, but are conveniently ensconced in separate cells, allowing you to pick and choose which to fight. It has a chess-like rule where you can't immediately suicide yourself, so the game ends when you lose all options to continue, not with your death.

Goblin Gold

Completeness

3 - The game is a very simple one by nature, so although there aren't many features I think it's complete. It doesn't feel as though anything is missing.

3 - Complete and polished. There is a very rare (probably 1 in 100) chance of spawning on an island tile, but bugs that can be fixed at the beginning of a game with a simple restart are not that big of a deal.

3 - * Feels complete\ * Didn't encounter any bugs in standard play\ * Tile variations nice, as is the hiding in the woods\

Aesthetics

2 - The presentation is clean and communicates everything that's needed. Control works well and the UI is (justifiably) simple.

3 - Controls work just fine. It's hex movement handled well, which is not always the case. The map looks very nice, though the actual size of the displayed map was about half as big as the game window and thus the tiles were quite small.

3 - * Keypad controls worked well\ * Very easy to understand\ * Movement animation helped with understanding which goblin was moving\

Fun

2 - Definitely worth trying. It's a shame that it's so easy to miss the behavioural design of the goblins, but once you see it, it's enjoyable to try and deal with their flocking behaviour.

2 - The combat is fun for a time. Once you figure some things out, however, you realize beating the goblins is rather trivial. Every battle is the same: draw out a handful of goblins and then try to pull away a pair. Use the wait key until a pair moves next to you, then kill one and the other will run away. I think this mechanic is a good starting point for a more complex game.

2 - * Short, easy to understand, but fun while it lasts\

Innovation

2 - A nice change from monsters either charging in or standing back to pelt with missiles.

1 - Kudos to the developer for doing something a bit different than your boring dungeon crawl. Yet we've seen all of the mechanics before.

2 - * Goblin running and regrouping worked well here\ * The herb scent mechanic worked well to hide information\

Scope

2 - Fine.

2 - A little bit smaller than average considering that there is only one type of enemy.

2 - * Small but complete scope\

Roguelikeness

2 - Too light on features to feel fully like a roguelike, to me. Still definitely within the genre boundaries though.

2 - It has a nice map and permadeath of course. The gameplay is a bit too puzzly and the game lacks the complexity to be described as roguelike.

3 - * Small and simple, great for newcomers

Many of the most successful 7DRLs focus on one idea and dedicate their week to making the idea work. Goblin Gold does exactly that and, while it's very simple, it comes out better than some games which tried to be more ambitious. \ \ The game doesn't make its core idea very clear, and if I hadn't by chance read a post by the developer I might have dismissed the game as just walking around a map. It is that, but there's a little bit more to it. In essence, the idea is that goblins will only attack in groups. Lone goblins will always run away from you. Your mission is to collect all the treasures chests scattered around the map, and the goblins are trying to stop you, but they will hang back and bunch up before swarming you. \ \ It's very simple but it leads to more tactical play than you might expect. Timing becomes important, as does choosing your field of battle. I've found that luring goblin hordes toward narrow strips of land flanked by water seems to be my best bet. You can only sustain five hits, so allowing yourself to become surrounded can easily finish you off. \ \ Again, there isn't much depth to the game, but what's there is done well. It shows what can be done with just one simple idea executed adeptly.

Goblin Gold is a game about, surprise!, killing goblins and acquiring gold. You play a treasure seeker with a problem. All of the treasure is surrounded by goblins and these goblins are a bit trickier to dispatch than your average monster. They only move towards you when they have superior numbers and they retreat when singled out. This is a small idea: you collect 16 treasures and win. But this small idea is executed very well. The way the goblins naturally camp around treasure adds a nice bit of theme.\ \ As you figure out the consequences of the goblin behavior, your perception of the combat difficulty will go from \"extremely tough\" to \"just right\" to \"trivial.\" For a few minutes, it's just right and for that Goblin Gold is worth checking out!

In Goblin Gold, goblins keep their gold in chests, and the player is tasked with collecting each chest while fending off goblins who'd prefer not to share. Goblins understand that they're weak, though, and so run from the player if they're alone. Once a pair or more of goblins can launch an attack, though, they attempt to do so with mixed results.\ \ Playing Gold to completion was relatively fast, and the game's graphics and simple animation are evocative of playing a board game. Completing the game comes relatively quickly after understanding how combat works and the interactions with the forest and rock tiles, but that's OK: The game doesn't overstay its welcome.\ \ While playing, I couldn't help but feel a bit sad for the goblins. They're content to relax next to their chests until the protagonist comes rampaging through the land to steal their gold. Perhaps they can regroup in a sequel.

STRIVE

Completeness

2 - Except for a couple of things that seemed like bugs (melee mode seems to not take time and enemies occasionally end up on the same square) this probably would have been a 3.

3 - The games feels complete and bugless.

3 - * Didn't encounter any major bugs while playing\ * Great polish with the contextual tips.

Aesthetics

2 - A well put together game that flows decently.

3 - It's standard libtcod look, which is actually not bad. There is clever use of ascii animation to show blood and gore. There is animation of explosions and shots, fast enough to not cause irritation, but not too fast, you can see them well.

2 - * Generally good aesthetics\ * Purple a bit hard to see on the map\ * Easy to confuse gore with medkits\ * HUD well done

Fun

2 - If there was an actual end, more tactical choices, or any number of minor additions this would have been a 3. As it is though the fun diminished as time went on and thus while a good game that is worth a play it isn't a required play in my book.

2 - It's fun couple times. But then it's the same. Another fun-killing factor is slow start. Several starting levels are totally safe and feel like a chore.

2 - * Not really my thing, but I could easily see other people enjoying it\

Innovation

2 - I have seen it all before but the mechanics for it all seem decent and with a bit of a twist.

1 - I don't know if it's inspired by DoomRL or not, but there is nothing in this game that DoomRL do not have.

1 - * Straight hack and slash as far as I saw

Scope

2 - Well within the realm of what I expect from a 7drl.

2 - Just about right for a 7drl.

2 - * A solid 7DRL entry\

Roguelikeness

3 - This is without a doubt a true roguelike in the traditional sense of the word.

3 - Roguelike for sure.

3 - * Turn-based tactical fights with ASCII in procedural dungeons with permadeath.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8roqZiCx-U

Infinite arena shooter. Explosions and gore. I wish there was an aim. Infinite shooter could be fun. But to be fun it should be significantly different every run. Which is not the case for this game. Random caves are sure random, but they are so featureless that feel the same. And there is not enough variety of weapons too.

Strive's strengths as a hack `n' slash include its interface and small level size. Instructions appear in relevant contexts, such as a reminder that pressing q will throw the currently selected grenade. I thought the modeless method of equipping items worked particularly well: Pressing s will shoot your first ranged weapon, and holding shift and pressing s will pick up a ranged item and equip it in the s-slot. Standardizing this to the grenade selection would make it even easier for new players.\ \ I encountered two color selection issues. I had problems seeing the purple creatures and their attacks, though I'm willing to blame the monitor. The other confusing aspect was the ASCII gore that monsters explode into is a dark red color, and I frequently confused the gore with the brighter red med kits for healing.\ \ Strive is a solid entry and, like Goblin Gold, could serve as a first roguelike or procedural death labyrinth.

Edwin's 7DRL 2015

Completeness

2 - Needs more refinement to really make it work.

2 - For the most part very nicely polished, but I did experience a game-ruining bug where I was frozen in place and unable to make a move - I had to restart the game to fix it.

2 - The game is complete, no bugs found, but it's a little barebone and lacks descriptions of attack abilities. Not all of them have obvious effects.

Aesthetics

2 - Very basic. Functional but no flair.

2 - Very nice minimalist style with a mixture of nice chunky icons and ASCII. Looks great and has nice atmospheric sound effects. Could communicate some things better, however - you don't know what type of creature you start out as until you attack something, for example, and you have to learn and memorise the enemy abilities through trial-and-error - they are not really given any description beyond the letter that represents them.

2 - Background sounds add a lot to atmosphere of the game. Visually it look functional, but there is nothing to be excited by.

Fun

2 - Hasn't quite hit the right balance to be fun just yet, but it's worth a few plays to experience the mechanics. I'd like to see what could be done with these ideas.

2 - While a little confusing at first, gameplay is certainly interesting, with a few simple but novel rules combining together to require careful decision-making. You only have a very tight window in which to posess your next host, which meant that I found the optimum tactic to be avoiding killing enemies and letting them chase me around so that I could hop into their body when necessary. This is a little bit of a shame since it meant the combat abilities were often superfluous. The very restricted view also means that it is hard to plan too far ahead - staying alive, finding the stairs and avoiding getting trapped in dead-ends is fairly luck-dependant.

2 - It's moderately fun to figure out abilities of different enemies and abuse them. But without the map and with very limited sight range traversing of the level is quite tedious.

Innovation

3 - Very unusual mechanics here, with the potential to be brought to life if given more time to develop.

3 - A high degree of innovation - the ability to spend energy to move further per turn in particular being an interesting mechanic that I hadn't seen before. The combination of different rules results in some pretty unique gameplay.\

2 - Possession theme was explored before. Movement mechanics is somewhat interesting, but it is tied to game's mechanics as a whole and have no much sense on it's own.

Scope

2 - Given the lack of polish or glitz, scope is fair.

2 - \ A fair range of different enemies and abilities.

2 - Ok for a 7drl.

Roguelikeness

3 - Although initially it doesn't seem to be a roguelike at all, once you understand how the mechanics work it does feel like one. The constant opposing pull of two important resources which are never more than a slender thread from running out, is very roguelike indeed and the feeling of exasperated tension is exactly what roguelikes are about.

3 - Has many of the ingredients of a standard rougelike, although it plays very differently.

2 - While there are definitely roguelike elements in this game, but minimalistic games like this feel more like a puzzle than roguelike.

Edwin's 7DRL 2015 is, despite its excessively (deliberately?) literal name, exactly the sort of thing I look forward to about the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge. Although I don't necessarily enjoy it all that much, it has some really intriguing ideas which could work well if refined into something more than the time constraints of 7DRL allow. The game is entirely mouse controlled, and you can move anything up to several spaces in one move (an enemies will usually move only one). A big move costs more of your finite reserves of energy than a small move, but a big move also increases your combat strength, while a small move actually reduces it. Both factors are vitally important because you need to possess an enemy to gain a new body before your energy runs out, but you can only do so once your energy level is very low. At the same time, you must be strong enough to survive combat. The game becomes a constant tension between these two resources, and working out how and when to make long moves and short moves makes it more tactical than most. Not entirely fun yet but there's a lot of potential.

A very interesting and nicely put-together game with some interesting mechanical twists. It takes a little bit of getting used to, however - enemy abilities are not really telegraphed and trying the standard 'kill everything that moves' approach will often not give the best results.

It's hard not to compare this game with 'Posession' - 7drl entry a few years ago. Unfortunately comparison is not in favour of this game. Move further at the cost of energy and gain attack power at the same time is an interesting idea. In theory. In practice you'll hop around the enemy you want to possess while trying to kill enemies that have no interest. Superlow visibility range makes navigation a little bit of a gamble. There is always a risk to end up near enemy if you jump at max distance.

The Chase

Completeness

2 - There are some noticeable bugs but otherwise quite polished.

3 - Complete game.

3 - The game feels very complete and polished, with help screens and story all included.

Aesthetics

3 - Everything has a nice flow which is quite important for something like a sidescroller.

3 - Very good looking tiles/sprites, similar to retro arcade games. It's very easy to control PC.

2 - There's one major aspect of the presentation that made the game feel a little janky: I found it hard to parse what happened when I moved. I think this is partly because enemies blend in too much with the background tiles, and partly because there's not smooth movement of the tiles between turns. Overall not bad looking and playing game.

Fun

2 - Good game and well worth my time but I could take it or leave it. Now if it was on my phone I would probably play it a lot when waiting places.

2 - Very fast paced roguelike-like turn based arcade game. I was a lot of pleasure with playing The Chase, but I must tell that game is too chaotic often. Too often. But creators warn us: \"[This is]Autoscrolling procedural turn based DEATH!\". Agreed.

2 - This is enjoyable for a little while, but pretty hard to play for an entire hour. I did it though! No win sadly, It's crushingly hard, perhaps a bit unbalanced. I wouldn't mind getting some teleport and gun refills once in a while.

Innovation

2 - A nice twist with having a regular roguelike mixed into a sidescroller.

1 - Turn based platformer. With undead. And living trees.

2 - Nice twist on the hunger clock with the autoscrolling.

Scope

2 - This is middle of the road for what I expect from a 7drl which means it was quite good.

2 - I was wondering if give 'good' mark or 'averange' mark. Game is complete in terms of content, Mechanics is polished, there are a few enemies and powerups... More than I expected but less than really amibious project. Then 2.

2 - A reasonable amount of content for seven days.

Roguelikeness

3 - It is a roguelike and not a roguelike-like but it is also a sidescroller.

2 - Turn based beat'em up with procedural generated levels. The Chase is within 'roguelite' factors.

2 - It's missing that feeling of exploration and progression I get in true roguelikes, but its still takes a lot of inspiration.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hg-osvTt30

Initially, I wanted to rate this game lower. The Chase isn't pure roguelike (rather roguelite similar to Spelunky), is chaotic, player's life and death is strongly dependent on the RNG. And it's all right... But later I appreciated completness this game, sufficient scope, very athmospheric sprites reminding old platform games... Gameplay's rules become clearer. At all, it's very good coffebreak. But not for roguelike purists.

An interesting take on the hunger clock through the use of autoscrolling the map to the left every turn. That means you are falling behind unless you are moving forward. At the far left is instant death.

lightless (and library rl.js)

Completeness

3 - I didn't have any problems playing this with Firefox.

3 - Complete game, without bugs or underdevelopmented elements. Probably, because scope is as minimal as sometimes I get the feeling that this was the alpha version.

3 - Seems pretty complete and bug free. There is in game help, yay!

Aesthetics

3 - The atmosphere and the controls all flowed well.

2 - Nice small tiles and intuitive controls, but timers are awful.

2 - Good use of the oryx sci-fi tiles. The tiles are small, but because this is a canvas game we can just use the browser page scaling to get a better view. Controls work fine.

Fun

2 - It was worth my time but I wouldn't mind if I had not played it.

2 - It's interesting game, fear-of-the-dark mechanics is interesting and athmospheric. Unfortunately, the potential has not been exploited and the game quickly goes boring.

1 - This is the lowest area for me. While the timers and such build a form of tension that works very well with the horror theme, walking around in empty spaces makes me very impatient. The last few levels are very empty. With RLs I prefer to be making interesting decisions fairly frequently.

Innovation

3 - I have never seen a horror roguelike like this before. While not perfect it feels fresh to me.

2 - Not very innovative, but 'dark fears' are presented in a different manner than similar topic roguelikes.

3 - Time spent in light vs shadow is a very nice twist on the hunger clock.

Scope

2 - Fits what I have come to expect from a 7drl.

1 - Only basic content and activities.

2 - The game itself is fairly small in scope, but makes the best of it's minimal design. Kudos for making a library also.

Roguelikeness

2 - It is so much like a Roguelike but not one. It is a different genre of roguelike is how I would put it.

2 - A bit roguelike and a bit roguelite.

2 - It's a horror game with a few baseline RL inspirations, and one particularly innovative feature, but despite this, I don't actually feel like I'm playing a roguelike. Probably because the primary source of conflict involves managing resources rather than tactical combat (or combat-like elements).

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxt2tH-sn3o

Another browser roguelike. Theme is fear of the dark on damaged space ship. I felt little like characters of 'Alien' movie - the whole ship crew died and I heard strange noises in dark areas. Graphics is very nice (athmospheric tiles) but good impression is marred by harsh timers. I had problems with evaluation completeness and fun - by scope. Scope is so minimal, player activity is limited almost only to check dead bodies and switching light. I didn't know if game is so unfinished and underdevelopment... But I must say that this what has been done is done right. Similar feelings with gameplay. At all, it's good game, but only for five-minutes sessions. For 2, 3 times.

This game can seem a bit pointless at first as it doesn't really give you much direction and the deaths seem almost random, so here's a hint: Pay attention to the unlabeled red timer in the top right. Good use of horror theme.

Combat Chess

Completeness

2 - No bugs encountered, but not a great deal of polish either. No end-goal. Level transitions are very abrupt. Game feels like it needs a little bit more work done on it to really be complete.

2 - No bugs found, but it looks like the game is not really complete. It's too barebone.

3 - At beginning game was badly bugged, but post-7DRL version is complete and bug-free. Almost.

Aesthetics

2 - Quite nice ASCII. GUI layout is clear and makes sense and the controls are straightforward. It's annoying that you can't change your selected unit by clicking on them - you need to do it via the side-bar.

2 - The game looks ok. Mouse controls are nice, but absence of keyboard control in a roguelike is somewhat strange. At least character switching should have been mapped on 'tab' or 1,2,3.

2 - Simple but rogueligish graphics. Controls unusual, but intuitive.

Fun

1 - Almost a 2. The mechanics are certainly interesting, but I feel they need more development to come together and be fun. The need to keep cycling through the different chess moves is irritating and didn't lead to much interesting gameplay. There's little in the way of team tactics necessary - you can just keep using one character every turn. The effects of the different weapons are cool, but don't seem well-balanced - the best bet is usually simply to take the most straightforward, highest damage weapon and keep using it. This all leads to the gameplay being fairly repetitive and about simply chipping away at the enemy health bars over time. I do feel that there could be a very fun game made with these mechanics, however - it just needs more refinement. A much smaller board and lower HP values could help to tighten everything up and make the move selection matter a lot more.

2 - It's a little bit entertaining at first. But once you figure out details, it becomes boring rather quickly.

2 - Due to mechanics game provides a lot of fun, but lack of goal/main objective bothers me.

Innovation

3 - There have been chess-like roguelikes before, but I haven't seen one done quite like this. I don't think they have been developed quite enough yet, but the ideas themselves are good.

2 - Team of characters is not innovative in any way. There were multiple various attempts in the past. Character moves selected from pool of chess moves is an interesting find.

3 - There was fusions of roguelikes and chess, but never in that way!

Scope

2 - Fairly basic, but with a range of different classes and weapons available.

2 - On a lower side of 2. Almost 1. The game is too simplistic. There is nothing beside core mechanics and core mechanics itself is rather simple.

2 - Rich gamplay, polished mechanics, but lack of content.

Roguelikeness

2 - A low 2. The aesthetics give it a superficially roguelike feel, but beyond being turn-based there is actually very little here that is distinctive of the genre.

2 - It's closer to tactical puzzle then to roguelike.

3 - Roguelike. Maybe without roguelike mechanics, but with strong roguelike feelings.

Combat Chess is a small arena-based team tactics game with interesting chess-based mechanics. I don't think that those mechanics really come together as a coherent whole very well at the moment, but with further development of the basic ideas I think there is potential for a great game here.

Attempt to integrate chess moves and team combat into a roguelike game. While chess moves look interesting, team feels unnecessary. You can simply play with each character till he dies. Some kind of a goal or at least scoring wouldn't hurt.

Good game with interesting mechanics. There was several 'chess-ish' roguelikes, but chess elements never been used in this way. First version was bugged and crashes often, but in postmortem always works fine.

Feeding Frenzy

Completeness

2 - Generally pretty polished but loses a point for the annoying delayed movement. There's no need for that in a game which is otherwise well polished.

3 - The game is complete and seems bug free.

3 - Has everything a small game needs.

Aesthetics

3 - Perhaps the strongest point. The visual design is excellent in terms of communicating information clearly and efficiently.

2 - I like the look and the sound. I do object a bit to some of the mouth shapes not being very distinctive when orbiting your character. Circle and square almost blend together making it easy to accidentally get the wrong type (and that can be deadly) The dark blue used for the powerups doesn't help, the blue runs into the black and I have to peer carefully to see what power up is what.\ \ What I really object to is the delay when moving. This cripples game play, especially when trying to get back up to higher levels. Often in a puzzle like this one knows three or four moves in advance and want to make them. It does not help the delay gets longer one later levels as you wait longer for other people to make their turns.

2 - Looks are OK but not my favorite, sound is passable. Music is unobtrusive. Controls work as expected. The rhythm of the gameplay supports the nature of feeding as not an apex predator, but rather something in between. There are are bigger fish in the pond, so keep your wits about you and wait for the right moment to strike. that said, this kind of takes the frenzy part out of it, see the roguelike section for more comments on this.

Fun

3 - Perhaps too puzzley for some roguelike players but decently fun in my view. I'm unlikely to keep returning to it for long but it's fun enough in short plays, and certainly worth checking out.

2 - It is very easy to get into. I was afraid with the readme there would be much memorization of enemy types, but it proved very straightforward.\ \ I like the idea of the powerups to fight the different enemy types, but feel there should be some form of cost to collecting them all, perhaps having to switch or choose... But it also suffers from allowing resting. For four-way movement games this greatly alters the dynamic, making it a lot less tight an experience. Which might be fine if I could move quickly....

2 - This is an enjoyable little game. The combat is easy to understand and deterministic which means eating your prey is all about positioning and timing. Additionally you need to keep an eye on the broader picture to make sure you don't end up boxed in by big guys. It's not mind blowing good times, but a nice little coffee break that would be nice to have on my phone.

Innovation

2 - Tries to combine some roguelike features with some elements which roguelikes don't traditionally use.

2 - The mouth-shape paradigm is quite cool. I think this would be very cool to reskin as a bacterial warfare game, where you are a bacteria trying to upgrade new components to disable the different types of fellow germs.

2 - The different mouths needed to consume different prey is a nice twist on the standard RL weapon systems.

Scope

2 - Good for 7 days. It doesn't blow me away with its scope but it's remarkably polished and balanced for a 7DRL.

2 - Well chosen scope for a 7drl.

2 - Nothing too ambitious.

Roguelikeness

2 - The permadeath and challenge level are certainly roguelikeish, as are the turn based play and procedural generation. In many ways, though, it feels more like a puzzle game.

1 - This is a tough thing to judge, and I can see being contentious. My main objection is probably the resetting with each level. This eliminates any sense of progression on the part of the character, making it feel like a series of puzzles rather than a journey.

2 - Borrows just enough from the genre to pass as a Roguelike-like. One RL convention left out that seems rather obvious for a game about feeding... why no hunger clock? I think the hunger clock would go a long way towards making the game more a frenzied like the title implies. As it is the player can afford to take their time and pretty much avoid taking risks, and still be successful.

Feeding Frenzy is really a puzzle game more than it's a roguelike. The thing that gets it into the 'roguelikeish' or 'roguelikelike' category for me is the combination of turn based thoughtfulness and procedurally generated levels. Otherwise it feels very puzzley. \ \ The idea is to eat enough on each level to be whisked away to the next. Food is scattered around each, and more appears as you play, but at the same time enemies are trying to eat it too. If you find the right powerups you can eat weak and medium enemies, which count as food. You can never eat the strongest enemies. The game mainly comes down to careful manouevring and decisions about whether to try and grab safe food away from enemies, or risk chomping down on the enemies themselves to clear the playing field a bit. It's a good design, simple and accessible but still offering tense choices. \ \ The game's main strength is its presentation, not in the sense of being pretty (though it's pleasant enough) but in the sense of conveying information. Different enemies are different shapes. Strengths of enemies are represented by both colour and size - weak ones are green and small, medium ones are orange and a bit larger, while strong ones are red and the largest. Powerups match enemy shapes so you can easily see which foes they allow you to tackle, and the shapes of all your collected powerups orbit you so you can see at a glance what your combat situation is at any given time. It's an elegant design which works very effectively and I applaud the developer for devising it. \ \ The game overall is good. It's enjoyable enough for a while, and the great visual design really enhances the gameplay. My one notable criticism would be the awkward movement delay. It seems the enemy movement is staggered, so once you get to about 5 enemies or more, your own movement feels very cumbersome. You move, then every enemy moves in succession, one at a time, before you can move again. \ \ That's a relatively minor niggle though. The game is still worth playing.

Feeding Frenzy is a very fun, fast-paced, and proceduraly generated puzzle game. It has very abstract art style that looks excellent, along with pleasant tunes and sound effects. While the gameplay is not extremely complex, it is worth playing to experience it!

A cute coffee break RL, somewhat reminiscent of Zaga-33, but much easier. Very complete and playable.

MineClimbeR(L)

Completeness

2 - Generally well designed by a weird design choice at the start and occasional game-ending crashes mar the experience.

2 - MineClimbeR(L) feels like a complete game. There's a sensible menu system, instructions and the whole thing feels polished and complete. The caves you explore are interesting with a selection of gentle inclines and sudden fatal drops. Minerals for crafting are vitally important and the scarcity of these feels a little unfair at times. I also ran into occasional crashes-to-desktop which kiboshed some promising descents.

1 - * No binary; major problem\ * Didn't see a way to mute or change music/sfx volume\ * When tied in, some creatures didn't seem to stop moving\ * Vertical movement & tied in movement worked well\ * FOV didn't seem to decrease despite comments about the torch running out\

Aesthetics

2 - Not outstanding but good. Information is mostly clear. Some of the enemies are hard to see but it's not an insurmountable problem. The simplicity of the crafting menu is very welcome.

2 - The game has a blocky, opaque feel achieved with the use of the fully-filled-in ASCII character. You see the cave from a zoomed-out perspective giving the cave an expansive and echoing feel. This does mean that the monsters are rather small. The simple sounds help the feeling of mining. There is a music track which feels somewhat bleak and reminiscent of Fallout - I felt a more light-hearted theme would have suited the game better.

2 - * Sensible keybindings\ * Yellow on the light gray was difficult to read\ * Light gray on the surface after digging resembled the light gray of the walls underground but behaved differently\ * HUD looked good, but hard to tell how much health/pick was left\ * Menu system & text intro worked well

Fun

3 - Flawed it may be but it's well worth a play. It manages to be two things at once without feeling forced.

3 - Mining is fun. And dangerous. If other games in this competition taught me that cave diving is dangerous, and I shouldn't mess around in bullet hell, then this game taught me that a hidden fatal drop may be over the next ledge or through the next block of floor. Yet, I can't tie myself into the wall every time, because I'll run out of anchors. Therefore I'm taking risks, I'm learning the terrain and, when I have to, I'm doing long descents by making cubbyholes in the wall and rappelling out of them. I like playing short roguelikes fast-and-loose, at least until I the RNG gives me a run too promising too lose. A blast.

1 - * Setup was a chore\ * Not sure if it's intentional, but the pick breaking basically ended the game, and some levels didn't seem to generate enough ore to make both sufficient anchors and picks\ * Not a fan of automatically entering a tile after digging it out\ * Felt like a tech demo on the verge of becoming a more fun game with just a bit more development time; as is, I didn't feel much of a hook from the existing mechanics\

Innovation

2 - The Terraria style of game already has a slight touch of roguelike to it in some respects, so this isn't totally new, but it's different enough to be refreshing.

2 - The side-scrolling gravity-based roguelike has been done a number of times but the climbing mechanics feel unique here and the addition of crafting adds another fun element.

2 - * The vertical movement was a nice twist\

Scope

2 - I'm on the fence between 2 and 3 here. I'm not astonished that this was done in a week but it's very well realised for such a short time. The lack of polish costs it a 3 though, since that pulls it back into 7 day range.

2 - The core climbing mechanic is very well designed and the game expands around that. There's not much diversity in terms of monsters or crafting items but there's enough to round out the package.

2 - * Inventory system worked well\ * Overall scope managed well

Roguelikeness

3 - Some might disagree with this score, but I consider this to be a roguelike. Not a conventional one, not the norm, but it's not a roguelike-like or roguelite. It interprets the principles of the genre in a different way, but they're still very much there. Crucially, it gave me pretty much the same feel as a roguelike. So that's settled.

3 - The game has a randomized grid-based map, turn-based positional combat and is really about resource management and risk-taking - those resources being HP, pick strength and remaining anchors. These are all strong roguelike themes.

3 - * Permadeath, procedural levels, many clocks, turn-based, even ASCII graphics.

A few years ago I went through a phase of playing a Steam game called Terraria, and that's what MineClimeR(L) reminds me of most. It's not as vast and fully featured as Terraria of course, but it's kind of a roguelike version of a similar concept. You're delving as far underground as possible in an attempt to learn the truth behind various rumours and bring evidence back to the surface. To descend you'll need a pick, some rope and a lot of care - the caves are full of sheer drops, dead ends and hostile creatures. \ \ You start off with a pick and some rope. The rope is absolutely essential since the biggest danger is falling. Your vision radius into unexplored areas is painfully small, and you can easily step off what seems to be a low ledge only to discover it's a gigantic plunge. It's wise to anchor ropes before moving into the unknown so that you can descend in safety or cross large gaps - but you only have a limited supply of these anchors (you retrieve the rope itself automatically). Soon you'll have to craft more from the materials you mine from the walls. Even your pick has a limited lifespan, though, so don't overdo it!\ \ In many games, crafting feels forced - a fashionable inclusion superfluous to the main gameplay. Here it fits neatly. It makes perfect thematic sense to make do with whatever you can scavenge while you're exploring, and it gives you a reason to risk the durability of your precious pick to mine useful trinkets from the walls. Crafting is simple, too. Hit Tab to open the menu, and if you're able to craft anything from your current supplies, its name will be listed. The main thing you'll be looking for in this list is Anchor, so you can continue using the life-saving qualities of your rope. \ \ I compared this game to Terraria and that's definitely the most conspicuous comparison, but the structure of the objectives is very roguelike. Descend to the bottom of the caverns, find something specific, and then climb out again (I've never got to the bottom but the help text mentions returning to the surface). Somehow the game still manages to feel like a roguelike, even though it seems to be doing something very different. \ \ The game isn't without its flaws. One glaring oversight (or unwise intentional choice?) is the entrance to the caves. This is always a sheer drop which will injure you or kill you if you just leap down - but that's the only option because your rope/anchors don't activate while you're above ground. That's logical in that you don't have a cave wall backdrop but it means your game always begins with at least injury, and often outright death. I suppose you good dig down through the ground instead but a dig of that size at the start of the game would take an aggravating toll on your pick. I don't see why you can't just enter the caves in a less stupidly lethal fashion. It's like if Rogue started you off by immediately setting you on fire and leaving it to the RNG to decide if the fire goes out before it kills you. Stupid. \ \ The game also occasionally crashes to desktop when using the crafting menu. It's not so frequent as to be a huge annoyance but if you feel you're making good progress and you're suddenly booted with no save, it can be aggravating. \ \ All in all, MineClimbeR(L) is an admirable attempt to combine two types of game and it works surprisingly well. It's flawed but worth playing nonetheless, an with a bit more polish it could have staying power.

MineClimbeR(L) is a fun spin on a roguelikey Spelunky with a bit of Terraria thrown in. Dig, craft, take risks and die frequently!

Starting MineClimbeR(L) required installing Python, PyGame, and then downloading the source. This generated a SDL fullscreen video mode error; attaching an external monitor to my Windows netbook, removing mirroring, and then restarting resolved the error. While not insurmountable, the process didn't leave me excited about the game.\ \ The game's clock consists of anchors, rope, picks, and ore. Anchors limit how many walls you can climb. Rope determines how far you can move on your anchors. Picks deteriorate every time a brick is dug out and are necessary to gather ore. Ore's used to create anchors and picks.\ \ After getting MineClimbeR(L) to run, I kept running into problems managing those clocks. I'd run out of anchors in one session and try again making sure to create more in the next. Then my pick would break, and I'd be unable to gather the ore needed to make another pick or more anchors. In the next, I wouldn't find enough ore and then run out of anchors or pick strength regardless.\ \ MineClimbeR(L) could be an interesting mining game for people interested in a smaller-scale Minecraft or Terraria from a roguelike perspective, and so it's a shame that it's currently limited by its distribution. I'm also not sure if I'm a bad player, which is likely, or if the level generation skewed towards insufficient ore. I'd be interested in revisiting the game if development continued.

Roguelikeishness

Completeness

2 - Feels almost complete. Enemies seem to be placeholders - which is fine - but also found a few bugs where enemies would be stuck in walls. Game doesn't seem to have an end?

1 - There are quite a few bugs related to picking things up, opening things, using things... You often have to press the associated hotkey four or five times for the action to register. There are also bugs like enemies stuck in walls, et cetera. The game is also clearly not balanced, and far too easy.

3 - Game looks complete and rather debugged.

Aesthetics

3 - Looks great. Animations are nice. I wish walking a step didn't take so long. The map could also be more useful, showing enemies or exits, or at least places you have already visited.

3 - The sprites are nice, as is the field of view effect, screenshake, particle effects. Everything is visually pleasing and easy to understand.

3 - Nice, very atmospheric tiles, good lightnings. One bother me - interval between input and execution is too big.

Fun

2 - It's fun! A classic roguelike, in a dark dungeon, with enemies to mash and potions and scrolls to use (although they are always identified and there are only a few types).

1 - Given the lack of balance and very simple combat mechanics, the game wasn't much fun to play.

2 - Interesting game which by great atmosphere makes up lack of balance.

Innovation

2 - Nothing terribly innovative, but it is nice to see something classic and 2D done using unity.

1 - I didn't see any features that were unique or innovative. This follows a typical, very basic roguelike formula. Bump to hit, and use items occasionally.

1 - Typical roguelike - dark dungeon, alone adventurer, some potions to drink and enemies to slash.

Scope

2 - A solid attempt at a 7DRL, about what one would expect.

2 - Only a few enemy types, not much variety in level generation, very simple combat.

2 - Adequate. Rich of random generation algorithms are 'balanced' by lack of enemies variety.

Roguelikeness

3 - Definitely a roguelike.

3 - It fits the mold of a traditional roguelike for the most part.

3 - Roguelike.

A roguelike in the classic sense. Made using unity with nice lighting effects and animations - fireballs! level up fireworks! I could not find an end to the game, and the enemies seemed rather easy compare to the amount of damage done and the amount of scrolls you fine. Has an interesting crystals and slotting mechanic but I could not really tell if they were doing anything. Looks great and combat is meaningfully tactical.

This is definitely a good start to a roguelike, but it is not very complete, unfortunately. It looks great visually, but the limited gameplay can be boring.

Roguelikeishness is interesting game made in Unity. Looks like old 2D dungeon crawlers and has similar spirit, which doesn't interfere with recognition this game as roguelike. Dungeons are very atmosphering and it's high diversity of map generation, but enemies are very similar and are boring.

Six Way Wanderer

Completeness

2 - Feels like it could've used an extra day of polish, but very much feature-complete and playable.

3 - I found no bugs and the game feels finished.

2 - Feels like it's missing content, though what it has is polished

Aesthetics

3 - Looks great. Controls are a bit fiddly sometimes (like having to enter the next level when stepping on an exit tile - maybe this is a feature?) but fairly straightforward and obvious. Animation effects are a very nice touch.

2 - Almost a 3. All it needs is the ability to just click where you want to go and go there if there aren't any enemies and possibly some help text for the abilities though they are mostly self explanatory once you use them.

2 - Simple style works nicely, but the controls are rough - mouse only makes it a chore to move around.

Fun

2 - Not a ton of content but certainly fun and worth checking out. A great starting point for a more in depth game. Puzzle elements add a lot, and the combat can get very tactical, which works great with the hex layout.

2 - Great fun and it wasn't a waste of my time to play. A good Coffee-break roguelike.

2 - Simple game, gets quite repetitive. Easy to beat and has nothing to encourage replays.

Innovation

2 - Nothing super innovative but the nested puzzles utilizing the different powers and the detailed overworld map are nice touches.

2 - Not many things in it to innovate but the abilities are decently thought out and somewhat different from the usual.

1 - Very standard gameplay.

Scope

2 - About what I would expect from a 7DRL.

2 - This is middle of the pack for what I expect from a 7drl. In other words it did what it set out to do and didn't overreach too much.

2 - On the small side, very quick to play.

Roguelikeness

3 - It's a roguelike, but without a lot of the extra stuff like identification. The combat is great though, very tactical and the low health makes every step feel like it counts - which is a core roguelike concept to me.

2 - More of a puzzle roguelike then a pure roguelike. It is missing too many things to truly be a pure roguelike but close enough that I am fine with people calling it one.

3 - Turn-based, random environments, though light on tactical depth.

A fun little \"puzzle-esque\" roguelike played on a small hex grid. Tactical movement is important, and the elemental powers and overworld map add a nice twist.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qhA3RUa3Ro

Hex-based crawler with very tiny levels, a few simple mechanics and a small puzzle to progression. A bit too simple overall, with no difficult decisions to make and nothing to encourage replayability. A bit more involvement of the powers that are found would have made things more interesting.

Sneak

Completeness

2 - No bugs or glitches that I've noticed. A mild lack of polish nudges this down from a 3 - it feels a little rough around the edges - but otherwise it's solid.

2 - * No obvious bugs, though the fov cones seem to intersect strangely with the walls at times. Didn't see a gameplay effect, though

2 - The line of sight calculations are a bit too loose and sometimes allows the enemy to see you through walls (they will stop and just keep firing at the wall between you and them). There's also some UI issues, the abilities and their associated power meters overlap the game space in a nasty way. Additionally, the camera zooms out when progressing to later levels, which seems like a mistake and makes it harder to play the game as the tiles and enemies become too small to see. Despite these issues, this game is stable and very playable in its current state but could use a lot of polish.

Aesthetics

2 - Very, very basic but perfectly functional. Letter choices for enemies are self-explanatory - G for Guard and T for Target. When a guard or the target has been eliminated, they have a noticeable red square on them. It's very basic stuff but the information is clear and easy to parse. The Metal Gear Solid-style vision cones are probably the strongest aspect. Arrow key movement is smooth and logical.

2 - * Font is a little difficult to read\ * Controls were simple and easy to understand\ * The abilities covering the map was a bit annoying\ * Zooming out on subsequent levels didn't work well for me

2 - It's visual design is very rudimentary but effective. there are some issues with some UI stuff overlapping the game space in an unpleasant manner. The controls work as expected. my only complaint is that \"wait\" is mapped to period, which for me is an awkard place because my left hand is on ZXC for the powers while my right is on the Arrow keys for movement. It would have been nice to have \"wait\" also bound to spacebar.

Fun

2 - Pretty entertaining for a little while. It's essentially a turn-based version of the Metal Gear Solid VR missions (for those of us old enough to remember those). The gameplay is simple but challenging and satisfying, if not particularly enduring.

2 - * Enjoyed my time playing\ * Difficulty ramped up a bit quickly for me\ * Abilities were all useful

2 - I'm not typically a huge fan of stealth games but this one is quite enjoyable. The fact that I can see the enemies line of sight displayed on the map combined with the psuedo turn based gameplay makes for an enjoyable experience. The three powers I encountered all work well and each lends it's own flavor to the game.

Innovation

2 - Stealth is seldom used very well in full roguelikes, so it's nice to see it being the focus here. I've played other stealth-centric 7DRLs but this one takes its stealth ideas from a well established major franchise. Good thinking.

3 - * The AI seemed well done here, still recognizably being in \"patrol\" and \"alert\" states but less predictable than most stealth games\ * The \"sneak\" ability reducing guard fov is great: Simple to understand and useful

3 - I think there's a lot to be said for limiting the detection range of enemies to a cone and displaying that on the game map. I could see this method fixing problems with stealth in the standard roguelike formula, where the stealth ends up boiled down to a statistic that determines whether an enemy sees you based on random chance and radius.

Scope

2 - Reasonable for a 7DRL.

2 - * Great scope for a 7DRL

2 - Short, but whats there works well and has a decent amount of variety in each play.

Roguelikeness

2 - Not fully a roguelike but has enough features of one to be appropriate for 7DRL. Movement is continuous turn-based (as in something like WazHack or Red Rogue) - i.e. enemies only move when you do, but time passes smoothly rather than being divided into distinct ticking 'turns'. Challenge, permadeath, procedurally generated layouts - somewhat roguelikeish, for sure.

3 - * Permadeath, procedural levels, and psuedo-turnbased. The player being substantially weaker than the guards also contribute to the roguelike experience.

2 - Pseudo turn based action games are becoming a genre of their own, and its amazing to see that this roguelike invention spreading its wings.

Sneak is, as its name would suggest, a stealth game. The idea is to bypass some guards and assassinate a target, then escape back to the entrance. Each level is more challenging than the last. The guards patrol more or less at random, so they're not predictable, but vivid yellow vision cones show you precisely whether they'll be able to see you - a feature which the Metal Gear Solid stealth games used repeatedly, and with good reason. It worked well there, and it works well here too. \ \ Another MGS comparison comes up in the way you deal with guards. It's often best to just get past them, but if you're able to get close enough without being seen you can actually knock them out. The game would be fine, if a little basic, with just this essential gameplay in place but a welcome touch of extra depth and playability is added by powerups. There's one on each level, awarding a randomly selected power which can be activated with a key press and recharges over time. These include the likes of speed bursts, reduced guard vision range, and freezing time. \ \ All in all, the game is a good effort. The stealth is simple but works solidly, and the fact that it's the sole focus works in the game's favour. Presentation is basic and feels a little bit unpolished but it's perfectly functional and imparts information clearly. Worth a play.

The guards have the standard patrol and alert states of stealth games, and it works well with the generated levels. Unlike many stealth games, the guards didn't seem to fall into predictable patterns, requiring frequent improvisation. And alerted guards—whether after spotting you or bodies left behind—become even more frenetic in their searches.\ The pseudo-realtime worked well here with responsive and simple controls. The difficulty ramps up quickly, and guards can spawn facing the level start, but these issues don't diminish the fun.

Pseudo turn based action game with emphasis on stealth gameplay. Great fun for a quick play, it is sadly marred by a lack of polish and some dodgy line of sight calculations.

scroll

Completeness

2 - Needs work.

3 - It feels like a complete and polished game.

2 - There are some technical issues that are tied to the way the game is implemented. In browser mode different browsers behave a little bit different, and in telnet mode you need very good terminal to handle the game correctly.

Aesthetics

2 - The scroll-like presentation is nice but some UI aspects are confusing.

3 - The UI provides all the necessary information and the controls function very well.

1 - Walls of black and white text. Not very exciting. Noticeable delay between keypresses and movement, that once again comes from the way the game is implemented, but it's not player's fault, why he should be suffering?

Fun

2 - Worth a try for the novel idea but it gets frustrating after The first dozen or so attempts.

2 - It was definitely an enjoyable game. The harder difficulties are (naturally) more interesting than the beginning one.

2 - It's somewhat fun at first, but after awhile searching combinations of letters in a wall of text becomes tiresome.

Innovation

3 - Very inventive concept.

3 - There are several aspects of this game that I would consider innovative, and the whole package together is quite unique.

2 - Forced scrolling of a level is not new. Making of spells by eating letters is new and quite interesting, but it's a part of a gameplay that is not the gameplay of a roguelike game.

Scope

2 - Could get a 3 except that the gameplay needs a lot more work, so I'd say the scope of the finished product is fair for 7 days.

2 -

2 - Look about right for a 7drl.

Roguelikeness

2 - A bit roguelikeish but not much.

3 - Although the “levels” are not procedurally generated, they are effectively random since you could use any source material for them. Everything else about the game fits what I would consider a RL.

1 - Essentially it's a twisted labyrinth game. Aside from ascii presentation there is nothing roguelike-ish here.

Scroll has an interesting idea but seems to fall afoul of its own inventiveness. Your @ navigates the pages of a text (which text it is depends on the difficulty setting) while trying to keep ahead of a gradually scrolling screen. You'll want to aim for the spaces between words since these are the routes you can pass through. You can move over letters and punctuation to swallow them, which either grants you a little bonus (punctuation) or progress towards casting spells (letters). When you've swallowed the letters needed to cast a particular spell, simply type them and the spell is cast. The problem is that once you've swallowed a letter you can't move far. It's not long before the irritation of constantly being anchored by letters when you can't see any other way to move eclipses the desire to explore the mechanics further. Scrolls tries something bold and fresh but doesn't really pull it off.

Scroll is a very unusual game. You need to navigate your way through a text document, weaving between words, at a given pace. Go too slow and you’ll be killed. Although the letters of words can be helpful to you (as spell ingredients), for the most part they form the walls of the level. This means the environment is very mutable and you have to play around with it in order to escape. That on its own makes this a RL worth checking out.

Bookwork trying to survive on a scrolling scroll. Hell yeah. Learn spells, swallow letters and cast spells if proper letters are in the stomach.

Dusk of a Shattered Kingdom

Completeness

2 - At first glance, the game seems to be pretty polished. Actually several things reveal themselves to have been left unfinished. The frustrating thing about this is that I'd give it a 3 if a few UI elements tied to unimplemented features were simply removed. Here's the list: a throw option that does nothing, a stamina bar that never changes, all pieces of armor say damage 0-0, a Level Up option that is never explained and appears nonfunctional. I also had no idea if the three classes did anything. A couple minor bugs: you can't pick up gold with a full inventory even though it doesn't take up a slot and the last hit on a monster always say it's hitting the \"remains\" of that monster. One last annoyance (common in 7DRLs): you can't move through allies; this almost caused me to restart before I figured I could hold down the wait key until my ally moved out of a hallway.

2 - On the whole pretty bug-free and polished, but the message logs refer to enemies you've just killed as if you were already hitting their corpse. Allies also tend to 'do a Lydia' - I dominated somebody in a long hallway and was then unable to get past them to the stairs (in the end I had to reset).

2 - There are some unimplemented features that remain in interface. But for the most part the game is complete and works. However, some balancing is definitely required.

Aesthetics

3 - I don't typically play ASCII games, but I love the look here. Tiles are softly lit with blue light to show your field of view, there are nice blood splatters everywhere, and the UI looks great (taking a cue from Brogue I think). There aren't enough symbols to be overwhelming, which is my usual complaint with ASCII. There is one area of the game that is especially beautiful and, dare I say, moving. You should play until you get there.\ \ Nothing to say about controls. They work.

2 - Nice clean ASCII with some subtle shading effects to make it look slightly prettier. Standard roguelike controls, pretty easy to pick up. I especially like the blood splatter effects and the forest in the ending level is pretty. A high 2.

2 - Nice and clean ascii. Interface is definitely inspired by Brogue, which is not bad.

Fun

2 - If you can figure out what is going on, it's quite fun! The fun part is figuring out how to fight the bosses on each level. If anything it's perhaps a little too easy because you get a ton of scrolls and some of the scrolls totally shut down the enemy without any consequence to you. I don't know if there is enough replayability to justify a 3. Perhaps if the bosses were balanced a little more and had more interesting behaviors, it would be worth revisiting.

2 - Pretty standard roguelike gameplay with an interesting range of spell effects and enemy weaknesses.

2 - It's somewhat fun to try it couple times, but it's too unbalanced (on easier side) to attract more attention.

Innovation

2 - The uniques (bosses) on each level have specific weaknesses and resistances. Maybe that's not new, but I did like that each weapon has two flavors associated with it: material type (silver/iron/wood) and damage type (slash/bash/pierce).\ \ The health is handled in an interesting way. You don't regen health, but instead rely on a small number of health potions that build up \"toxicity.\" I assume if your toxicity bar is filled, you're dead but I never tempted fate.

1 - Doesn't really push the envelope in any way. Standard roguelike, standard setting, standard everything.

1 - May be idea was innovative, but implementation is not good enough to experience it.

Scope

2 - Average scope. The game is short if you know what you're doing, but I'm ok with that.

2 - Good range of enemies, weapons and spell effects.

2 - A several enemies, a several scrolls with spells, bosses. Very solid 7drl entry.

Roguelikeness

3 - Totally roguelike.

3 - Difficult to think of any way this could possibly be any more roguelike.

3 - Roguelike for sure.

In Dusk of a Shattered Kingdom, you're playing a prisoner escaping from the bottom of a prison/dungeon to the surface. This actually makes a little more sense than your typical RL backstory. Dusk is a classic ASCII roguelike with interesting \"bosses\" on each floor. The bosses aren't insanely difficult, but to beat them you will have to use your scrolls wisely and pay attention to their weaknesses. One nice detail is that these unique bosses (and your character) have cool sounding procedurally generated names like Sir Edmund the Red. The game looks beautiful, the theme is good, and the combat is interesting.

A nice, solid roguelike albeit one that is fairly generic and doesn't really do anything new. The one slight quirk is that healing items are few and far between and increase your toxicity, so it is best to avoid taking damage in the first place wherever possible and only fight when you have to, supporting the game's theme of being an escaping prisoner.\

More or less traditional roguelike. According to description bosses have some weakness(es). But they are probably not beefy enough in order to be forced to find and exploit this weakness.

Eientei

Completeness

2 - I haven't noticed any bugs but proper help text is needed, plus a few bits and pieces of polish.

2 - Eientei runs perfectly fine and is a complete game. You can certainly pick-up-and-play, but it's extremely advisable to read the instructions linked from the github page. I've come close to completing the 15 level main quest a couple of times only to be hoodwinked by unfair spawns when I traverse the squares only to be surrounded by 20 powerful enemies, which leads to the inevitable outcome. The key repeat is also very sensitive, leading you to run into walls which, in common to other games I've reviewed this year, can be fatal.

2 -

Aesthetics

2 - The rain of shots is fairly pretty, and that just about lifts this up to a 2. Otherwise the confusing clutter would earn a 1.

2 - Eientei is vaguely a bullet hell shooter. This means the dungeon rooms are often filled with a thousand moving asterisks of various hues. Unless you stop moving, these bullets do not harm you, allowing you to wade through a sea of colour. The presentation is otherwise simple, particularly for the walls and pickups and the bullets have a habit of obscuring what is going on. The UI is sensible with the keybindings for special moves clearly and helpfully displayed. There's no sound or music.

2 -

Fun

2 - Very flawed but not actually bad. Worth a play.

2 - Initially stumped, the game improved markedly after reading the instructions. You wade through a sea of bullets, knowing they can't harm you unless you stop. Stopping is an unfortunate side effect of melee attacks or special abilities, however. You are driven onwards by a vicious foodclock which accelerates time, of which you have little. The combination of the mechanics works really well and produces a stark balance between seeming invincibility and fragility. If the game was a little less unfair, it would achieve the highest score.

1 -

Innovation

2 - Nothing groundbreaking but the idea of incorporating a bullet hell into a roguelike isn't often attempted.

3 - Eientei brings innovative mechanics I've not seen before. The bullets that fill each room are only dangerous if you stop to attack. This is an excellent mechanic, although it could be better if the path of the bullets was a bit more predictable or represented on the screen. The foodclock is also innovative - time slows down if enemies are present and there is only a short grace period in the absence of enemies before time really accelerates. Stopping to heal is therefore free if you are around enemies, but stopping in the way of the bullets is rarely a good idea. Exploring is fine, but your rapidly expiring grace (night) score gives a real sense of urgency. I think there's the gem of an idea here that could be worked up into a really convincing new foodclock mechanic for use in other games.

2 -

Scope

2 - Not bad.

2 - Eientei brings new mechanics, four distinct classes and a fair selection of enemies to the party. The scope is good for a 7DRL without inspiring wonder as to how it was all done in time.

2 -

Roguelikeness

2 - Lacks the weighty consequences and need for careful thought which characterise roguelikes, but does include some roguelike aspects.

3 - Eientei is clearly and presently a full roguelike. Highly positional combat (with bullets), bump-to-attack, climbing staircases, a food clock, it has it all.

3 -

Eientei is an odd one. Allegedly inspired by Touhou (presumably the esteemed series of bullet hell shooters rather than the film studio behind Godzilla) it asks the player to choose from such unorthodox characters as Gardener and Doll Controller, then throws them into a mansion to find something out. The aim isn't really clear (a common thread in this year's 7DRLs) but progressing from floor to another seems to be the order of the day. \ \ The first striking thing is the deluge of asterisks. Every room is virtually filled with a wall-to-wall blizzard of the things. 'Blizzard' is a fairly accurate word, since an asterisk passing over a space will obscure anything underneath it, such as health pickups. What are these asterisks? That's never made clear (there's that thread again) but from careful observation of what happens when I deliberately walk into one, and the developer's name-check of Touhou, I assume they're projectiles. That's Touhou's trademark style, after all - great, swirling clouds of energy bullets. \ \ So the aim, then, seems to be to exit each floor until you reach the objective, trying not to be blasted apart by the torrential rain of incoming shots. Although the effect is striking to look at in an ASCII sort of way, it's also confusing. It can be hard to see what else is in the room, and whether something is firing all these shots or they're just...there. Enemies pop of sometimes but they're best avoided if possible. \ \ Each character class has three abilities. The Doll Controller summons dolls with different behaviour patterns, but what the other characters' abilities do is anyone's guess. I usually survive longest as the Gardner but I couldn't tell you why. Sometimes I use an ability but I have no idea whether there's a range, an area of effect, or anything like that - or even what the ability is meant to be doing. The health bar is fairly clear but the two other bars, blue and pink, are a mystery. The blue one might be linked to ability use but it's hard to tell. Often the pink bar depletes either continuously or seemingly at random. \ \ The game definitely needs better help text. \ \ That said, it's actually not bad. It's reasonably enjoyable evading the artillery deluge in search of the stairs - but it would be better to know how to use my abilities, and which bar does what. With over 120 7DRLs this year, opacity of gameplay can be enough to make a game not worth playing. For this one I'd say give it a shot but be warned that you'll have to figure out even the basics all by yourself.

Initially incomprehensible, Eientei eventually reveals itself to have a number of novel mechanics which hang together to make an engaging and unusual roguelike. A little more balance and polish would have rendered this a stand-out game in this year's competition.

Overall, I like the style of the game. The combination of melee enemies and ranged enemies spraying stuff everywhere and juggling the right time to strike was good. There were some buggy elements like (unless it's intended) where if I was only getting hit by ranged enemies I could go well below 0 health, or enemies and myself were hidden by the 'bullet-hell' that was going on. I like the concept behind drawing for different abilities, but it was something I rarely felt pressure to do.

Rogue Sector

Completeness

3 - Feels very complete. Occasionally, I took no damage when I expected to, but I'm likely just misunderstanding the rules.

3 - Everything works; any glitches or problems.

2 - All the features seem complete.

Aesthetics

3 - Decent looking art. The way the shading changes as the ships rotate on the title screen is quite nice. All UI elements are clear and mouse control works fine. The game should probably start fully zoomed out because of how important it is to see incoming enemies.

2 - Not very roguelike-gish look, but aesthetic and pretty nice.

2 - Looks nice, controls are intuitive and simple.

Fun

2 - It's fun when you're able to weave in an out of asteroids and make dire situations turn in your favor. I usually found the game VERY difficult however, which is strange considering another reviewer found it too easy. Take your pick I guess. Sometimes I'd get swamped by 4 opponents. Sometimes I'd spawn in the line of fire of an enemy. Enemies have no qualms about kamikazeing right into you. In general, I didn't feel I had any advantage over the enemies and yet I had to face many of them at once. I never made it past sector 4 despite many attempts.

2 - Fast paced logical-shooter-turn-based-game in space. Quite pleasant, but too easy.

2 - Well worth a play. The combat could be more interesting, but the flying and maneuvering makes up for it. The ships have a real feeling of inertia to them. The tension moves are a nice way to add some extra strategy.

Innovation

2 - The movement system offers some interesting tactical options and is fairly unique.

1 - Nothing new.

3 - The movement controls are awesome and a great example of how to simulate a body in motion in a turn based game.

Scope

2 - About average.

2 - Not too ambitious, but I didn't notice lack of any importent content.

2 - Gets a lot of mileage from a few simple systems.

Roguelikeness

2 - Let me just say that I'm rating this a 2 not \"because it's not bog-standard fantasy\" (as the developer laments), but because it's lacking several things that a roguelike needs. There's not really procedural generation here. I don't think scattering enemies and asteroids on a grid counts (a natural problem with a space game). And then there's not enough depth or complexity either. This game is easily compared to Hellion, which is also a sort of space shooter, but that game also manages to have items and resource management. And yet I was still the only reviewer to give that a 3 for roguelikeness! Sorry for the rant....

1 - I though that this is roguelite, but after few rounds I understand that permadeath, random generated game board and encounters is not enough. Roguelite-like, maybe.

2 - An excellent conversion of a top down shooter into a turn based game. Some sort of resource management that forced the player to do more than dive through levels would push this further into roguelike territory.

Rogue Sector is a very nice translation of an asteroids type shooter into a grid/turn based game. In some ways, it's comparable to another entry: Hellion. In both games, the turn based movement system lets you weave in and out of asteroids. Even more satisfying is that this game lets you lead enemies right into their death by taking them near asteroids.\ \ The coolest part of the game is the way you move on the hex grid. You choose between \"easy\" and \"hard\" moves and you can't do two hard moves in a row. This leads to a bit of challenge in plotting our your actions and it successfully maintains the feeling of momentum that would see in a fast paced arcade game. Your mileage may vary, but I personally had a very difficult time actually winning dog fights. There seems to be a lot of luck in how enemies are arranged and what they decide to do. Even so, I suggest you check out Rogue Sector.\ \ It appears that the developer quaffed the wrong potion during development, so kudos for getting this done anyway.

Simple turn based shooter in space. With puzzle elements. And procedural generated world. And random encounters. Probably. Pretty nice - Rogue Sector is fast paced game and looks quite aesthetic. But is too easy (I mean *really* easy) and... isn't roguelike.

Turn based space race with innovative movement mechanics.

Anoxic Depths

Completeness

2 - Anoxic Depths appears to be a complete game, with a shop and randomly-generated diving cave. The shop contains a series of useful or essential items to be bought and equipped. The controls are extensive, in order to cope with the 3d environment although I found myself sticking to the simplest ones. The player is dropped in without many instructions (other than a list of controls) which is a 'deep' learning curve but fits in well with the game. However, I found the game to be very hard. The initial 'what do I do?' stage took a long time to get through and once that had been established, it was hard to find enough artefacts to fund continued exploration. Otherwise there are a few minor bugs that don't influence gameplay significantly.

2 -

2 - Thankfully it has save and load, as this can be a time consuming play. You'll wanna draw maps. That said, maybe automap would be nice?

Aesthetics

3 - Anoxic Depths' strength is in its depiction of the difficult and dangerous activity of cave diving. The loneliness of being in a covered diving environment is well captured by the sound track, hard-to-decipher kanji font and the very narrow and limited frame of view. The brutality of the mechanics (accidentally swimming into a wall can doom you to a watery grave) and the requirement to hand-map the cave add to the claustrophobia and danger the game tries to evoke. The atmosphere created through the audio and visual choices but moreover through the choice of mechanics was Anoxic's strongest element.

2 -

3 - Captures what i imagine would be the sheer frustrating terror of being underwater in a cave with no light. Good use of sound and color. The kanji lends mystery to the feel. The controls are OK, but require constant rechecking. It's not always 100% clear to me what happens when i perform an action, as the feedback is very sparse.

Fun

2 - The initial interest in Anoxic is figuring out which of the multitude of equipment is required for your quest. Secondly, through multiple tries with different equipment sets, the swimming mechanics become clearer. Finally, the game reveals itself to be about careful exploration and mapping in semi-realtime as your oxygen depletes. There is interest here but it is for the more careful and methodical gamer.

1 -

2 - Is it fun? Could be, but it requires patience. While there is help for the controls, there is not really any instruction on how to be a successful player of the game. the game seems purposely obtuse. The lengthy setup process gets in the way of quickly retrying after a failed attempt. As a new player, this is very daunting and I nearly cried in frustration several times. However, once some learning happened, i was able to actually start moving around the caves without immediately suffocating or getting knocked out or what have you, and felt very accomplished.

Innovation

2 - Although not introducing any radically new elements to the genre, Anoxic's clever use of field-of-view and swimming mechanics were notable. I felt the 3d nature of the environment could have been better expressed, which, if done successfully, would have perhaps set the mold for future games of this type.

2 -

2 - Neat twists on the hunger clock and 3D exploration.

Scope

2 - Anoxic is a complete game, albeit one set around the relatively simple premise of exploring a cave. It's not a game about a vast diversity of encounters or content. Therefore the scope is perfectly acceptable for a 7DRL.

1 -

3 - I'm giving high marks for an ambitious attempt to bring underwater cave exploration to the RL camps, which worked out fairly well and is surprisingly... immersive :P

Roguelikeness

2 - Anoxic features grid-based movement with a realtime countdown. The core theme of exploration is roguelike although the game lacks interaction with any other mobile entities and has no roguelike RPG elements.

3 -

2 - An interesting blend of simulation and hunger from RL.

An interesting exploration-based game that takes seemingly simple mechanics but, though judicious hiding of information, nicely captures the danger of cave diving and the care and preparation required to carry out this activity in real life.

I like the diving aesthetic and the 3D nature of the levels. The imagery of the Chinese/Japanese (I’m really sorry, I’m not familiar with the language) characters is beautiful, unfortunately, due to my unfamiliarity I found it very hard to parse the information on the screen and often found myself stuck and/or lost and not sure why. To get started I had to watch your tutorial video just so I would buy the right stuff.

Equal parts engaging and infuriating, This underwater cave diving sim has a lot of mystery and beauty, but also a lot of rough edges.

I'm the Burglar

Completeness

3 - It's a complete game! There don't appear to be any noticeable bugs and it worked just fine for me. I was able to beat it on the 3rd try.

3 - Overall the game feels polished. There are occasional quirks of the level generation, such as the safe containing the you need to exit the level spawning in a room which has no entrances. They're infrequent though. Generally good.

2 - I had an issue where the final level you acquire the special package. But unlike all the other levels, it seems you do not need the key. I didn't know this until I looted all the chests and found no key. There are also what I believe to be impossible levels. If the chest is at the end of a dead end corridor, and there is not enough room for the police on the other side to let you run in, loot, and escape, there is no way to get the chest. Which would be fine if it was a $ chest, but in at least one case I encountered it had the key. While I'm all for unwinnable states in roguelikes, it is important that it not be visible to the player, and the simple set of potential actions makes this obvious...

Aesthetics

3 - The art is great, and it's very clear and easy to understand what is going on.

3 - Fairly simple graphical presentation with a nice, clean style which makes information easily discernible. At no point have I felt unable to parse the on-screen situation accurately.

2 - The art is consistent across the game. The sound effects are appropriate and add a lot. One problem is the facing of the police is very important for understanding the mechanism of the game, but the art makes this very unclear. Especially as they hold their clubs behind them... Another issue is the delay for turns. I should be able to move as fast as I hit the arrow keys, but I seem limited to some timer. This makes playing the game aggravating due to spamming arrow keys, rather than due to being caught by the police.

Fun

2 - I had a good time playing this game. A bit more variety and challenge would have been welcome, but yes, it's fun!

2 - Not bad. Feels like an early arcade game, or something on an old Atari console. Gets repetitive after 15-20 minutes of continuous play, so best played in short bursts. Not much thought involved, so that might turn off the roguelike crowd.

3 - This is a fun and addictive game that slowly unfolds as one learns more of the police behaviour. It has suitable moments of eureka as you discover extra tricks to get at the safes.

Innovation

2 - This is a fun idea that has some unique aspects. It reminds me of old action puzzle platformers from the 80s like Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, and other games like that.

1 - I'm not sure there was any attempt to include a roguelike feature anywhere here, so 'innovation' probably isn't the right word. Does it count as innovation if you avoid the target genre completely?

2 - I like the use of stairs for vertical passageways. It feels mostly like a procedural DROD.

Scope

2 - The game is fairly simple... stairs, hallways, safes, money, police, keys, and snipers. I think that's a full list of what is in the game. However, it doesn't need much more than that. It's fun as it is. A bit more variety in the level generation or perhaps a few additional enemies or obstacles could have made the game even more fun.

2 - Reasonable for a 7 day project. Not deep or complex; not excessively basic either.

1 - While this game is probably as a big as it should be, that doesn't get around the fact it isn't very big.

Roguelikeness

2 - I would label this as a roguelike-like. It has some elements of roguelikes but plays more like an action puzzle game.

1 - I'm very close to feeling a zero is deserved here. The game very much feels like an early arcade game. It's faintly turn-based, in that everything moves one step when you do, but if you don't do anything for a few seconds they'll move anyway, so in fact it's more real time. I'm struggling to think of anything roguelikeish about it beyond the faint hint of turns and permadeath (which is in keeping with the arcade feel here anyway).

2 - Procedural generation of tactical combat is here. Very simple games like this are always hard to categorize into genre, especially genres that imply more than a single mechanic.

I'm The Burglar is a fun puzzle-action roguelike-like, or at least that's my best description for it. You play as a burglar through a series of 5 buildings on the hunt for cash and a special package. There are safes scattered throughout each building and police on patrol. The goal is to remain undetected by the police, get cash, and find the key to the next level. There are multiple floors on each building and stairways connecting each floor. The game is not turn-based; it plays out in real time, so you need to move quickly. I had a lot of fun with this game, and finished it after about 30 minutes of playing.

Make no mistake, I'm The Burglar is an arcade game, or maybe an early home console game. In feel it reminds me of games like 'Kaboom!', 'Oh Mummy!' or 'Miner 2049er' which I used to play on the Atari 2600 and Amstrad CPC. The game is real time. Don't let its illusion of turns fool you. Yes, when you move your enemies move as well, but if you stand still for maybe 1-2 seconds they'll move anyway. The aim is to open safes to find a key which you use to exit the level. On the way, you grab money bags for points. Bump into a guard or the sniper's crosshairs and the game is over. Each level has several floors which can only be traversed by connecting stairways, so movement options are very limited. \ \ The game is reasonably fun, but there isn't a roguelike feature in sight. It's an old arcade game through and through. I suppose maybe the idea was to include a hint of turn-based movement and some permadeath but they feel perfectly at home in this arcadey setting anyway. Overall the game is well polished for a 7 day project and pretty fun in short bursts, but 7DRL was completely the wrong challenge for this. It would have fitted better in a normal (non-roguelike) game jam.

I'm the burglar presents an interesting twist of perspective for a 2d-maze runner; you are moving between levels of a building via stair cases, rebranding what would be straightforward @ in a maze into a multi-level chase adventure. It is tightly balanced and sure to present a challenging diversion to any who play.

ducksoup dungeon

Completeness

3 - Wow. Was this actually done in 7 days? Feels very complete.

2 - The game is complete, but there are minor bugs here and there. Some hits on enemies are superloud. First it seriously startled me. Once generated level was totally empty with no door to the next level.

3 - Polished, plays well, though level generation code is a bit lacking and later levels get slow with too many enemies.

Aesthetics

3 - Looks great. Sounds great. Feels great.

2 - The game simulates game-boy graphics. Successfully. Sound effects are nice. Controls are slick. But edges of level give you a feeling that there is something there. Many times I tried to find a way, only to realise that there is nothing there. Pieces of skeletons that sometimes can pop to the other side of the wall and jump there are supporting this confusion.

3 - Beautiful game, simple controls, plays fluidly with some nice juiciness to the attacks. I really love the GameBoy aesthetic.

Fun

3 - Super fun. Smashing, jumping, double-jumping, all sorts of platforming goodness.

2 - It's fun to try different character at least once. But other then that it's quite repetitive and not really challenging. It's more about patience.

2 - The is extremely fun at first, but after a while gets grindy and repetitive. Rollerpig is way too easy and the others too difficult. Definitely worth a few minutes play in your browser.

Innovation

1 - Fairly straightforward platformer gameplay.

1 - Generic platforming game.

1 - Nothing too original here - it's a real-time procedural platformer. Multi-jump is nice for navigating the random levels, and the character abilities are interesting, but not that big a twist.

Scope

3 - Beyond what I would expect for a 7DRL. Impressive!

2 - There are a few enemies with different behaviour and several playable characters with different graphics and different attacks. It's hard to estimate things like this, but it doesn't feel like there is content out of scope of 7drl.

2 - Very nice short game with 4 different characters and a few different enemy types. Lacks variety in mechanics.

Roguelikeness

1 - Definitely not a roguelike. Still fun though!

1 - It's twitchy platforming-ish game that uses procedurally generated levels. I can't even say that procedural generation adds value to the game.

2 - Real-time roguelike-y platformer, with a bit of a tactical feel to the combat. No progression or interesting interactions.

A super fun platformer with procedurally generated levels, great retro gameboy-style graphics and awesome music/sound effects. I'm actually not sure how this is even possible within 7 days! Also it's not a roguelike in any way, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't play it anyways.

Platformer with procedurally generated levels. Actually it's not really platformer per se, since your character(s) have unlimited multijump, which is essentially ability to fly. Not very convenient, but still. Kill enemies, collect gold, unlock more characters. New characters are kind of difficulty levels. Playing with next one makes the game harder.

Spelunky-like game with Gameboy-esque graphics, sound and controls. It's really pretty and a joy to play with its simple mechanics, though after a while it gets repetitive and there is nothing to spice the game up as you progress. If you like roguelike platformers this is well worth a try, and easy to play in your browser.

Forlorn Four

Completeness

3 - This is a complete game. I didn't notice any bugs, and it seemed fairly balanced, even though I couldn't beat it within the span of an hour.

2 - Has a few classes, a few enemies with some different AI, and an end game. About what you'd expect from a 7DRL.

3 - * No major bugs\ * Enjoyed the monster descriptions\

Aesthetics

2 - The ASCII is fairly straightforward except for one major issue - if you have more than one character of a given class in your party, they both get the same color and it becomes impossible to tell them apart. This is a big pain when you have, for example, two fighters in your party, one of whom is healthy and the other who is on the verge of death. You can check party members using the describe hotkey, but a simple color-coding scheme would have resolved the issue from the start.

2 - Simple, effective ASCII graphics.

2 - * Didn't like the squad being class-based instead of position-based. Class-based coloring made it difficult to determine which member needed healing, for example.\ * Keybindings worked well\

Fun

1 - The levels were large and mostly empty, and the combat wasn't that interesting, but there was some fun to be had. I liked the idea of managing my party of 4 hero characters and moving them in turn. There were a few aspects of the game that took away from the fun... in particular, I didn't like how I had to move every party member to the staircase even after the level was cleared of all enemies. It was time-consuming and didn't really have any gameplay value.

1 - Felt a bit like a longwinded maze game.

1 - * Gameplay was basic and repetitive\ * Didn't find that the squad useful given the limited options\ * It looked like experience was limited either by radius or to the killing member; if not, then the power level seemed to

Innovation

2 - There aren't any aspects of this game that I would label as particularly innovative, although the 4-character party is interesting.

2 - The idea of using 4 different characters at once in a roguelike is interesting, and has a ton of potential.

1 - * Gameplay is hack and slash, and squad-based games have been done previously.

Scope

2 - 8 enemy types, no weapons, and very simple dungeons, so I would call the scope fairly limited, but it's reasonable for a 7DRL.

2 -

2 - * As expected for a 7DRL

Roguelikeness

3 - This definitely fits the typical roguelike formula.

3 - 100% roguelike

3 - * Procedural dungeons, permadeath, tactical combat, and a need to avoid combat.

The Forlorn Four is a basic roguelike with very traditional gameplay and party mechanics. It was a bit difficult to play because controlling all four party members was a bit hard to master.

This a solidly designed roguelike with a ton of potential. Controlling 4 characters at once in a roguelike is an interesting twist. A few games appear to have implemented multiple characters, but it is a fairly uncommon mechanic. As it stands now this game is very sparse and feels like wandering around aimlessly to find an exit while swatting away weak enemies. Two improvements would make this a very fun game: 1) make the level design a bit tighter, so you don't feel like you're wandering down long, dead end hallways all the time 2) implement lots of enemies at once, all of whom have the ability to kill a lone adventurer easily. Or the monsters should at least be able to kill an adventurer as long as they attack in pairs or groups. I imagine using a stalwart to block a hallway and stop a very dangerous enemy who can kill a weaker character in 1 or 2 attacks. Meanwhile, the a cleric heals the stalwart so she doesn't die, while a rogue sneaks down a side hallway to flank the monster and the fighter watches the rear.

Combat went from trivially easy on the first few floors to death in two turns before my fighters could handle it or my cleric could mitigate the damage. I suspect this could be alleviated with more grinding, but I didn't find combat compelling enough to try.\ I found I enjoyed the game more as my squad size decreased. Part of this is the limited options available to the squad, as there are no items and only one class, the mage, has access to ranged spells.\ It's a small game and easily played. The monster descriptions are cute as well. Without a bit more depth, though, I'd really only recommend it to developers considering making squad-based games.

Salvage Crew

Completeness

2 - Pretty polished all in all, though I found it a little prone to crashing my browser.

2 - There's a full game here which has good balance and has been carefully put together. I felt a little more help was due the player upfront, however, particularly since there are many 7DRLs and games are always fighting for attention. It wasn't clear to me how to sell items or exit levels until I'd played for about 15 minutes. I also ran into occasional between level crashes (probably in the random level generation) which were frustrating, since you lost your progress.

2 - Finished, but lack of polishing.

Aesthetics

2 - I like the visual style and overall presentation. The sprites/icons are cryptic but the tooltips clear that up. My main criticism is that it took me an unacceptable time of a couple of minutes to discern which objects are collectibles, which are enemies and which are my ships. A simple key would alleviate this.

3 - The game has a minimalist geometric space aesthetic reminiscent of Geometry Wars. This is helped by the ambient soundtrack and minimalist communication through text. The icons are easily differentiated and the scenery varies between levels in a pleasant fashion. Excellent.

2 - Very nice graphics, but only in default settings. When I was changing resolution screen become weird and bizarre.

Fun

2 - Worth a try, primarily to see if it's your thing. It's not mine.

3 - Once you've figured out what's going on, Salvage Crew is engaging. Each level presents a new challenge and each step requires a decision. There's both the tactical decisions of crew placement and the strategic decision of how many items to consume, or sell, and whether to risk the next level or pick up the last set of credits and cash out now.

2 - Hard to tell how to play this game due to lack of instructions. But - through trials and errors - I managed to play properly and it's nice game, but not for a long time.

Innovation

2 - A small spin on the squad tactics thing, making it a bit more puzzley and focused on evasion.

2 - Salvage Crew is a puzzle roguelike in the vein of Michael Brough games such as Zaga-33. All the elements are familiar, including multiple APs, predictable enemies, multiple character placement but the exact mix seems unique.

2 - I don't know about innovations, but due to 'sooo strange' feelings I decided to give '2'.

Scope

3 - Good scope for seven days, considering the striking presentation style and puzzley aspects.

2 - The scope here is sensible. There are a handful of enemy types, a handful of pickups and the game is kept short. I'd take a balanced, limited scope game over an incoherent but huge game any day of the week.

1 - I expected more content.

Roguelikeness

1 - Not remotely roguelike-ish. It's a tactics/puzzle game. Using turns and proc gen layouts doesn't make it a roguelike.

2 - Although not a traditional roguelike, Salvage Crew is very strong on random generation and positional combat. There are also semi- or fully-permanent consequences in the loss of a character within a mission or, in the three mission structure, from not making full use of the opportunities afforded by an earlier mission. On the other hand, if you're looking for a more traditional hack and slash game with RPG elements, you won't find that here.

2 - Rgueligish... A bit. I though about '1' mark.

I'll say upfront that I'm not the audience for Salvage Crew. Squad-based tactics and puzzle games are among the genres I find most frustrating (with certain exceptions). This game is a bit of both. Your aim is to amass 90 credits within three days. You do this by undertaking missions in the form of a series of self-contained, puzzle-like screens. You control 3 ships initially, with 4 action points between them. Using these actions optimally in order to grab credits and helpful bonus effects without being destroyed forms the crux of the gameplay. My first instinct was to fight enemies if they seemed to be a threat, but after a little while it became apparent that this isn't the best course. When you destroy the last enemy in that particular puzzle-screen, you warp to the next. Any credits or multipliers you didn't collect are lost. The upshot of this is that it's often best to avoid combat as much as possible in order to grab the cash. An interesting idea, and it's nice to see a squad tactics game which isn't all about eliminating the opposing force, but personally I found it altogether too easy to get boxed in and run out of AP. The enemies outnumber you a lot of the time, plus they're as strong as you and as fast as you. Some might relish this but I found it frustrating. As I mentioned, I'm not the audience for this. If you'd like an accessible spin on turn-based squad tactics with a bit of puzzling thrown in, this might be up your street. Worth a go.

Salvage Crew is an interesting single-screen, multiple character game all about strategic positioning of your characters. Only needing 10 minutes to deliver a satisfying playthrough and with great visuals and soundtrack, it's a joy to play, once you've figure out what's going on.

Salvage Crew is interesting roguelike made in Unity. I don't like Unity runner much, but J. Brodsky know how to use this environment. Effect? Well, game is complete, well done, but mechanic is so strange and I had problems to go through game due to lack of instructions.

knock-down drag-out

Completeness

3 - I couldn't tell whether it had any subtle bugs, but it's playable and winnable. Having the 'ignite' option twice if you have the fire element probably was not intended, I assume.

1 - The game feels complete in some ways but it is quite buggy and the developer admits it. It appears these bugs exist even on the version which is supposed to be updated. I ran into the same game breaking error twice: \"Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'x' of undefined\".\ \ Things are also very unbalanced. *SPOILER ALERT*. I struggled to make headway on killing the enemy who teleports randomly and damages you with a huge area of effect spell even on turn 1. Finally, I realized you could beat the game simply by getting enough mana, standing next to the enemy, and casting Cold Gun four times.

2 - the dev lists a known issue where summoning a snowman crashes the game. So my question is why allow players to select that option, why not disable the option so players don't lose a bunch of progress? Other than that the game works well and is quite playable.

Aesthetics

2 - There's not much to it, but some of the monster descriptions can be fairly amusing.

2 - knock-down drag-out looks great. It uses clear ascii, decent colors, and a really neat animation queuing system.\ \ The controls are annoying though. You can walk around with WASD but it is usually pointless. Instead you'll be clicking spaces to open context menus and then selecting what you want to do. Because you have to pool->convert->use, that's 6 clicks and a bunch of waiting to actually *do* something. When the map starts to get filled with enemies that can chain-damage each other, you'll be repeatedly forced to click a message box that alerts you to how much damage each enemy takes. Sometimes you'll be clicking this a dozen times per turn. There's a reason why most roguelikes use a message log. Also, I really didn't like that the game showed me options that I couldn't yet select. Just don't show them until I can use them!

2 - Very simple graphics, nice colors, no complaints here. Controls are generally OK with one major exception. My main complaint comes form the way this game handles messaging. Messages, such as results from actions, pop up as a small window which I could find no other way to close than by clicking the window itself. This frequently interrupts gameplay.

Fun

1 - The game does not seem to actually be that complex, but it's hard to figure out. It could really use a small README to quickly introduce the basic concepts. After getting over most of the learning curve there does not seem to be that much fun in the game itself.

1 - The mechanics are incomprehensible at first. Some things I still don't understand (e.g. why sometimes tapping a pool actually drains my mana). You'll be spending a lot of time figuring out what's going on and after you do, you'll find that many of them are pointless and not fun. You can summon monsters but they are all stationary. You can claim territory for little effect.

2 - While the combat and wizardly aspects are very innovative, I found that way the game handles messages and small arena made this a bit less fun to actually play.

Innovation

3 - This is worth playing for roguelike developers, for inspiration on how to tie together resource and space management by having your resources - even ones you're actively using - exist and persist on the game map.

3 - Without a doubt, there are a lot of interesting systems working here. The elemental system with elemental subtypes is unique. I think if these innovative ideas were applied lightly to a more fun foundation, this game would be great.

3 - This game makes the wizard feel truly magical. Many games, not just roguelikes, tend to make wizards feel like a type of ranged damage dealer rather than true masters of mysterious arcane arts. This game brings that mystical aspect back to the roguelike wizard, and I would love to see this implemented in a larger roguelike.

Scope

2 - There's a decent amount of mechanics, enough that it's hard to tell how some of them work.

2 - There's a lot of options available to you, but you are constrained to a single tiny level.

2 - There's quite a lot of gameplay implemented.

Roguelikeness

2 - Part boardgame, part strategy, but a big part roguelike, too.

2 - When generated, the tower has very minor modifications, which don't greatly effect gameplay. Plays more like a board game or strategy game than a roguelike. A low 2.

2 - It's missing a few major aspects, such as exploration and hunger, but definitely draws upon the most important aspect of roguelikes, and that is interesting tactical turn based combat. However that's not enough to make me feel like I'm playing a roguelike, but rather more of a turn based duel game.

A wizard duel with a boardgameish feel. You, the badass wizard, can create pools of arcane energy, and convert these arcane pools into pools of different elemental energies. Elemental pools can then be tapped to get your mana count to match the size of the pool, diluted back into an arcane pool, or converted into a monster. You also have a small number of spells that you can directly fire, using your mana. Your enemies are the lameass wizard, who'll use direct fire spells but won't create pools, and the monsters (whether summoned or spontaneously spawned) that you couldn't cleverly maneuver to attack the other wizard instead of you. Oh, and both you and the other wizard can jump to any tile on the battlefield in one turn.

The goal in knock-down drag-out is to kill a rival wizard in their own tower. When you first glance at the game, the two @s staring each other down indicates this is a simple roguelike. In fact, it's quite complicated and resembles something closer to a turn based strategy game or a board game. You mine resources, build your power, summon monsters, and try to claim territory.\ \ The game has a lot of flaws, but let me first say that the developer is obviously talented. The presentation is great. The systems are unique and detailed. Ultimately, however, none of the mechanics combine into a cohesive or balanced game. Many of the ideas here, while interesting, are pointless. Claiming territory seems cool. I figured that might be the win condition (like Go). Or maybe you'd get free movement inside your territory or be safe from enemy attacks? None of the above. I found it easier to skip that mechanic altogether.\ \ Anyway, I'd like to see what the developer could do in the future with a tighter, more cohesive idea. Take a look at knock-down drag-out if you want to see the innovation, but expect to be flustered by the gameplay.

Very interesting arena based wizard combat. There some magic the gathering influences going on here that definitely spice up your typical RL wizard class. Check it out!

Rogue AI

Completeness

2 - Plenty of content, but could use an in-game tutorial or something to guide the player through the process of making an AI.

2 - It's an actual turing complete programming language to control a creature with skills and items. There were some show-stopping bugs but the dev was quick to reply and fix them.

1 - * Couldn't set AI for practice or compete modes reliably\ * No real documentation for the test mode\ * Documentation for the language looked good

Aesthetics

3 - Great art, consistent style. Very approachable graphics for a RL. Very nice looking UI, although I always find button-heavy UIs get in the way of enjoying a game. But lots of buttons may be unavoidable in this game.

2 - Uses the quality graphics that I've come to expect from Numeron's games. The programming GUI takes a while to get the hang of but maybe it's easer for non-programmers? Changing the ai can be really difficult and time consuming - maybe having an Excel-like insert row or insert column or select and move a region of tiles would help.

1 - * Graphics looked good\ * Couldn't figure out how to pick up items in test mode, what the icons were supposed to do, what skills were available\ * The programming information window isn't large enough to display the text\ \

Fun

1 - I feel like this game could be very fun. I used to enjoy playing WeBL quite a bit, and this seems like essentially the same process, so I imagine it would be fun. But no one else was online, and the test and practice modes weren't terribly enjoyable. I can't really say the game is fun when I never had fun playing it. This isn't to say I disliked the game, rather I think there is a lot of potential for fun.

3 - It's programming so of course I think it's fun! I followed the development of this on the 7drl.org blog and was not disappointed when I got to play it. It's not at like like most games but I'm sure I'll spend some more time with this.

1 - * This looks like a game I'd really enjoy if I could use practice and compete.\

Innovation

2 - A very interesting idea applied to roguelikes. Reminds me of WeBL, except in roguelike form.

2 - I've heard a few people talk about making ally ai a major part of a game but I've never seen it done and I've certainly never seen someone attempt it like this.

3 - * Haven't seen a programming-based game in a roguelike context before\

Scope

3 - Pretty enormous scope for a 7DRL.

3 - Not only do you have a turing-complete graphical programming language, but there's other enemies, three classes with unique special skills, four very different items, and an online server for fighting others.

3 - * A programming language, online leader boards, testing environments...a huge scope.

Roguelikeness

3 - It has all the qualities of a roguelike, the only difference is you are indirectly controlling a character who fights against another player's indirectly controlled character.

1 - More of a programming death match. That's not a bad thing at all though.

1 - * Really felt like other bot-based programming games in the little I could play, not a roguelike.

This game was a bit hard for me to review, because I'm not really into games that take a lot of preparation to play. I'd rather be able to jump right in and start playing immediately, but this game requires a pretty big time investment. You have to learn how to set up an AI, implement an AI, test the AI, and THEN you get to go and experience the actual game. But having said all that, there are many people who would be excited to play a game with this sort of intricate control scheme. It is essentially a programming game, which definitely could have a dedicated group of fans. One feature that might be worth implementing is a scheduling system similar to a fantasy sports league's scheduled competitions. Players would join a league and then every day or once a week or whenever, everyone's AI face off against each other. This could help with the problem of not having any players online, since players wouldn't have to be online at the same to fight. Players would set up and test their AI whenever they feel like, and when they're ready they would commit the AI to the next scheduled fight, then when the time comes the fighters face off against each other and the resulting battle is saved in a replay so you can watch it whenever you get the chance.

Numeron's eighth 7DRL is really something else. Instead of running around picking up and using items, using skills, and fighting or fleeing from enemies, you program an ai that does those things. The challenge is in figuring out how to get it to use the right items at the right time.

Rogue AI tasks you with programming an AI to defeat opposing AI. Technical problems prevented me from being able to successfully try vs. other AI—I was only able to test an AI vs. a manually controlled rogue (running Java 8 Update 40 on OS X 10.10).

Conservation of Ninjutsu

Completeness

2 - Stable but with occasional noticeable bugs and definitely in need of more polish. Some gameplay oddities resulting from lack of refinement.

2 - It didn't crash but was slow as molasses during a Michigan winter.

1 - There are too many bugs and too few game.

Aesthetics

2 - Looks pleasant enough and things are mostly clear, though some spaces are unclear as to whether they're wall or floor without reference to the tutorial. Some of the mechanics are puzzling but that's through no fault of the presentation or UI. Persistent bug where ninjitsu level never displays higher than 3 after killing the target (though effects are normal - seems to be a graphical bug only).

2 - The tiles look nice but the slowness makes the controls feel horrible and your character looks like an egg in a black spandex suit.

2 - Sprites are stylish. But controls could be better. There is no 'skip turn' key!!! If you click on character, character performs seppuku. Since you need to skip a lot of turns, clicking to the left and to the right of character will sooner of later lead to misclick on character with enraging result. Character can move diagonally, but not with keyboard. Also 'ninjutsu' is ninja technique. Not some kind of energy. And icon of ability 'suriken storm' have kunai on it.

Fun

3 - Decently fun once you get the hang of it. I'm glad I tried it out. Some gameplay aspects are confusing, even with the help text, but two or three attempts at the game should clear that up.

1 - I didn't even play it all that long and I sorta wish I hadn't.

1 - Too repetitive and boring.

Innovation

3 - Very novel. Some aspects are reasonably familiar gameplay features which are not often used in roguelikes - e.g. using a grappling iron to scale walls. Others are fresh and imaginative - turn speed varying depending on recent terrain type. Credit for inventiveness, certainly.

2 - There are actually some interesting things here sadly.

2 - It's a very weak 2. Stealth/ninjutsu mechanics is original, but not very interesting.

Scope

2 - Good scope for a week.

2 - The lower end of what I expect from a 7drl

2 - Again very weak 2.

Roguelikeness

2 - Some roguelike features but not fully a roguelike overall.

3 - I guess its a roguelike?

2 - Too minimalistic to be true roguelike.

Although confusing at first, Conservation of Ninjutsu is worth the effort to get the hang of. The 'mini-tutorial' text is an essential read in order to have the faintest clue as to what's going on, and even then it'll probably take some gameplay experience before you start to remember the difference in appearance between sand and road, and how each will affect you. \ \ The game introduces a very novel concept - the idea that moving across different terrain raises and lowers a resource (ninjutsu) which then determines how many action points you will receive on your next turn, and thus how 'long' (in terms of actions performed) your turn will be. Because this ninjutsu resource doesn't immediately raise or lower your action points but instead determines how many you'll receive the next time your turn ends and you recharge, you have to consider not only what terrain you're on now, but where you've been recently and where you plan to go next. The game is an assassination mission in which your ninja must inhume a local feudal lord, and every single enemy, including the target, can be very dangerous if you don't manage your ninjutsu with care. Your advantage is your ability to take multiple actions on a turn, so baiting enemies and positioning yourself to gain as many AP as possible for your next turn is crucial. \ \ There are some oddities. Once you've killed the target you have to escape from the castle and then survive for a set number of turns - from memory I think it's 90 turns. That's fine, but having high ninjutsu (which is usually desirable) means you take multiple actions per turn. Useful when you're battling your way out past the vengeful guards, using a grappling hook, throwing knives and smoke bombs to escape, but no useful once you reach the far fringes of the map, devoid of enemies, and just have to wait out the timer. This results in a curious situation where a deadly ninja assassin, after performing a mission and successfully fleeing to the tranquility of the countryside, then has to spend several minutes sprinting back and forth across a road (so that your ninjutsu remains low and your turns pass as quickly as possible). \ \ Moreover, the game doesn't even end. Once you've waited out the time, you get a little \"you won\" message at the bottom of the screen and the game continues. \ \ Still, the occasional blemish doesn't harm the game too much. Clearly there wasn't time to add much polish during the week, but the game is still enjoyable and worth checking out. Just don't be put off by the initially confusing mechanics.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jOOCeQISy4

Minimalistic game with strange stealth gimmick.

Please the Island God

Completeness

2 - I think a lot more consideration should be put into ease of use. Otherwise, the game seemed complete and bug free.

2 - There are some minor issues with the game and the UI could use polish. Otherwise, the game ran quite well for me and feels complete if exceptionally challenging.

2 -

Aesthetics

1 - Hex movement is tricky enough, but the controls here are WESDXC. Ugh! QWEASD is a lot better for this kind of thing, though I imagine this might a consequence of doing hex movement in a terminal (the characters can only shift horizontally so there is no UP or DOWN movement). The instructions tell me that 'w' is wait one moment after saying that 'w' is a hex movement command. Good one. :)\ \ I did not care for the colors. Enemies have solid red backgrounds and your character is represented by a white background @ with a little adjacent rectangle denoting your health (red, yellow, or green).

2 - For a hexagonal display, the UI does a good job of providing important information. The controls take some getting used to, but that is normal for hexagonal movement.

1 - The colors and strange grid system are tough to get used to

Fun

1 - I really tried, but could not figure out how to progress in the game. The other two reviewers made similar statements. The setting is very nice however.

1 - I struggled a lot with this game. I wanted to like it but found the food clock too tight and the goals too unclear. Perhaps more hints for how to accomplish the main goal, and starting at some satiation level higher than “start starving next turn,” would improve the fun.

3 - I like the survival aspect to the game.

Innovation

2 - The setup is very original. Chopping down trees and planting flowers is not something you typically see in a roguelike. It was interesting that monsters would kill each other was well. There is a lot of simulation under the surface, but it's not immediately apparent to the player that this stuff is going on.

3 - The simulation itself is quite fresh and your goal is very unusual. Even the way you have to get food (properly or safely) is unique.

2 -

Scope

2 - About average. There seemed to be roughly 10-20 unique entities (monsters, plants, terrains) in the game. I suppose a lot of work has gone into the simulation aspects.

3 - There is a lot of simulation that is occurring under the hood, especially since each monster is acting independently and keeping track of its own information. The engine itself is also quite feature rich: a client-server architecture for remote access (if desired), automated play, and recordings of past game session.

2 -

Roguelikeness

2 - Permadeath (oh yea lots of it) and a nice procedurally generated island are here. You're actually encouraged *not* to engage in combat though and there's not enough else to replace it with.

2 - There is procedural generation, permadeath, and some tactical considerations. (and ASCII!) However, the pacing and unclear goals often render the tactics moot, since you’ll die too quickly for the decisions to matter. I consider this a bigger detractor for the RL score than the unorthodox main goal.

3 -

Please the Island God is set on a small island filled with wandering bugs, dogs, and bears. Your goal is pretty obvious from the title. You have to somehow spread the growth of a plant called the \"GOD FLOWER.\" How do you do this? My guess is as good as yours. After many playthroughs, I figured my best bet was to drop the GOD FLOWER on a soil tile that had adjacent soil tiles and wait. Nothing happened. While the setting and theme are very interesting, I was never able to make any headway and I often died very quickly due to starvation or roaming bears.\ \ To make matters worse, this game is the most unwieldy 7DRL I have ever played. It's linux only and requires two shells scripts just to start the game. Running these scripts again at a later time just results in an error. Between the README and the developer's blog, it seemed that playing the game a second time involves deleting save files and running a different shell script. REALLY? I could never get this to work, so instead I literally had to redownload the game every time I wanted to play it. Maybe I'm just a linux newb, but even if I am that shouldn't be the barrier to entry for your game.\ \ Even once you're in the game, the controls and UI are a bit difficult to understand.

Please the Island God is mainly a simulation of a small island with many actors all trying to find food to satiate their ever growing (and seemingly constant) hunger. Your character is NOT at the top of the food chain (and there IS a food chain), so that makes things interesting and challenging. However, your hunger is also very rampant and food is hard to find. Furthermore, the easiest way to get food (killing animals to eat their corpse) pushes you away from completing the main quest (pleasing the Island God); waiting for other animals to kill and then steal the corpse is the safer way, but I kept dying of hunger before I succeeded at it. The main quest is unusual (make certain plants grow) but the time required to complete it is such that, again, I would die of hunger before making any major progress. Perhaps I’m missing the trick to this game, but with the detailed simulation that occurs here I would expect multiple successful ways to win. With better balance and instruction (or hints even), this could be an interesting game.

This game intrigues me. I spent a lot of time looking around trying to find objects that might help me. I didn't see any carpentry tools to work the wood, but I found an axe to cut down trees. I also found a few god flowers but couldn't find a way to make them grow any faster. There is some interesting stuff going on in this game that I just can't quite figure out.

Ponzu

Completeness

2 - * Some rendering artifacts\ * No documentation\

Aesthetics

2 - * Single line message log hides some worker updates\ * Two-letter mnemonics unnecessarily complicate commanding workers\ * No indication that some panels exist (e.g., inventory)

Fun

3 - * Fun to play after overcoming the lack of documentation and interface issues

Innovation

2 - * Crafting puzzle game with a roguelike aesthetic reskin

Scope

2 - * Reasonable scope for a 7DRL

Roguelikeness

1 - * Aesthetically inspired by roguelikes, but the gameplay experience is entirely non-roguelike.

Ponzu is a crafting puzzle game like SpaceChem but with roguelike elements. Play consists of programming your workers to pickup and sell resources generated by static structures in the generated world; however, monsters may interfere with your plans.

Scattered Dungeon

Completeness

3 - The game appears complete and free of bugs. I couldn't get to the final level, but the game introduced new enemies and mechanics as the levels advance.

2 - No noticeable technical problems but it does still feel a bit rough, plus there are some typos and menu quirks.

Aesthetics

2 - The game's pixel graphics are functional, but could use some refinement. The game's background music and sound effects are done competently. The controls are solid.

2 - They do the job.

Fun

2 - At its core Scattered Dungeons is a puzzler that appears to lean hard on RNG. I could be mistaken, but the random sequence in which you assemble the dungeon and the unknown state of unrevealed tiles means that it is very easy to game over on larger levels where on of your first moves places you in danger and you can't get out of danger in time. Overall, it is fun to play, and if the RNG is tamed a bit I could see it alongside Hoplite in any mobile store.

2 - It gets repetitive quite quickly but it's reasonably fun for a while, if you like straightforward puzzle games.

Innovation

2 - Assembling a dungeon is definitely new, I haven't done that before. Most of the mechanics aren't new to the puzzler genre

2 - It's essentially a tile-moving puzzle game with a slight twist.

Scope

2 - The game has progression, music and solid graphics, definitely on par or slightly above what I'd expect from a 7DRL project.

2 - Fair.

Roguelikeness

2 - Scattered Dungeon is a puzzler with roguelike trappings. It has the permadeath and invokes Rogue and Nethack with the setting, but the mechanics are mostly puzzle derived.

1 - Absolutely none. It's been set in a dungeon but that alone isn't enough to make it a roguelike. Not a bad game but certainly no roguelike.

Scattered Dungeon is the first 7drl where I have assembled a dungeon in the process of exploring it. The primary mechanic of the game is assembling the dungeon tile by tile while collecting resources and dodging hazards. If you are left standing on the largest dungeon piece at the end, you advance to the next level, complete all 16 levels and face the boss.\ This game reminds me of Hoplite, in that it is as much a puzzler as it is a roguelike where managing the enemy location is as important as your own and you are working with a very small health bar (or in Scattered Dungeon's case, potions).\

Scattered Dungeon is a puzzle game. Like many good puzzle games, the idea is simple in principle but can cause a lot of analysis as the game progresses. Each level is broken into multiple single-space squares, and each turn you must move one in a single direction so that it connects with another. The square you have to move is chosen at random, and any items on it will be thrown into the platform it collides with. When every square has been moved, the largest single united platform will be the only one to survive, so you have to make sure it's the one you happen to be standing on. The game essentially comes down to making sure you add as many squares as possible to your platform, and as few as possible to any other. It's not bad, pretty fun for a while, but a bit rough around the edges and prone to becoming repetitive. Worth a try, just don't expect a roguelike.

Loguerike

Completeness

2 - For its limited scope, it is complete, albeit not really balanced.

2 - A simple, but essentially complete high score game.\ Would be nice to see a few more features, like different levels, sound effects, to draw players back in.

2 - Technically it is complete and I haven't encountered any bugs, but it requires more balancing and probably something to add to the mix to make it more interesting.

Aesthetics

3 - For its limited scope, it has simple controls and easy-to-understand graphics I like the isometric view.

3 - Very simple, nice isometric graphics.

2 - Nice pixel art. But it's a pity that you cannot play it with mouse.

Fun

2 - It's fun to play for about 20 minutes! The dependence on luck and minimalist gameplay didn't hold my attention for long, but the game was unique enough to be entertaining.

3 - An enjoyable game. Would play it in my spare time.

2 - It's moderately fun to try it a few times. But different games don't feel too different, despite randomisation.

Innovation

3 - The concept of a very small playing space that constantly changes due to tiles the drop in randomly is a pretty fun and unique mechanic.

2 - An interesting simplification of roguelikes. Boils RLs down to their basic mechanics (movement strategy, resource management)

1 - There are no innovations in roguelikes perspective.

Scope

1 - The game was created in one day, so I don't want to judge it too harshly, but it's very small in scope.

1 - Pretty small in scope. But it accomplishes what it was meant to.

1 - As far as I know it was done in 1 day. Probably for 1 day it's impressive. But it's 7 day challenge.

Roguelikeness

2 - It has enough roguelike features to be considered a roguelike-like, but it could just as easily be labeled a puzzle game.

3 - Even though it is basically a puzzle game, has pretty much all the parts of a roguelike: procedural generation, perma-death, cell-based movement.

1 - I don't really get any roguelike feeling from this game. Puzzle game with some resources and randomisation aren't qualified as roguelikes in any way.

Loguerike is a very abstract game where the world consists of a small grid and colored tiles. It is unique and fun (and impressive given the very short development time!), but has very limited scope.

Overall a fun, simple game. Good humour, good strategy, good difficulty. Can be a bit randomly punishing sometimes, but that's true of most roguelikes.\ \ I managed to get to 80 something points, not sure if there's more to see after that.\ \ A good game to expand on with more features, such as an online high score board. Very well done for 1 day.

Minimalistic randomised puzzle game. For the most part you choose whether to loose health, but gain food or to loose food, but avoid loosing health.

Monster Supremacy

Completeness

2 - I haven't noticed any bugs but the game does feel very unrefined, verging on unfinished in places. I can't in good conscience award it a 3.

2 - The bounce ability is insta win against anything except the ranged monsters. Otherwise it is a complete and solid game.

2 - Not a lot of bells and whistles, but what's there works and seems bug free.

Aesthetics

2 - The aesthetics are fine, though better explanation of gameplay in the help texts would be useful. Using keyboard to move and mouse to aim projectiles is also fine, but assigning enter to use stairs means moving the left hand all the way across the keyboard. Odd choice.

3 - Great looks and smooth feel. The controls for moving diagonal don't fit me well but you can change that.

2 - Simple, unoffensive sprites. Controls are keyboard and mouse and are easy to use.

Fun

1 - At the moment the design is too unrefined to be worth playing, though there is potential there if it has more work done on it.

1 - I didn't have fun. The bounce ability is overpowered except against ranged monsters which aren't even fun to fight anyway.

2 - Slain monsters can be eaten to restore health, but this will also replace your primary attack with that of the monster. This gives a nice dynamic flow to the game that changes up how you will fight your next encounter. You can choose to skip the corpse and leave it for later. It isn't mind blowingly fun, but it's simple, quick and worth a play.

Innovation

2 - Nothing particularly new, but having access to only one ability, gained from defeated enemies, is a minor twist.

1 - It is a roguelike in the traditional hack and slash sort of way with bump to attack on everything except the ranged ability.

2 - I appreciate any twist on the standard item/class system of rpgs and roguelikes alike.

Scope

2 - A little on the small/lacking side, but scores a low 2 here.

2 - This while at the lower end is what I expect from a 7drl.

2 - There's a decent amount of content here for a seven day project.

Roguelikeness

2 - Although some of the components of the game might tick boxes on some kind of roguelike checklist, it doesn't feel like one. There's too little player agency and too few decisions.

3 - This is a roguelike, as I stated in innovation.

3 - Like all coffeebreak RLs its lower on the spectrum of RL features, most notably some sort of hunger clock equivalent.

With different powers awarded to the player based on consuming enemies' remains, there could have been something interesting here but instead it ends up being an exercise in indifference. The presentation is solid and the control is simple, if a tiny bit awkward (spacebar to eat fallen foes, and return to use the stairs) but the core idea isn't realised all that well. The powers gained include Bounce (a knockback effect) and the self-explanatory Poison but you can only have one at a time. This could impart a little tactical aspect to the game but unfortunately the way you acquire powers - eating an enemy's remains - is the same way you regain health. You tank so much damage in each fight that you will almost always eat the corpse immediately just to survive, meaning that rather than choice of ability being a tactical choice, it's just a case of being stuck with whatever is lying around. Monster Supremacy isn't terrible but it feels like the kernel of a game which needs more work.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my YouTube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg4wOL7jByM

Easy to play coffee break RL focused on stealing powers from slain monsters.

Deathdealer

Completeness

2 - The game works, but lacks instructions. Enemy AI is very very simplistic. There is a screen with cards that I probably can add to my deck, but I don't see a way to do this.

2 - I didn't encounter any bugs and the different cards to give each deck type a different feel but it feels like something is missing.

3 - * No major bugs\ * Didn't see a way to change my deck, but I assume that occurs every five levels\

Aesthetics

2 - The game looks quite generic. But lots of cards with range limitation and absence of ability to see ranges makes playing this game quite tedious. There is checkerboard pattern on the floor, but it's contrast is very low and it's still tedious.

3 - Clear ascii, easy controls, simple but effective ranged attack animations.

2 - * Gray background tiles look nice, but the contrast and size make it hard to count distances \ * Escape key quitting the game without a prompt is annoying\ * Hard to see some of the lighter colors

Fun

1 - Very bad balance kills most fun. Some enemies are clearly overpowered.

1 - There's a huge potential for fun but the arena is so barren, the enemies are so straightforward, and the card effects don't seem to have enough interactions. Maybe if there were walls, trees, water, or other tiles. Or if spells had more effects on the terrain or creatures. With just a bit of work this could be a really fun game.

1 - * Didn't feel balanced\ * Lots of randomness with the cards, enemy spawn positions

Innovation

2 - There were arena roguelikes, there were roguelikes with CCG elements. Combination of both? Probably no. But I can't say that this is very exciting combination.

2 - Personalizing your deck of cards is an idea that I and a few others have thought about but I think this is the first time I've seen it as a major focus.

2 - * A more successful TCG-inspired game\ * Straight-up arena combat

Scope

3 - There are lots and lots of cards. Very impressive amount. And several different enemies.

2 - The decks are interesting and the creatures are a little different.

2 - * Reasonable scope for a 7DRL

Roguelikeness

2 - It's almost 3. Something elusive is missing. Absence of any kind of obstacles on arena combined with straightforward AI makes maneuvering almost useless.

2 - More of a roguelike than some of this year's entries. If the arena had more to it and there was more interaction among the creatures and cards, I think this would score higher.

1 - * Random elements make it feel like a turn-based TCG + arcade game\ * No real level generation; random waves more resemble an arcade game

This game combines tactical combat on arena with CCG. I can't really say that this is very successful attempt. Completely naked arena doesn't provide a lot of tactical options. The way enemy AI works combined with absence of diagonal movement gives you no way to move closer to shooting enemies without taking damage. Decks are quite boring. There are no interesting interactions/combos with different cards.

Fight oncoming waves of enemies with your deck of spells. It's a really neat idea but the arena is a bit too barren, the creatures a bit to similar, and the spells a bit to generic (do 2 damage, recover 3 mana, take less damage, etc). And there's long stretches of time between waves where you just discard spells. It almost feels like there's not enough to do or that your actions don't really matter. Supposedly you can get new cards on every 5th wave but in the nearly 90 minutes I played, I never made it past the 4th wave. I do think this is worth trying though and with a bit of work it could be really great.

The gameplay seemed a bit unbalanced: The starter green deck, for example, primarily consists of melee modifiers when I frequently encountered ranged enemies. Without a way to heal or otherwise evade their attacks, I could only reach a stalemate where the enemies and I kept moving in a line or wait for the end.\ The red deck was the most interesting for me with its ability to create terrain. Doing so didn't give me much of a tactical advantage as each of the decks can place a mana pillar that blocks ranged attacks, and I didn't experience problems with melee attackers.\ Deathdealer doesn't deliver a roguelike experience, but it could be interesting if you're looking for card-based tactical combat.

Heart of Morning

Completeness

1 - The game is quite buggy and therefore I give it a low score for completeness. Monsters never managed to damage me - I kept 200 hit points from start to finish. Every attack from a monster either missed me or was absorbed by my armor. There are also some other noticeable bugs... for example, if two or more arrows fall on one tile, the previous arrows seem to disappear. I played for about an hour, but eventually quit before finishing the game because I realized it was impossible to lose, and without any sort of challenge, it wasn't worth continuing.

2 - It was tempting to give this a 3 because it generally feels polished, but that weird spike of imbalance needs work, and there are some features clearly not implemented - when using the look command a message appears saying the dev didn't have time do include it. Fair enough, but still incomplete.

1 - The roguelike engine feels pretty complete with complex combat and a detailed inventory system (which is apparently a carry-over from the previous game). Unfortunately I always ran into levels with no apparent path to the stairs before reaching the end of the game, so I wasn’t able to see the end game. A bug where the game crashes when asking for help in look mode also caught me out.

Aesthetics

2 - The simple ASCII art was clear and easy to understand.

2 - If you like ASCII and the trappings of DOS games, you'll like this. The whole thing feels like an old roguelike, from the presentation to the archaic keyboard commands. Good...except that those weird keybindings make no more sense than they did 25 years ago.

2 - The game has a nethack-esque aesthetic with a traditional layout and a range of interesting and slightly crazy monsters (e.g. the film crew). The combat system adds a lot of flavour to the game by informing you which piece of your comprehensive selection of equipment deflects each monster’s blow. There are some animations for ring effects that I initially thought were glitches but are useful when you get used to them.

Fun

1 - With no way to lose, and no implementation of damage to the player, it wasn't fun.

2 - Definitely worth a play. The game is enjoyable and generally well designed, with enemies that succeed in challenging what initially seems like an insurmountable player advantage. The sudden death room sours things a bit though and puts me off continuing to play for much longer.

2 - The game starts with you carrying a lot of fantastic equipment. The only enemies that can harm you for the first ten levels that I could play are equipment-destroying villains such as rust monsters and thieves. Yes, the monsters we love to hate. There are also no pick-ups in the levels, just monsters. Gameplay is therefore limited to running past everything hoping a rust monster doesn’t hit you. There’s the gem of an idea here, but it needs more development.\

Innovation

1 - Unfortunately, there was nothing particularly innovative that set this game apart from the very standard, basic roguelike formula.

2 - A nice twist on the classic roguelike formula. There's very little in the way of items to pick up - just the odd arrow fired by a kobold - so inventory management is minimal and instead of being about building your character, it's about trying to stop your enemies un-building it!

2 - There’s a different take on your standard roguelike here. It reminds me most of A Quest To Far 7DRL from 2010. The disadvantage here is that there’s a lot of dungeon to cover between each significant power-reducing effect.

Scope

2 - There are a fair number of monsters that have unique properties. Some are ranged, some are melee, some slow, some fast, and the rust monster in particular was interesting because it could ruin and steal your equipment.

2 - Good. It's tempting to award a 3 and if that one room had been resolved, I might have. As it stands, the balance weirdness pulls this back into \"reasonable for 7 days\" range.

2 - There are a lot of monsters with interesting effects and AI inhabiting the dungeon and you are generated with a selection of brilliantly-named items (the dwarven clockbow comes to mind). Unfortunately the gameplay does not make good use of either.

Roguelikeness

3 - It has pretty much all of the standard roguelike features except for finding loot in the level.

3 - Very much a roguelike, through and through. It might flip some classic tropes on their heads but that doesn't prevent it from being a roguelike. Using tactical manouevring and well time timed retreats to prevent enemies weakening your prized equipment is just as much a roguelike endeavour as trying to construct a powerful build in the classics.

3 - It’s as roguelikey as they come with full positional combat, ASCII graphics and a whole selection of interesting items to equip.

Heart of the Morning is a fairly traditional roguelike with ASCII graphics, inventory, basic room-and-corridor levels, bump-to-attack, and other standard features. Unfortunately, it appears to be buggy - I played through to level 7 and a monster never managed to hit me. I started the game with 200 hit points and I never lost a single one. This means that the game is impossible to lose, which takes away the potential for fun.

This is an odd one. In some ways it's the most traditional roguelike I've played in the 7DRL this year, in other ways it's a fun inversion of the genre, and in still others it's a frustrating exercise in irritating design. \ \ Heart of Morning has the appearance of a classic roguelike. The display is chunky, retro ASCII reminiscent of a DOS game and the interface uses arcane Nethack-isms like semicolon to examine enemies. It seems initially like a wannabe - a game clinging to outmoded design tropes from the roguelikes of yore. In practice, though, it's really an inversion of many of those tropes. \ \ Rather than starting off weak and becoming powerful (or even the reverse, as in at least one previous 7DRL) you are always powerful, but the denizens of the dungeon endanger your top tier kit more than they endanger you. Rust monsters corrode your metal equipment. Magical de-buffs get rid of your +5 and +2 bonuses. The first floor or two feel like hacking unstoppably through feeble foes that can't threaten you, and consequently they feel like a tedious exercise in searching for the stairs. As you descend a few floors, though, you begin to realise that the cumulative effects of various enemy abilities is gradually debilitating you. You might miss this on your first play or two - I did. I didn't read the messages closely enough. Even once I did read them, I wasn't concerned. You carry multiples of most things - backups suits of armour, spare shields, more magic rings than you can wear. But the enemies to gradually wear them down. \ \ This would be interesting and worth an unreserved recommendation, except that the game seems to lose the plot part way through. I've played for a couple of hours so far (more incoming) and every single run has ended the same way - somewhere a few floors down, I walk into a room that is crammed to bursting with dragons and assorted other nasties. Whether I try to tough it out or retreat, I soon find a similar horde approaching from the opposite direction, and with this bombardment of gear-damaging attacks I soon succumb. \ \ Difficulty is fine. Even difficulty spikes can be tolerable. But this is a matter of slamming into a brick wall suddenly. I can't say for sure that I'll never find a way past this, but I can't think of a new approach to take. You work hard at being careful, avoiding gear damage fleeing from rust monsters and picking off magic users from a distance. But then, however careful you are, you hit that room and die. Always. \ \ It's a weird design choice and one that tarnishes an otherwise unreserved recommendation. Heart of Morning is worth playing, particularly if you want a game that feels like a classic roguelike while subverting your expectations, but I can't recommend it wholeheartedly because of the inevitability of falling to that one impossible room. With no skills to advance or new gear to find, all you can do is preserve what you already have - and it isn't enough.

Heart of Morning sees your experienced adventurer fight his way through a deep dungeon to defeat an insane wizard. With maxxed-out stats and a whole selection of powerful equipment, only monsters that can rust, steal or damage your loot are a threat. Unfortunately what appears to be a game breaking level gen bug may prove to be what thwarts you in the end.

XENOWARS

Completeness

2 - Some problems which need smoothing out, but mostly fine.

2 - It feels like a complete game, with only a few minor bugs (e.g., aliens can move through some obstacles, the game end doesn't seem to end).

2 - * Music! But it didn't loop well, and there was no way to mute it\ * Couldn't get continuous attack to work (holding LMB and moving)\ * Mobs were sometimes blocked by trees, other times they went through them

Aesthetics

2 - Entirely functional aesthetics.

2 - The controls work out well, though it can be tricky at times to select your teammates instead of accidentally killing them.

2 - * Controls get the job done\ * Serviceable graphics

Fun

2 - Worth a try, but with some problems.

2 - It’s enjoyable, though not very long.

1 - * Controls felt sluggish\ * Levels felt repetitive

Innovation

2 - Mostly nothing new but getting squad commands in there isn't commonly done.

2 - There isn’t much innovation here except for the combination of action-oriented gameplay with auto-pausing. That turns an otherwise purely action game into something more tactical.

2 - * Hack and slash with psuedo-realtime movement with friendly AI\

Scope

2 - Good.

2 - The game is rather short (3 missions) and not feature-rich. However, the scope is sufficient for a 7DRL and enough for a fun game.

2 - * Good 7DRL scope

Roguelikeness

2 - Not a roguelike but probably features enough bits to scrape 'roguelike-like' status.

2 - This game has all the features of a RL that I look for: procedural content, permadeath, and tactical gameplay. However, I think many people will confuse the real-time feel of the game with the actual turn-based nature of it. Hence, I have given this a rating of 2 instead of 3.

2 - * Roguelikelike feel with the realtime action and emphasis on hack and slash.

Good effort but needs more work. It's a continuous turn based shooter (i.e. time advances when you act) and you control the leader of a squad of AI troops trying to accomplish specific mission objectives against swarming aliens. The aliens are simple but decent; they remind me a little of the Zerg from Starcraft. Control is mostly good, with smooth WASD movement and mouse-based aiming. You can even give orders to your troops, which more or less work. Unfortunately the AI sometimes stops shooting for a while for no discernible reason, and friendly fire is on, which means you die more often to being shot in the back than to alien attacks. Too rough for a strong recommendation but worth trying.

Xenowars is a short squad-based tactical game. Players move their squad leader around and shoot at aliens while trying to complete objectives (e.g., get to this point, guard this point). Your teammates tend to be useful unless you direct them into bad positions, or have them follow you all the time; it’s often necessary to given them explicit instructions of where to move or what to attack. The AI is basic but good enough for how the game functions. Whenever my squad leader or teammates died, I felt like it was because I placed them in a bad spot rather than the AI being stupid. It is turn-based, but in an unusual way (and I consider this its key innovation): the game is real-time as long as you are moving or shooting at something. As soon as you stop, the game is paused. Unless you’re trigger happy, you can play this game as though it were turn-based and tactical even though it feels more like a fast-paced and action-oriented game.

The movement seemed slow for a shooter, and I found the AI a mixed blessing. While they did seem to shoot faster than I could, they also had a tendency to shoot my player—and I them. I did appreciate the option to give them commands during the mission and found them effective at holding positions.

Huge

Completeness

2 - Would be great to see more content and balance in this game. Does have an interesting end game, but the lead up to it feels a bit incomplete due to how easy it is.

2 - Other than an ending it seems complete to me. The inability to restart after death (or end when the boss is dead) is the only reason to give this a 2 instead of a 3.

1 - The game feels like a techno demo.

Aesthetics

3 - Very nice sprites, good atmosphere, graphical effects. Could use a bit more variety in the locations and enemies.

3 - This game does an excellent job of presenting the necessary information, and the controls are sufficiently concise that it all comes together beautifully. The visual and audio effects are nice additions, though the audio provides some important game hints too.

2 - Nice pixel art, some suitable sound effects, nice fov. But synchronous smooth scrolling goes pretty bad with immediate movement. You have to wait till scrolling ends before you can move again. This significantly slows down the game.

Fun

1 - Was very monotonous and grindy until I discovered the boss. Not sure if I got lucky, but I killed the boss very easily.

2 - It’s a short dungeon crawl with a tactically-interesting boss.

1 - Too repetitive. Slowly walk around for several minutes without any thread, gathering resources, then kill the boss in under a minute. That's all.

Innovation

2 - The hidden boss idea was a clever use of the bomb mechanics. Seems like a good basis to make a more ambitious game on (lots of mechanics like the bomb that reveal secret bosses and items)

2 - The monsters just differ by health, and there are consumables instead of an inventory (which is fine, and it works well here). The addition of a simple (and easy-to-use) crafting system is slightly innovative, though the multi-component boss is also innovative and very well done.

1 - Big multitile bosses aren'r new in roguelikes. Everything else is also generic.

Scope

2 - What you'd expect from a 7DRL. Has an endgame with a boss.

2 - There is a variety of monsters (differing mainly by strength), a unique boss, and enough material in the dungeon to keep things interesting.

1 - It's not very different from '@' walking around the level. I would expect at least different enemies (not only graphically).

Roguelikeness

3 - Pretty much a true RL.

3 - It's a procedurally-generated dungeon crawl, with tactical elements in the gameplay. It’s definitely a RL.

2 - There is too little game to call this roguelike.

This game had a very clever mechanic with the bombs and the boss. The graphics and sound seemed very polished. But, the game leading up to the boss fight felt monotonous and grindy. I managed to beat it on my first try, and none of the enemies presented any real challenge.\ \ This game has some good potential with the clever boss and bomb mechanics, if expanded with more content, IE: enemies, levels, items, etc. It will be a challenge to make the grind up to revealing the boss interesting though. Basically will require a lot balance work to get it right.

The purpose of Huge is to defeat a large boss. This boss has multiple parts that need to be defeated together, and each part makes a separate attack. To beat it you need to find a special item to craft bombs strong enough to do the initial damage. You simply won’t have enough health or deal enough damage otherwise to beat it. The rest of the game is a typical RL with consumable effects instead of an inventory (e.g., walking over a health potion automatically heals you x amount, walking over a sword always increases your attack power, etc.). The mechanics work quite well, and the game feels very complete (other than the lack of an ending or ability to restart). It’s short but seems bug-free, and it provides a fun and interesting challenge.

You are trapped in an inclosed area with huge and dangerous boss. There are +hp and +attack items scattered around. As well as some strange crystals that can be turned into bombs. Pump enough hp and attack, gather some bombs and kill the boss. There are other enemies, but they are not more then nuisance.

Hurt Yoghurt

Completeness

2 - There's not much to it but it seems finished. I've only seen one bug - a level with either no exit or an exit which was underneath a yoghurt spawner, I'm not sure which. Still, this bare bones game only gets a 2 for completeness.

2 - No noticable bugs, but the game does feel unpolished.

2 - Has an endgame, variety of items.

Aesthetics

2 - I like the decoration which surrounds the play area but it's weird that you have to manually zoom out on every single level to see you inventory.

2 - Not entirely pretty, but the controls are simple enough.

2 - Interesting designs, but was a little bit difficult to determine what some items were, because the colour pallet seemed to be all the same for everything. Zoom was a nice feature, but maybe unnecessary.

Fun

1 - With no challenge and no goal except beating your own score, there isn't really anything to make Hurt Yoghurt worth playing.

2 - The expanding yoghurt is interesting to play with and manipulate with the acid and potash, but the random, open levels mean little variety as you progress and little incentive to replay. Beating the game is easy enough, so it needs more incentive to push for high scores.

1 - Seems like the risk/reward mechanic of going for relics that have been engulfed in bacteria could be fun, but as it is it didn't really feel like there was much need to deal with the bacteria. Jsut grabbing what you could and leaving worked pretty well.

Innovation

1 - Walk around and collect things.

3 - Manipulating a cellular automata yoghurt enemy is very different and interesting. Roguelikes need more of this sort of thing!

2 - Interesting concepts.

Scope

2 - Fine.

2 - Medium scope 7DRL.

2 - What you'd expect form a 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

2 - Barely roguelike influenced.

2 - Turn-based with permadeath and procedural content, but it lacks interesting tactical interaction.

3 - Has all the hallmarks of a RL, unusual as it is.

Hurt Yoghurt is aesthetically novel, with a weird biological theme and eerie minimalist music, but the gameplay is a straightforward score challenge. There are 10 levels, each with a few pockets of yoghurt which will spread as the turns pass. You can slow the spread using potash or accelerate it in a direction of your choice using acid. The aim is to collect as many artifacts as possible on your way to the bottom. There's really no danger here - you have to do very badly for the yogurt to become impassible - and there's no minimum goal, so it's just about beating your own high score, which I personally don't find very engaging. Not enough was done with the idea. Skip it.

A mass of yoghurt is expanding through the monastery and you need to rescue the relics, manipulating the yoghurt with acid and potash as you go. A little hint - combining the two makes for a fun effect. The yoghurt expands by cellular automata, which is really nice to watch and to play against. However interactions in the game are fairly limiting, and mostly it just ends up a dash to the stairs with whatever relics you can nab on the way. Less open levels and different terrain types could have made this much better.

An interesting game concept with potential. Spreading mechanics (fire, bacteria, etc.) always seem REALLY difficult to get to work properly though. They either get out of control too quickly and are impossible to deal with, or aren't much of a threat. Will be hard to get that balance right in a roguelike.

AAPA2

Completeness

2 - There are a couple of bugs but for the most part nothing too terrible. There's an occasional crash, which knocks this down from a 3 to a 2, but they're not that common. Otherwise it's reasonably polished.

2 - The game does work. It is very slow, however, and suffers from it's engine inability to go properly full screen. I get a small 1600x900 window rather than either a full 3200x1600 experience, or an upscaled variant. It would have been cool if it had support for true window mode. It is always a bit disappointing when what is essentially a tile-based game can't run on a system due to performance problems!

Aesthetics

2 - Decent enough aesthetics. Weapon activation buttons are easily identified, key features of the map such as planets are distinct from their surroundings, and it's easy to see when ships are firing. It's not always so easy to tell which of the ships is firing at which but that doesn't affect gameplay as long as you remember that all ships fire broadside. The ship models are unnecessarily detailed and can make the display look a bit cluttered but that's a minor niggle.

2 - The combination of mouse & keyboard is a bit disconcerting. You can play almost entirely by mouse, but not quite. When you fire lasers it is unclear you have to also pick a direction, leaving me thinking they were doing nothing. The ships and combat is very nice, and I like the hex grid. I love the proper use of qweasd for hex movement, well chosen!

Fun

2 - I can't see myself putting a lot of time into the game but it plays (and restarts) very quickly so it's good for short bursts of play or a series of rapid, 'one more try' games. Worth a go.

2 - Very compelling, and sufficiently difficult to make me sit up and take notice. While this game loses roguelike points for static waves of enemies, it is probably important for training the player on tactics. I really love the broadside/laser dynamic. My big problem is the laser feels way too finicky to get setup right.

Innovation

2 - Uses some roguelike features (turn based movement on a grid, in this case a hex grid) and some features from other genres (firing broadside, waves of arena combat) and tries to splice them together. Not hugely groundbreaking but a nice try at something a little different.

3 - The broadside/laser mechanic is the sort of passive/active attacks that I think always can use further exploration in the roguelike space. This game is well worth trying out for anyone looking into ways to make combat more interesting.

Scope

2 - Fair. Limited in scope but in the right sort of way for a 7DRL. Doesn't try to overreach.

2 - I can't help feel it would have been easier to write this game without unreal... A complete and fun game in seven days? Check!

Roguelikeness

1 - This is where it falls down a bit. Yes the movement is turn based and yes it's on a hex grid but there's no procedural generation of any sort. I'm not a stickler for any 'roguelikes must have these features' attitude but procedural generation of at least some aspects seems to be one of the definitive traits by anyone's definition. The map here is the same every time, the waves of enemies are the number numbers and locations. It's a non-proc gen action game which happens to be turn-based.

1 - Tactical combat like this is a staple of the roguelike genre. But without dynamic levels, I really cannot in good conscious mark this a roguelike, it is more of a puzzle-game.

An arena combat game between spacecraft which tries to meld roguelikes features with other genres. It's not hugely groundbreaking (arena combat roguelikes have been attempted before) but including features which you tend to see more either action games or strategy games, such as the ships always firing broadside, is a nice touch. I applaud the attempt. \ \ For me, the drawback with AAPA2 is that it doesn't feel like a roguelike at all. It feels like a lightweight action-strategy game, and I think the main reasons for that are that it's best played with the mouse (keyboard is an option but feels a bit clumsy to me) and, crucially, there's no procedural generation in sight. The layout of the planets on the map is the same every time. The same numbers of enemies appear in the same groups from the same directions at the same intervals. It's a reasonably fun game taken for what it is, but what it is isn't a roguelike in any sense. Yes, it's turn based but other genres also have turn based combat - it's not exclusive to roguelikes. Many strategy games use turns, for instance, and that's really what this game feels like, far more than a roguelike. If you can overlook that, you might enjoy it. I do.

Ad Astera Per Astra 2 is a hex-based space-ship combat game. It is a turn-based combat, but with facing, resulting in a feel that would be as at home in ancient naval warfare simulator as space.

Down There

Completeness

2 - Could use more of a ramp up in difficulty. Solid features for a 7DRL, but lacks an end game.

3 - The game feels complete and stable. There's some help at the start of the game and a useful readme.txt. I ran into no problems during my adventures.

Aesthetics

2 - Good sprites, could use some polish, like on the edges of walls where the grey outlines don't line up.

2 - The game has a JRPG-esque feeling with big, beautifully-drawn, pixel-art sprites. The dungeon is quite zoomed in which shows off the sprites well. There's no sound or music, which is would work well in this sort of action game.

Fun

2 - Initially some fun mechanics, but became monotonous.

2 - Down There is pretty simple. Monsters run at you and attack and you attack them back by holding down space. Strafing the enemies seemed to reduce the damage I took a little but there's no real tactics or strategy here. Monsters are encountered one-at-a-time so combat is very quick and straightforward. It's fun for a quick blast but there's not much to get your teeth into.

Innovation

1 - Nothing really new, just hack and slash. (Which is fine if implemented with a bunch more content.)

1 - It's a real time hack-slasher. Nothing wrong with that but nothing I'd not seen before.

Scope

2 - What you'd expect from a 7DRL. Has a high score system that saves your highest score. Played for an hour, and I'm not sure what the gold is for though?

2 - There are a few monster types but they appear to be pretty much the same and two types of one-use items. You can level up to improve your stats slightly.

Roguelikeness

2 - Roguelite: has permadeath, procedural generation, but uses free movement in a top down view, not cell based movement.

2 - It's quite roguelike all in all, with its windshield kills and hack-and-slash. Its real-time play and simplicity of play means it lacks the true rogue-feel but, if developed a little more, it could become a full realtime roguelike.

A simple roguelite with some potential for interesting development. The early game had some basic strategy to it: kite enemies into big groups then use a scroll to kill all them, attack individual enemies while moving, avoid hallways (the opposite of most RLs, in which hallways are a good way to funnel enemies.) But, the leveling system quickly lead to monotonous gameplay. Once you become powerful enough to kill an enemy in one hit, you almost never need potions or scrolls and could probably play forever. (Unless I'm missing something, but I played for an hour)\ \ Like most 7DRLs, it could use more content to fill it out. More items, enemies, rooms, etc. My favourite thing about the game was speedrunning through while kiting tons of enemies. An interesting development would be to make most of the enemies brutally hard (like the orc things in Catacomb Kids) forcing the player to run through the dungeon at top speed, avoiding loads of enemies and grabbing what they can before they find the exit. Basically make it into a speed run game where you are forced to make tough decisions about what loot to pick up.

A very simple realtime roguelike with cute JRPG-esque graphics. Travel through an infinite, randomly generated dungeon, holding down space to attack! Occasional chests with health potions or attack scrolls add to your survivability. A nicely complete entry but one that lacks enough depth to be recommended.

Garbage In Garbage Out

Completeness

3 - The game is rather minimalistic, but feels complete. No bugs encountered.

3 - Very complete and playable program. There's no help apparently, but I believe it was intentional as the game is simple enough to understand.

Aesthetics

2 - Game graphics is lo-fi pixel art. Functional, but not too exciting. You pick commands by pressing numbers 1-8, which requires either moving one hand or using two hands. It would be nice to have alternative hotkeys clustered together, to be able to comfortably play the game with one hand.

2 - Nice looking with fairly understandable icons for everything. Controls are easy to use.

Fun

2 - The game is quite fun, but sometimes feels unfair. Like no move commands for several turns, or enemies spawned right behind you. Yes, it's random game, but when you loose mostly due to RNG and see no faults at your side, it's somewhat frustrating.

1 - Maybe fun for fans of puzzle games, but not for this reviewer. Roguelikes are all about making choices with the resources and abilities you have and planning ahead for future obstacles. In contrast this game shuffles your abilities each turn, including your movement, taking all sense of control out of the picture and leaving the player with no ability to plan ahead. All your moves are chosen at random, meaning that you eventually have turns where you can't do anything useful, but you still must perform 4 actions so your bot does a bunch of useless things as your anger level rises. You can't really do anything to prevent or plan ahead for these cases, so there's little strategy to boot.

Innovation

2 - Nice minimalistic concept. Not entirely novel, but surely not trite.

1 - Not sure what RL systems it's trying to innovate upon.

Scope

2 - While the game is minimalistic, there is graphics, sounds, nice UI. Not out of scope of 7drl, but good amount of work. Strong 2.

2 - The developer created a good amount of content for this.

Roguelikeness

2 - More of a puzzle then a roguelike. But technically speaking there are some elements of roguelike present.

1 - Super random puzzle game. It has procedural generation in the level layout.

This game is more of a puzzle than roguelike, but there is some tactics involved. You control a tank. But instead of direct turn by turn control you have to enqueue command (like turn, move, shoot) by batches of 4. To make things more fun you can only pick from 8 commands randomly picked from all available command. And final touch - your commands pool is also your hp. By taking damage you loose commands. Spare commands are randomly scattered around the game field. It's up to you to decide if it worth to pick some commands or should you rush to exit.

Very difficult puzzle game with a lot of randomness. As a very complete, well put together program, this game would have made a fine entry in a different game jam, but hey, we all make mistakes sometimes. Playing puzzle games makes me feel impatient and frustrated, so sadly this gets a \"skip it\" in the fun rating.

Isometric ASCII Roguelike

Completeness

2 - No bugs that I noticed but more polish is definitely needed.

2 -

Aesthetics

1 - The visuals are interesting the main reason to try out the game, but they're also abrasive on the senses, so I'm afraid I have to award a 1 here. Interesting or not, a game's visuals shouldn't make you feel like you have a migraine coming on, and they certainly shouldn't make you want to stop playing.

2 -

Fun

2 - This is a tough one. Is the game actually fun? Not really, particularly with the painful side effects of the presentation. Is it worth beholding for a few minutes though? Yes, I think so. I'll err on the side of a 2 here.

2 -

Innovation

1 - The innovation is in the visual style; the game is otherwise fairly basic. Simplicity of gameplay isn't a crime, but it *feels* simplistic and shallow. If anything, it probably feels even simpler than it is. I'll say no, not innovative.

2 -

Scope

2 - Gameplay-wise it's not much even for 7 days, but clearly some time and effort went into the presentation style.

2 -

Roguelikeness

2 - A bit roguelike. Basic proc gen dungeon wander.

3 -

The main selling point of Isometric ASCII Roguelike is its visual style. It is indeed isometric and its graphics are composed of ASCII symbols clumped into shapes. It's a novel style, for sure. The gameplay itself is basic, though. Walk around, pick up potions which heal immediately, grab bows, arrows and swords. Limited inventory use allows you to choose your current weapon, but that's about it. The enemies are all the same and I only ever saw one type of weapon for each class - one bow ('old bow') and one sword 'average sword'). The game can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, but how long it lasts depends almost entirely on the random placement of potions and enemies. It's fairly common to start off surrounded by too many enemies to defeat or escape, and it's equally possible to stumble across either far too few potions or far too many. If too many then you can, of course, remember their location and come back for them when you need them, but that leads me into the next problem. \ \ The game world is a sprawling network of identical corridors. It's very, very easy to get lost and wander round in circles without realising you're doing it. This is exacerbated by the way the isometric perspective handles walls, which is hard to describe but results in many doors and items being invisible until you're right on top of them. There's no map, not even a partial one, so after a while the game becomes a tedious exercise in trying to remember whether you've been down this white and grey corridor before, or whether that was another one. \ \ The unsavoury icing on the disappointing cake is the visual style - the very thing which is the game's selling point. It's true that the visuals are novel and charming, but the screen-filling block of almost monochrone ASCII symbols in a great grey sheet, combined with the way the sprites flicker whenever you attack, rapidly gives rise to a thumping headache and sore eyes. The game is worth a brief play to witness its unusual visual design, but the simplistic play and confusing layout aren't worth the eye strain you'll eventually suffer.

Most of all I loved the style of the isometric ASCII and played the game for some time as it made me feel like I was back in the 80s again. I did find a small hack where I could shoot arrows through doors and used it to my advantage when dealing with enemy-filled rooms. The instructions are clear and simple and the game itself was easy to get into.

No Way But Down

Completeness

1 - I was going to give this a 2 initially, but the staircase bug is a deal breaker. Beyond that, the game suffers from balance issues. At first, combat is very deadly, but a shield I found on the first level made me totally immune to damage for the next 10 levels. I'd often encounter 20 enemies and just hold down the arrow keys for 10 seconds. Talk about windshield enemies!\ \ There are a few minor issues as well. Last hits on enemies hit their \"entrails\" (I saw this in another game this year). I could walk off screen and still move around. Oddly, I was unable to wield a sword and shield simultaneously.

2 -

Aesthetics

2 - The look is very nice. I like the flickering effect, though many players will likely get annoyed with it. I like the sprites, but why give enemies sprites and leave the player as an @? The large levels are very cool, but a minimap would help at this scale. The controls could use some work. Four way direction is fine, but if you're going to limit my movement to 4 directions, DON'T let the enemies attack in 8 directions. It'd also be nice to rebind keys or simply have more options (numpad, WASD, etc.).

2 -

Fun

2 - I actually had some fun exploring the larger caves.

2 -

Innovation

1 - It's good to see something interesting tried with AI but it didn't quite work out. Enemies form a conga line in front of staircases. Sometimes you can just walk around this line and descend freely.\ \ I did once encounter the ability to briefly continue after death as a reanimated corpse. This could be interesting, but it felt randomly tacked on.

1 -

Scope

2 - Average scope.

2 -

Roguelikeness

3 - It's a bit simple, but otherwise very roguelike.

3 -

No Way But Down is an ultra-simple roguelike. You explore giant caves (very nicely generated by the way) and bump into enemies. Surviving in this game depends on finding equipment. Quickly. Before finding such items, enemy encounters hurt pretty bad. You'll be dependent on health potions scattered throughout the caves. If you can get certain equipment, however, you become godlike.\ \ The game suffer from one show-stopping bug: sometimes the staircase is generated into the wall and you can't move onto it. I encountered this on my first playthrough (which might lead a player to assume all stairs are broken) and in another run on the 10th floor. This was rather frustrating and made me want to call the game No Way At All.\ \ It sounds like the developer had some neat ideas regarding AI but not enough time to implement them fully. Clearly, the foundation of a great game is here. A few tweaks here could make this game into something worthwhile and I hope the developer tries again next time too.

This is a pretty straightforward RL as far as I can tell. I didn't see anything new or innovative while I played. The aesthetics look nice although the flickering fov did get a little annoying over time. It looked great at first, but it was short lived. Not much to say. Good job finished a 7drl!

Omicron

Completeness

2 - I wouldn't say it's polished - I had a couple of crashes - but it's pretty feature complete, for what it's aiming to be.

2 - Had a few crashes during play, but managed to beat it without further problems. Game isn't very polished and feels like it could do with more content.

Aesthetics

2 - Mostly fine. The action count (2 per turn) could be more prominent, and there's little sense of what the enemy letters are meant to be, but otherwise everything is solidly functional.

2 - Mostly monochrome ASCII - some better use of colour could have made this look a lot nicer. Control is mouse-only, and fairly unintuitive at first, but it does support the gameplay.

Fun

2 - Worth a go. It attempts something novel and partially succeeds. It's a short game, so easy to check out. Just make sure you read the instructions so you understand how it works.

2 - Positioning and ordering actions correctly is fun and interesting. Unfortunately the game is let down by fairly boring enemy AI and no interesting terrain. Full vision of the level also removes any tension.

Innovation

2 - The movement system is a little similar to this year's RUNNER_PUNCHER but not as refined. Still, it's pretty unusual and the idea of multiple actions per turn, while not wholly new, is a twist we don't see that often.

1 - The action system is interesting, but isn't exploited well to make novel gameplay.

Scope

2 - Decent scope.

2 - Only one level, and the enemies are mostly samey.

Roguelikeness

2 - Not entirely a roguelike but there are definitely strong roguelike aspects, including tactical positioning.

2 - Randomised levels, tactical combat. However the levels aren't very interesting - just random preset rooms by the looks of things, and the terrain has little effect on gameplay. Also the game is round-based with action points rather than roguelike-style turn-based.

Omicron is very much a tactical game, but the tactics aren't particularly advanced. They mainly consist of making sure that the second of your two actions per 'round' is movement so that you can pull away from enemies. Keeping your distance, avoiding being surrounded and just alternating abilities as they cool down will get you through after a few attempts. The idea of having two 'turns' (actions) per 'round' (turn) is unusual, and that's really what the whole game is based around. The control scheme takes a bit of getting used to, and some of the spawns are wonky (it's possible to have loads of enemies right in your face at the outset) but it's not a bad effort, and worth the 15 minutes it'll take to beat.

Turn-based tactics game where you get 2 actions per round, and movement is up to 8 spaces during one action. This leads to a lot of drawing enemies out, getting into the right position so you don't get shot at and timing your shots correctly. You also have a few different abilities you can use with associated cooldowns.\ \ Overall an interesting game that could be built upon with better enemy variety and more engaging level design.

That's okay, you've got explosives.

Completeness

2 - Fine for the most part. Control can be a bit unresponsive and more resolution options would be welcome (it's a bit too high for my tiny old monitor) but it's acceptable.

1 - There are some severe issues with this entry. Performance is very poor, and seems to get worse as the game goes on until it finally crashes. Each turn takes longer and longer, and each dividing wall that the player escapes through makes the problem worse.

Aesthetics

2 - Tiles and sprites are nothing spectacular but absolutely fine. They do the job, and in particular the way that accessible tunnels are differentiated from inaccessible ones by colour is a nice feature. UI is slightly awkward in other ways - there's no need to make me click the corner of the screen to pick up items.

2 - Uses the crawl tiles so its familiar to look at. Controls are OK, combination of keyboard and mouse works out fine.

Fun

3 - Pretty fun once you get your head around what's going, and it has that slight push of curiosity to see what's beyond that next wall. Having clear demarcations helps - \"I got through three walls last time; I'll try for four this time!\" It grew on me as I played. Well worth a try.

1 - Some issues keep in the way of making this a fun experience. The first is that the bombs go off at random, thus can not be depended on. Its hard to enjoy a combat system when it's too random. Secondly the crafting system: You make a throwing bomb with a regular bomb and a feather. That's the only function of the feather, and you have infinite regular bombs, so there's no real choice not to craft the throwing bomb. It ends up being a time wasting routine the player has to go through every time a crafting item is picked up. Instead it would be better just to give the player the new bomb type. The final problem is the framerate problems mentioned before coupled with the rather large area which must be searched.

Innovation

3 - I've seen other 7DRLs based around laying explosives but this one seems to use it in a way that pushes the adventure angle. You're exploring a labyrinth and trying to escape, but you can only break major walls with very specific bombs, of which there are a finite number. Throw in a bit of crafting for good measure. Novel.

2 - The explosives only gameplay idea has some merit.

Scope

2 - Fine for a 7DRL.

1 - There doesn't seem to be much content, the different enemy types don't feel any different other than that they drop different things.

Roguelikeness

2 - Although it does away with a lot of roguelike conventions, it still has the feeling of trying to push a little bit further each time, and learning the best ways to use the items you have.

2 - Not much to say here, a basic dungeon crawler using only one weapon type.

When I first played That's Okay, You've Got Explosives I hated it. I grumbled aloud and posted a snippy gripe on Twitter. It felt awkward and cumbersome to me. \ \ I was wrong. \ \ When I returned to the game to give it some more time for reviewing purposes, it began to grow on me. The interface is a bit clunky, admittedly. WASD moves but you can move diagonally by pressing two directions at once (why no numpad?) and the biggest culprit is being able to drop bombs with E but having to use the mouse to pick things up. Yuck. Still, once you begin to get used to that, the game starts to show a surprising amount of potential. \ \ It's based around explosives, as the title suggests. You're trying to escape from a labyrinth which has no doors, just a load of continuous walls. You have a seemingly infinite supply of basic explosives (the count shows 99 but I've never seen it deplete) which you can use to demolish ordinary brick, but the major walls are distinctive grey stone affairs which can only be destroyed using special golden explosives. These golden explosives are finite in number, and a lot of your time will be spent firstly trying to find the next one, and secondly locating a suitable section of wall to break through. \ \ The labyrinth also contains its share of monsters, and you have no means of fighting them other than your explosives, which are on a timed detonation, so if you want to survive you'll develop a technique for kiting enemies over a trail of bombs. It feels clumsy at first, but as you adapt to it you find there's a certain elegance to the dance. \ \ Finally there's some crafting available too. Monsters sometimes drop items like feathers or magic orbs, which you can combine with some of your explosives to form new types, such as sticky bombs or teleporting bombs. I've found these to limited usefulness, and for the most part I stick to the basic bombs, but it's nice to have the option. \ \ All in all That's Okay, You've Got Explosives turned out to be a pleasant surprise which just needs a bit of patience to start revealing its qualities. It's certainly not flawless and aside from the limited crafting options it's not particularly deep, but once you get over the initial awkwardness of the controls and its bomb-based structure, finding your way out of the labyrinth while dancing a deadly explosive dance with the monsters is surprisingly compelling, and keep pulling me back in for one more try. Give it a look.

A basic dungeon crawler with some performance issues that render it almost unplayable.

Vamps N Wolves

Completeness

2 - I haven't noticed any bugs and the game seems to achieve what it sets out to, though it's quite rough and unpolished.

3 - All aspects of this game feel complete (even the simple ending and continuing to play after victory/defeat).

Aesthetics

2 - I wouldn't say it's aesthetically pleasing but it's easy to distinguish between important features. The large picture of a wolf or vampire which indicates your current disguise is nicely drawn.

2 - Some of the graphical elements could use some polish, and the resolution of the display makes it difficult to see level tooltips. The tiles for level 4 were also confusing initially (I thought the floors were the walls and vice-versa). However, these elements are all minor.

Fun

1 - I'd say don't bother playing it. The idea of having a stealth ability which applies only to specific enemy types is interesting but the game doesn't do much with it, so although I applaud the attempt I can't really recommend making an effort to play it.

2 - If you really dislike puzzle games, change this to a 1. The puzzles are reasonably challenging, and enjoyable to an extent, but it can get repetitive at times. The length of the game might be pushing it; if it was longer, without any additional features, I think it would detract from the fun. As it is though, 10 levels is enough to make this a fun game.

Innovation

2 - A nice attempt to try something novel with stealth.

2 - Most RLs do not have puzzles in them, let along be puzzle games. Since you can’t fight (except in one limited circumstance), you have to avoid things. However, the innovation is how you can manipulate enemies to ignore you or chase you, and this can cause some interesting puzzles to arise.

Scope

2 - Fair scope for 7 days.

2 - There’s enough content here to keep things reasonably fresh across levels. Even though each level has the same number and type of power-ups, the random position of them (and the random maze itself) keeps them varied.

Roguelikeness

1 - Aside from turn based movement and proc gen layouts there's nothing very roguelike about it, and crucially it doesn't *feel* like a roguelike.

2 - The puzzle-like nature of this game may turn off more serious RL players, but the randomness of the puzzles mixed with permadeath make this definitely inspired by RL games. You will not be looking for “the solution” to each level, but rather “a solution” and that makes this feel more RLish and less purely puzzle-like.

Vamps N Wolves is a commendable effort but not well rounded enough game to be worth spending time playing. It revolves around a novel idea relating to stealth - you have two available disguises, and each will fool one type of enemy. If you wear your vampire disguise then vampires will leave you alone, and the same for wolves with the wolf disguise. This means you're constantly switching back and forth using the spacebar so you can get past enemies to the exit. It's an intriguing idea. \ \ There are some drawbacks which prevent a recommendation. The gameplay is very, very simple. Generally you can just walk around large parts of the level in either disguise and alerted enemies will be too far away to reach you. There are also some oddities of layout and enemy placement which cause occasional annoyance. Every time I've died in the game it's been because of a looped corridor with an enemy of either type at each end, meaning there's no way out. You could head towards one end wearing the appropriate disguise but you can't move through enemies even when disguised, so even the friendly ones block you in. The only time enemies move is when you're in the wrong disguise so sometimes you have to bait them away from their position, but it becomes problematic when there's nowhere to go. This all basically comes down to needing more polish and refinement. \ \ There are a few items scattered around which immediately have effects like teleporting you or temporarily allowing you to attack foes, but they're more a mild novelty than anything particularly important. \ \ Good effort on trying something different but the game needs more work to become worth recommending.

I expected a game of fighting vampires and werewolves. Instead, Vamps N Wolves is about navigating through a maze filled with the said enemies to avoid them. You can switch between looking like a vampire or werewolf, and this causes enemies of the same type to ignore you. Early on, you can just switch when necessary to get through the maze. The game becomes harder pretty quickly though: you’ll need to carefully decide when you want to switch so that you can bait enemies (opening up an exit or blocking others) or just get into a better position to sneak past others. There are a few altars that also help, removing obstacles in different ways or allowing you to warp between points. It feels very much like a puzzle game, but because of the randomly generated levels, random placement of altars, permadeath, and limited view of the level it does not feel too much like a puzzle. You still feel like you’re trying to find a way out of the maze rather than trying to find the sole correct solution. This game is a good example of how to add mental challenges to RLs, without being Sokoban.

Theseus

Completeness

2 - I haven't seen any bugs but it definitely feel like an unfinished game or early build.

2 - Fairly complete, but I had problems to run game.

2 - About what you'd expect from a 7DRL.

Aesthetics

2 - The visuals aren't particularly appealing but they're at least not confusing.

2 - Harsh sprites which are wrong implement; controls ok

1 - The graphics had an interesting folky looking quality to them that matched the ancient greek theme, but were a bit unpleasant. Simpler graphics probably would have worked well.

Fun

1 - I have to say skip it. It's not horrible, just extremely basic.

2 - Interesting game which provides lot of fun, but too hard and unpolished.

1 - Didn't feel like there was a lot of strategy involved. A good base to build from, but will require some work to make it entertaining.

Innovation

1 - Kill stuff, walk around.

2 - 1HP game, theme, shifting maze. 1 or 2, I decided to give 2.

2 -

Scope

2 - I'm going to give it a 2 here because it does feel as though effort was made, so it's probably a reasonable scope in the context.

2 - Hard to say because I can not go through whole game, but seems good.

2 -

Roguelikeness

2 - It's more or less a roguelike but kind of feels like a partial one.

3 - Roguelike. Maybe a bit roguelite?

3 -

Theseus is well intentioned but extremely basic. There seems to be just one level each time you play, with new waves of enemy spawns from time to time. Walk around killing stuff, wait for the next stuff, kill that too. At first I assumed the aim was to kill the minotaur, but after doing that the next wave of enemies just contains another minotaur so presumably the aim is to get through all the waves. I've put in my share of time but I just don't feel any motivation to try and finish Theseus. It has a 'first game' feel to it, which is absolutely fine, but not worth recommending as a player.

Nice game, whch had very good potential, but this potential has not been exploited. Interesting maze and theme and... it's all.

This is a fairly solidly designed RL game, but lacks a bit of oomph. With some more content, enemy types, items, and so on, could be a solid game. A good 7DRL attempt though, that goes beyond what many try with some ambitious graphics. The installer seemed a bit uneccessary for a game with the scope of a 7DRL.

Stygian Abyss

Completeness

2 - The game is rather empty, there definitely feels like a lot of content is missing. It is free of gameplay bugs, though I think the graphics can corrupt at times.

3 - I didn't see any bugs and it ran well enough (using Firefox) from what I can tell.

2 - Not a whole lot of features, but what is there works and isn't buggy.

Aesthetics

2 - The graphics and controls are certainly a callback to Ultima Underworld, which is a bit of a cursed blessing as they feel very old school. The sound is functional, but the levels are so large that the songs get repetitive.

2 - If not for the slow movement and the short sight range I would have given it a 3.

3 - My favorite part about this game is the look and feel. The graphics come from the old Ultima games, and overall the feel of the game matches very well with my experiences of first playing those games back in the day. The controls work well enough.

Fun

1 - At this point, the game needs significant improvement to the gameplay. There isn't much to do, you kill some monsters, systematically explore the level and descend. Exploration is best handled by sticking to a wall and wandering through the level, and combat is just a clickfest. The engine is pretty solid, but at this point the content is way too thin.

2 - It wasn't a waste of time to play though I don't think I would play it again. Probably would be more interesting if you are into Ultima.

2 - Sadly, this is where the game falls short for me. The first person view combat is extremely simple, involving very slow moving enemies and button mashing your main attack. There are variety of items scattered about that can give you a ranged attack, but these are usually weak and eventually you will be meleeing yet again. The final nail is the character's slow movement speed in a relatively large dungeon which must be searched for the ladder down to the next level. There is no automap or memory which leads to walking around in circles a lot. I won't say skip it, as the aesthetics make for a nice journey into the nostalgia zone.

Innovation

2 - Stygian Abyss isn't the first 7DRL to use the first person perspective, but it is still pretty uncommon.

1 - Judged not as a roguelike but as the actual type this isn't innovative.

1 - We've been down this road before and I think we're still waiting for that combination of first person and roguelike that will revolutionize gaming forever.

Scope

2 - For scope, the game seems on par with most 7DRL projects. There might be more depth in the deeper levels, but the length of the game makes grinding down to them a chore.

2 - Middle of the road for what I expect from a 7drl though maybe the top of that pile.

2 - Definitely an ambitious project and one that yielded a playable game. Cheers!

Roguelikeness

2 - Game features permadeath and procedural generation, though it uses a realtime engine instead of turnbased

1 - It isn't a roguelike from what I can see.

2 - Procedural generation lends a new dungeon crawl each time, I need more difficult decisions and resource management to really feel like I'm playing a true roguelike.

Stygian Abyss is a callback to the the Ultima Underworld series of first person dungeon crawlers. You play as an adventurer from Earth who stumbles through a moongate and ends up in Britiannia, and decides to explore the Stygian Abyss. The game is first person with controls and combat superficially similar to the Underworld titles, but lacking in depth. You explore levels, fight monsters, collect items and descend further into the dungeon. You start with a decent weapon and armor, or at least they appear to be, the game isn't very strong on feedback for equipment. There is a level progression system, but it is very slow. Overall, the game feels empty at this point, but the developer is apparently still updating the game.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJXDEGn0aLc

Nostalgic looking first person procedural generated dungeon crawler with a combat system that is too simple for my tastes.

Booty Seekers

Completeness

2 - There didn't seem to be an ultimate end goal in sight, but in my few hundred days at sea I was able to do a fairly impressive amount. The adventure system works fine, there's an impressive navigable map with enemies and ports and jutting mountains and mysterious jungles, there's a system of loot and upgrades. \ \ I was unable to play this in the web browser much at all. The adventure pop-ups wouldn't allow me to close them because the buttons were off the screen, so I ended up playing using the PC downloadable version. Ships sometimes seemed to explode without reason, or at least without me shooting at them. It definitely feels that combat hasn't been fully implemented or balanced out as a feature because it is very easy.

2 - The game feels mostly complete but could sue some polish. In particular, there are many grammatical problems in the text for the random events which appear throughout the game. The game could use a save system as well as sessions can last quite a while.

Aesthetics

3 - Really good effort with the aesthetics given the time constraints. Beautiful hex map, nice shaders, a real whiff of the sea, good fx, the little towns and ships look fine, and there's a pleasant guitar soundtrack to boot! The roar of cannonballs gets a bit monotonous but I guess that's life as a pirate!

2 - The game controls well using just the mouse. The art and audio are excellent, having a nice soft focus visual style, decent animation and relaxing music. In sharp contrast, the writing is juvenile and silly, with many events focused on sex and masturbation. Don't get me wrong, a chuckled at the humor, however I felt that it was tonally at odds with the rest of the presentation.

Fun

2 - Because combat becomes trivially easy very quickly, the main fun in this game comes from the adventure pop-ups. After dying once in my first game, I managed to get invulnerable easily in all my other attempts. Even tried to get myself deliberately killed by chasing other pirates and not firing at anybody for turn after turn but I wasn't able to get sunk. Maybe enemies are only provoked when a gun-fight begins, but since very quickly my cannons became super-powerful I destroyed everything in sight with a click of a button. \ \ So the fun in this game consists pretty entirely in the various imaginative, funny and often quite sexually themed multi-choice pop-ups that come your way as you explore the waters. The results from your choices seem to be pretty fixed so once you've seen them all the fun tends to run out. However, certain encounters can give you new traits which then open up new options in other events, keeping the fun alive for a bit longer. It's an impressive feat to have built this kind of linkage within a gamejam. It would be great to see somewhere the traits you have at any given time and it would also be nice if the encounters were more procedural. With challenging combat and more variability in events more fun will no doubt emerge.

2 - The game is enjoyable to play for the most part. Due to a low difficulty curve, oversimplified combat, and seeming lack of an ending, it can overstay it's welcome. The ship to ship combat could have been handled in a more interesting way by limiting the firing direction of the cannons and giving bonuses for hitting broadsides, etc. This would have made positioning more important, and brought the game more inline with the tactical gameplay that is so important to a good RL.

Innovation

1 - We've seen pirate simulators before and we've seen multi-choice event windows before. Combat consists of plain clicking of enemy vessels. Flying pirate ships are a funny idea, though I don't see why they need to fly above the ocean when they could be sailing in it! I think there is a good deal of ideas in the text of the game, so it would be interesting to see this fantasy world fleshed out more.

1 - Nothing I haven't seen in roguelikes before. Unless I were to count having homosexual/straight as character traits, but traits in general have been done before.

Scope

2 - A nice start for a pirate rpg game. Good accomplishment for a 7DRL.

2 - There was definitely some ambition going into this project, and there's a good amount of content in the form of the random events.

Roguelikeness

1 - Whilst there seems to be some procedurality in the map and enemy generation, there is permadeath, and the game is definitely turn-based, this game left me feeling like it was more of an adventure or rpg-lite than a roguelike. Especially because there is no challenge in the combat yet and the adventure side of things is very prominent, I very quickly ended up just wantonly sailing the sea seeking my next adventure pop-up instead of really engaging with the combat system or thinking about the map. Looking forward to seeing improved combat and making decisions that really feel like they matter.

2 - Very low on the roguelike scale but taking just enough inspiration to land it in the roguelike-like category.

Sail the seas as a fearsome pirate in a flying ship! You can fight enemies at sea to gain loot and supplies, buy supplies and upgrades at ports and sail around hoping to run into exciting encounters leading to multi-choice options. A beautiful little Unity game of nice ambition and fun moments, this entry falls a little short of its potential due to its easy combat, but the art and adventure texts make it worth checking out. If and when the combat is made challenging this could be the core of a fun game.

A simplistic piracy roguelike with pretty graphics, good audio, and strangely juvenile writing.

Cinnamon Fins RL

Completeness

2 - The game works fine, but this kind of game must have some sophisticated level generation algorithm to be playable. And it is obviously missing here.

3 - Completed and polished game.

Aesthetics

2 - Lo-fi pixel art icons are not immediately recognisable, but thanks to hints you can learn their meaning. I'd say it looks okay'ish.

3 - Nice, clear tile-based graphics, intuitive controls. Lack of diagonal movement not bother.

Fun

1 - In theory this should be fun and replayable. In practice you end up in unwinnable situations so often, that it kills desire to play more. Careful balancing and proper level generation could fix this.

2 - Good idea, but a bit too random.

Innovation

2 - There were roguelikes that packed many things in one tile. There were roguelikes where every move was superessential. But probably not in combination like in this game.

1 - Logic game with roguelike inflences. Nothing new.

Scope

2 - Just about fine for a 7drl.

2 - A lot of possibilities, but not too ambitious.

Roguelikeness

1 - This game plays like a puzzle.

1 - Not a roguelike.

This game is some kind of minmaxing puzzle. You play on 8x8 grid where every tile contains up to 3 different kinds of effects. You may get resources, loose resources, spawn monsters. You need to reduce number of 'points' resource you have to zero to win. The problem is - everything is completely random. The game isn't even making sure that stairs are generated. Often there are no good moves. All moves are critically bad. In addition to this monsters can attack diagonally and you cannot. Once they are spawned you are getting overwhelmed very quickly.

CinnamonFinsRL is hard 'puzzle' game with roguelike influences. Mechanics is interesting. Every tile has assinged value of resources. When PC move on ceratin tile, gains ones supplies and lose other. Materials are used to fight with opponents. Rules are simple but large number of resources provides diversity of possibilities and tactics. Quite good and funny, but not roguelike.

Die Rogue

Completeness

3 - Feels very complete. Professionally done.

2 - No bugs that I could see.

Aesthetics

3 - Looks great, sounds great. Controls are minimalistic touch controls and explained very intuitively. Meshes with the game very well.

2 - Looks really nice and the dice have a great \"feel\" to them. It's hard to know what's going on, or why, or why I should care though. There's also quest text that you never have time to read. Also stuff on the right side of the screen that may or may not have any effect, I couldn't tell.

Fun

2 - It's fun! A bit hard and fast paced for me, but definitely fun. Almost a shame that I can't really do much to look at the cool stuff going on in the screen because of all the frantic clicking. Certainly worth a click

1 - Almost but not quite fun for me. It reminds me a lot of the real-time dice rolling game Space Cadets: Dice Duel. Except that has co-op and different roles and thematic tension. This is just shake and click what you're told to as fast as you can. There is potential though and I'm interested in what this becomes.

Innovation

2 - Hard to call it innovative since it is clearly not a roguelike or even has feint hint of a roguelike. However, based on my personal experience, I found it a rather novel approach.

2 - Uh, I guess. I'm not sure what to compare it to since it's not a roguelike at all.

Scope

2 - A solid and focused entry.

1 - Roll for combos while things count down.

Roguelikeness

1 - Certainly not a roguelike in any way shape or form. Except maybe that you die a lot, but that's hardly enough is it? At any rate, it is still a blast to play.

1 - I think the word \"rogue\" is used in it somewhere but it's more of a realtime dice rolling thing.

Die, as in dice! This is a great-looking little mobile rogue-inspired action game. Shake dice to roll them, then tap on dice to activate them. Some dice do damage, some dice buff your sanity (very important), some add gold, some keep the sleeper from awakening (!!). In any event, it is exceedingly difficult to keep up, as the game progresses rather quickly, and starts messing with your dice, making things even more difficult. There is not much strategy that I could discover, but if there is a base of a rather fun mobile time-killer here, especially if you could hand the same 'scenario' over to a friend.

If you like shaking the screen and clicking what you're told to as fast as you can - but never fast enough - then this is the game for you! There may be more to it though; I don't know since I couldn't bring myself to play more than 15 minutes.

Evig Vinter

Completeness

1 - A number of problems with crashing and some thing that seem liked bugs happened quite a bit at first.

2 - The game crashed on my first attempt to explore wilderness. There is a bug with leveling up. I was getting a level after each visit to wilderness even if my xp is clearly not enough for level up. It is impossible to spend day without sending someone to explore wilderness even if you have tons of resources.

Aesthetics

3 - Looks and feels great though maybe some different tilesets for different buildings.

1 - If you make a graphical game and call the place 'warehouse' there must be at least something that makes player believe that it's a warehouse. In this game all locations are identical. And what's worse, they are identically empty.

Fun

2 - It wasn't a waste of time to play and I don't feel cheated for having spent my time on it.

1 - The game have a little rough start if RNG decides so, but then it's super repetitive and boring.

Innovation

3 - It changes some things and shakes the usual roguelike patterns up a bit while still staying within them.

1 - Nothing new here.

Scope

2 - This is what I have come to expect from a 7drl.

1 - I'm afraid it's not really enough even for 7drl. It's literally @ walking on the screen plus very basic base management.

Roguelikeness

3 - While part of it isn't really a roguelike in a sense I spent most of the time in what was definitely a roguelike.

2 - There is turn based combat, characters have stats, permadeath... But there are no any tactics or difficult decisions. It's way too blank and primitive.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnmHeNXRuqo

Simplistic games that tries to combine base management and resource gathering. But way too simplistic.

Goblin-COM

Completeness

1 - The game is missing the biggest feature it promised, the actual combat. As it is when I am reviewing it fights are isnta win. I can't really give it a higher score until there actually is something there.

2 - The important feature that's missing is its combat, instead of a turn based combat mode, the game pops up an apology and counts the combat as an immediate victory. Despite this, the game can still be won or lost. It has an autosave feature, help, and quite a nice interface.

Aesthetics

3 - The layout and style feel quite nice and flow well.

2 - I find the game quite nice to look at, and the controls do what is expected. One control I'd love to have would be spacebar to pause.

Fun

2 - If it wasn't for the story which was nice this would be a 1.

2 - Despite not having the turn based x-com style combat mode, there is still some good fun to be had in acting as a sort of air traffic controller sending out squads to intercept the incoming goblins before they wreck your buildings.

Innovation

3 - Lots of innovation but sadly not much follow through on some of the more ambitious stuff.

1 - Not really doing anything new here, nor can I say it's bringing a neat twist to old RL mechanics as, well, its got almost no roguelike mechanics.

Scope

2 - The game works quite well and seems to have fit into the 7 days though major features where cut to make it work so yeah.

2 - A decent amount of content for 7 days.

Roguelikeness

1 - Not a roguelike at the moment. Maybe if there was combat that would change but at the moment its more of an X-Comlike.

1 - This is an ambitious strategy game to be made in 7 days, but it is lacking in many roguelike features.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW3Uul7-Iss

Unfinished but still playable. An interesting concept that is sadly not really a roguelike at all.

I Need To Go

Completeness

2 - Feels mostly complete. Instructions are clear, music is a nice touch. Dancing lights is a nice touch. Not the most polished game in the bunch, but very well done.

2 - Unpolished, but no bugs.

Aesthetics

3 - Looks like a unicorn barfed ASCII all over my monitor, which I guess is the point. Aesthetics definitely lend themselves to the game very well.

1 - Ugly colours, bad choice of symbols (both items and NPCs are upper case letters with no meaning to them), poor control scheme.

Fun

2 - I can't really say it's too much fun in terms of the actual gameplay, but the presentation itself is very fun. Worth checking out.

1 - Basic gameplay that isn't very compelling to play. It seems like resource use is meant to be a challenge, but I had no trouble just ignoring that element of the game, making the only challenge being to navigate fairly tedious rooms. No replay value.

Innovation

1 - Nothing too new here, except maybe for the theme. I can't say I've ever had the option of peeing in a roguelike before, that I can remember.

1 - No interesting mechanics in the game. The theme is pretty original, but the game does little to take advantage of this.

Scope

2 - Seems about right for a 7DRL. Not a huge game, but it focuses on one thing and does it well.

2 - Small game, very little interaction.

Roguelikeness

3 - I guess technically it is a roguelike. Levels are procedural. Movement and combat are tactical (ish). Death is quick.

2 - Turn-based, random environments, but no tactics or interesting decisions.

In order to fully appreciate this game, I recommend drinking as much water or beer before you play it. DO NOT PEE. You need to have your bladder as full as possible as you play this game. The colors are riotous and the music is terrible and I can't see anything on the screen... it feels like a real party! And I really have to pee!

A roguelike with a very original theme - you're at a party and you really need to pee! The gameplay thus involves navigating rooms filled with drunks and beer to find the bathroom. This is mostly tedious, as the levels are big, the controls awkward, NPCs get in the way and the colours are constantly changing. Overall a light, jokey game.

Infinite Energy

Completeness

3 - I found no bugs and I suppose nothing is missing. The enemy pathfinding around corners seemed a little kludgy, but that's minor.

2 - No real bugs that I came across, although there's not a particularly high degree of polish either.

Aesthetics

2 - I didn't care for the look. The level consists of red walls on a red background (which has a nice parallax effect) until later is it blue on blue. It's a bit much on the eyes and also repetitive. I know the enemies are supposed to have these black feet thingies, but they end up looking like a circle on a black square (almost as if there was a transparency bug).\ \ The controls do the job, but I wish I didn't have to move my left hand to hit ENTER when moving onto the next level.

1 - Pretty hideous MS Paint graphics. It is at least reasonably functional, however.

Fun

1 - There is potential here and there are moments when I think \"being able to stop time is really cool!\ but those moments are vastly outweighed by a lot of tedium."

1 - Gameplay is fairly dull and lacking in challenge. Enemy projectiles are trivial to dodge unless you're in a narrow corridor, enemy types are limited and uninteresting and the new weapons do not do much to spice up the basic gameplay. Movement speed increases throughout the game, but is always too slow, making trudging around the levels pretty tedious.

Innovation

2 - Points for trying something different. The whole \"enemies only move when you do\" thing has been done, but perhaps not with a shooter like this.

2 - Auto-pausing real-time games have been done before, but are still relatively uncommon. This game doesn't do too much extra that's new on top of that, however.

Scope

2 - Kind of on the low to average side.

2 - A number of different weapons and enemies, although there is still not a lot of variety in their effects.

Roguelikeness

2 - The basics are here. You're exploring a procedurally generated labyrinth and killing monsters. However, there are not so many interesting tactical choices.

2 - Does at least nod towards roguelikeness with its pausable combat system, randomly generated levels and inventory system. Lacks much of a roguelike feel, however.

Infinite Energy is a top down shooter where time only progresses where you move/shoot. The concept of a bullet hell game where you can pause time and then have a slew of interesting choices to make to save yourself sounds promising... but that's not really here. Instead you move back and forth while enemies shoot single shots at you. The pause-time mechanic doesn't work as well as expected because there's a bit of a delay between the time you hit a button and when time stops.\ \ The bigger problem is that interesting content is spread very thin over a lot of downtime. I spend way too much time waiting for my \"energy\" to regenerate and I spend even more time slowly backtracking from dead ends on the map. With the huge levels, slow movement, lack of fog of war, and lack of mini-map, navigating around is *really* boring.\ \ For the first 10 levels there are only two kinds of enemies (one is a larger, beefier copy of the other) and you may not even see a second weapon for many levels. I'd rather see the game condensed way down: more variety in a smaller space with a faster ship.\ \ Infinite Energy has some potential, but it would need a lot of rebalancing before I could recommend it.

A fairly basic but servicable game that attempts something a little bit interesting, but with ugly visuals and slow, repetitive gameplay.\

Never To Tell

Completeness

2 - I haven't seen any bugs but aspects of the design lack polish.

2 - It’s a complete and polished game albeit with one with a limited scope. It feels like it could just directly onto the iphone and not be out-of-place in the app store. However, I felt some of the randomly-generated levels were unfair with no way for me to pass without losing significant health.

Aesthetics

2 - Some might rate the aesthetics lower but I find them quite charming. UI is simple and functional as well.

3 - The simple hand-drawn and animated sprites were effective and care was taken with the intro and menu screens and backgrounds. The hand-drawn aesthetic was backed up with sounds apparently recorded on a mic. The overall effect was convincing, even if it did wear its gamejam-roots on its sleeve.

Fun

1 - Could have snagged a solid 2 (\"worth playing\") score here if not for shooting itself in the foot by making a manouevrability game which lacks manouevrability. As it is, the experience is too frustrating to be sustain a recommendation.

2 - Figuring out and defeating the movement patterns of the enemies is entertaining. No instructions are provided but it’s easy to understand what you need to do. Some apparently unfair levels slightly diminished the fun factor.

Innovation

2 - The aesthetic is unusual and the idea of two arbitrary observers which interfere at random is fairly new. Not necessarily good, but new.

2 - Defeating enemies via exploiting their movement patterns is a fairly well-known trope and it lacked the clarity of purpose of some puzzle games that take a simple concept and exploit it to its logical extreme. However, I don't know of any puzzle game that does exactly what it tries to do.

Scope

2 - Decent for a one-week project.

2 - There’s a few different enemy types in the game with some interesting interactions, enough for a complete game.

Roguelikeness

1 - No. I suppose an unconvincing case could be made for tactical positioning in a turn based system but I think that's straining the idea of a roguelike to its limit. This is a puzzle game. I think it's in the wrong game jam.

1 - Although this game does have roguelike-movement and enemies, it is really a puzzle game with a single screen, multiple lives and no RPG or dungeon elements in sight.

I'll say upfront that I like the aesthetic here. I can see it being divisive. The sprites and observing faces have a crude, Microsoft Paint look to them, but the whole garish style lends itself to a surreal and dreamlike ambiance which I suspect was intentional. I can appreciate that. \ \ Unfortunately that's the game's most enjoyable feature. At heart it's a straightforward puzzle game which, structurally, reminds me of the original Game Boy. Get to the exit while avoiding enemies or leading them into obstacles. You can't attack but traps harm enemies just as effectively as they harm you, so manouevrability is your best defence. It's a debilitating weakness to the game, then, that manouevrability is so limited. Movement is 4-directional, which can be fine, but when the gameplay hinges on nimbly dodging around dangers, 4-way is very awkward. This is only exacerbated by the fact that enemies move at the same speed of you, which means that an enemy higher up the screen (the exit is at the top) can often block you. This is how a run usually ends - a blocking situation which the player had no means of avoiding or preventing. Frustrating. \ \ For that reason I can't recommend Never To Tell. I like the surreal stylistic choice but the gameplay and control need more work.

A short puzzle game which adopts roguelike positional combat mechanics and random generation of levels. A simple concept executed to a high level of polish.

RobberyRL

Completeness

1 - On this front I have to give the game a 1. The fact that none of the skills, character classes or movement modes make any noticeable difference means that multiple major features are strikingly absent.

2 - The game works fine, but clearly missing features. Looks like a lot more was planned, but not implemented. Also it doesn't work in firefox and in chrome pressing backspace during name input causes 'back' function of browser... Name input is really messed.

Aesthetics

2 - The visual style is reasonably pleasant, but the blue guards often blend into the background, and they're almost invisible in water. Needs a bit more work to make things clearer. Still, it doesn't impact the gameplay too badly.

2 - The game looks ok. Healthy mix of ascii and symbol-like graphics. But controls could be better. All lists start with '0'. This forces you to move either hand to another part of keyboard to select first item. Irritating.

Fun

2 - It's worth a try just on the basis of being something unusual, and it's reasonably fun as long as you happen to find some decent armour.

2 - Very weak 2. Geometry of levels doesn't give you a chance to use platforming creatively. And given fixed levels design, replayability is almost non-existent.

Innovation

2 - I'm not really sure how to score it on this. It's innovative for a roguelike in that it's not one. I suppose I'll give it a 2 for at least trying something unusual, roguelike or not.

1 - There were roguelikes with platforming before. There were stealth games before. And this game doesn't add anything new to either nor it creates some unique mix.

Scope

2 - Fine.

2 - On the lower side of what you would expect from 7drl.

Roguelikeness

1 - Absolutely not. As roguelike as a ham sandwich. Fun-ish game, yes. A bit out of the ordinary, yes. Roguelike, no no no.

3 - It's a roguelike.

RobberyRL is in essence a platform game. There's running and jumping, and although it's all done in a turn based way, that element feels a little gratuitous. There's ostensibly stealth too, though I never found that using the 'sneak' mode made much difference. Nor, for that matter, did using the 'run' mode seem to have a noticeable effect on my speed. \ \ The game isn't bad once you start to understand what you're doing. Forget about stealth and just parkour your way around the levels, grabbing treasure. Once you feel a bit more comfortable with the movement you can perform great leaps and hang from edges like a pro. A loot percentage counter tells you how much treasure you've collected, and once you have over 50% of the loot, you can exit the way you came in. At that point you progress to the next level without fanfare or interlude, which is a bit confusing the first time. The landscape looks the same, so I nearly closed the game assuming it hard started over when I won. In fact there are several levels, the transition from level to level just isn't well signposted. \ \ The idea is solid enough, and fairly intriguing, but there are flaws in the way it's executed. Guards largely move at the same speed as you, and they spot you from a mile away even when you're sneaking, so you'll spend a lot of time in close proximity to them. If you find good armour early on, that means the game is a cakewalk as the guards effectively can't hit you anymore. Without good armour they'll pound you into the dirt pretty quickly as they cling to you like armed limpets. Since the guards are almost impossible to avoid even with maximum stealth, this can make the game very frustrating or very easy, depending on the item drops. \ \ Speaking of item drops, they're the only thing that varies from one attempt to the next. The level layouts and even the guard patrol routes (as far as I observed) are identical each time you play. This means that although identical play won't get you through every time, because you don't know where the loot is, you can at least devise an optimal exploration route after a few attempts. \ \ As I mentioned, neither sneaking nor running seems to behave any differently from normal movement (in the end I just ran everywhere, because whatever negligible speed boost it might impart was more valuable than the useless stealth system), and the same is true of the skills to which you allocate points at the outset. I experimented with all-sneak, all-melee and all-lockpicking builds, and none of them were any more successfully at any of those tasks than any other. No character ever killed an enemy, regardless of combat skill. Sneaking was never useful, regardless of the level of sneak skill. Unlocking doors randomly takes anywhere between a couple of attempts and dozens, with no apparent reference to your lockpicking skill. \ \ The game is a fun diversion once you get the hang of it, and it's worth taking a look at for something a bit unusual, but it has too many flaws to get a strong recommendation and there's really nothing roguelike about it.

Another attempt to make turn based platformer/roguelike. I'd call it partial success. Platforming itself is implemented quite well. But other than that there is not much in the game. The most difficult part - level generation is not implemented here. The game have several hand-crafted levels. There are several classes, but the only difference between them are stats. They don't have any kind of unique skills. It wouldn't hurt for a platformer about robbery to have some parkour skills and level designs where these skills are necessary.

Stay Strong

Completeness

2 - It doesn't feel like anything missing that was intended to be there, but \"feature complete\" seems like a stretch. It doesn't really have features.

2 -

Aesthetics

2 - Aesthetics are functional.

3 -

Fun

1 - Give it a miss. There isn't enough to recommend Stay Strong.

3 -

Innovation

1 - No innovation because there isn't really anything happening.

1 -

Scope

1 - Very limited even for a 7DRL.

1 -

Roguelikeness

2 - Has a hint of rogueishness to it, but is missing the things that matter.

3 -

Stay Strong is more or less like Pac Man. Walk around in a 4-directional way through a series of small mazes, trying to avoid being touched by dollar signs. \ \ The main problem with the game is its opacity. What are the blue exclamation marks scattered around? No idea. If you walk over one then nothing happens. If an enemy walks over one then they turn blue but otherwise work in exactly the same way as normal. If an enemy comes up alongside you, you can bump to kill it. Sometimes this works but other times they kill you. What determines the outcome? No idea. At first I thought it was the blue exclamation marks, but no. Some blocks (trees?) in the mazes can be destroyed with a bump, to create a new opening. Which ones? No idea. I've experimented and there doesn't seem to be any consistency or pattern in the breakable blocks. What are you even trying to do? Again, no idea. Just keep going until you can't anymore. \ \ That's the problem. Nothing is clear or explained. It's unclear what things do, or why they work in the way that they do. It's also not clear whether there's any difference in direction. From the starting area you can head off in any of the four cardinal directions but you can't return to a previous screen, and no branching off to the sides, so once you pick a direction you're committed to it. Is only one direction valid, or do all of them lead to the nebulous goal? Unclear. \ \ That says everything about Stay Strong, really. Everything about it is unclear. With no inventory, interesting enemies, impressive presentation, or really any feature to make it anything other than forgettable, there's no reason to play it. Even if you do, you'll forget. I keep seeing its title and being unable to remember whether I've played it, even though I've done so a multitude of times now. \ \ I'm sure an effort was made here. but skip it.

This game is deceivingly fun. On the first look I didn’t think much of it, but then I kept firing it up again and again. Its puzzle-like nature is very addictive, however, some instructions to convey that the ‘!’s are axes (are they?) would be helpful. The bleeding animations are a nice touch too.

Void Sanctum

Completeness

1 - Void Sanctum allows you to walk through several locations and pick up a variety of beautifully drawn items. It uses what I assume is a standard UI or one from a previous engine since it contains all kinds of shortcut bars, stats and meters, none of which do anything. However, there's no game to speak of, since none of the items appear to affect you in any way. Monsters are 1 hit kills and can kill you in a single hit which runs directly counter to the traditional RPG setup. It can't really be called a game. I also ran into some freeze crashes, bugs and strange behaviour (randomly gaining skills that did nothing).

1 - Technological demo without actual content. There are items, but they do nothing. There are enemies, but all of them die from a single hit and kill you in one hit.

1 - Nearly complete, but very bugged.

Aesthetics

2 - The game uses long flavour text for each location which is printed at the top of the screen. It's nice read and well written. Some locations also use ascii characters on top of semi-transparent tiles for scenery which works well. For example, a bush may be '#' on top of a transparent green bush tile. The music is also well chosen, assuming it wasn't composed during the 7 days.

2 - The game looks very good, music fits theme well. But there are strange solutions like inventory popping up every time you pick an item. Tooltip delay is very big. Mouse must be used to equip items and look around, but wasd cannot be used, despite 4-way movement.

3 - Beautiful fusion of modern aestethic look and spirit of classic roguelikes; font in in-game menus could be bigger

Fun

1 - The game is not complete enough to really enjoy. Furthermore, the interesting items that actually do nothing just disappoint.

1 - There is no actual game to evaluate fun factor.

3 - Very good game, well balanced and very entertainment.

Innovation

1 - The game is not complete enough to fully understand whatever ideas were had during conception. The atmosphere is the stand-out feature at the moment.

1 - From interface placeholders and other things looks quite generic.

2 - Typical roguelike with innate spirit; thought about '1', but...

Scope

1 - The scope is large but sadly unfulfilled.

1 - Art part might be enough for 2. But gameplay part is 1. Rounding down.

3 - Rich gameplay, a lot of content.

Roguelikeness

3 - It feels like a traditional, but incomplete, roguelike.

3 - Looks like it was planned more or less like traditional roguelike.

3 - Definitely roguelike.

Void Sanctum is desperately incomplete and can't be recommended for play. However, it is aesthetically pleasing so worth a look if you'd like to read some nice flavour text, look at an interesting mixed ascii/graphical style whilst listening to well-chosen music. Just stay out of the way of the monsters.

There is nice music, there are nice visuals and flavour text for each location. But there is no game. It's quite empty technodemo.

Void Sanctus is very promising roguelike. I hope that development will be continued... For this while game is big, well designed, good gameplay, but replayability is not so good and game is very bugged. Nevertheless I recommend to play VS. It's very succesful fusion of modern look and spirit of classic roguelikes.

cboy

Completeness

2 - The game feels mostly complete. Some more variety in plays would have been nice.

1 - A lot of basic features are missing. Nothing happens when you die, the @ just sort of disappears. Not mentioned in the readme is that pressing ESCAPE quits the game. If you are holding any gold it will also output your score on the terminal after you exit. There's no in game help. Moving off the edge of the map causes the game to hang. Overall doesn't feel finished. Hopefully the developer builds on this or uses a library next year so they can get closer to a full fledged game.

Aesthetics

2 - Aesthetics are fine, basic colored ascii works for me.

2 - The color palette is a bit bland, which make sense since its supposed to be a western, however the mostly dark brown on black makes things a bit hard to view. The controls for handling items are somewhat strange.

Fun

1 - The game could be more fun with some more variety in content.

1 - I can't really recommend it. Its mostly just an @ sign and some things you can kill. The balance is off and needs polish. You'll start with no way to defend yourself and a bunch of bandits bee-lining for your position. Its easy to die, and just as easy to crash the program should you try to move to a different screen. Either of these requires the player to exit the program and then relaunch, which kills my will to continue playing. Please, please work on user friendliness, as in roguelikes it is so important to be able to quickly retry after a death.

Innovation

1 - No innovation going on. Basic ascii RL.

1 - Nothing new here.

Scope

3 - Scoping is good. Single screen with a high difficulty. That's how I like it.

2 - Theres a decent amount of systems to make a game here. The procgen works well and makes nice looking western towns.

Roguelikeness

3 - Yup, that's a roguelike alright.

3 - It's definitely in the category of rogue.

For a 7drl I think the scope is perfect. One screen, pretty difficult, and feels just like I'm playing a roguelike. There were a few bugs here and there, but I still got a good feel for the game.

Small, unpolished roguelike in the wild west.

little warrior

Completeness

2 - Feels polished in most respects but the poor starting area design (hidden shops) and the highly variable treasure spawns seem symptomatic of a need for more refinement of key aspects.

2 - Completed but objects generation is unpolished.

Aesthetics

3 - Looks good, controls well, and the interface makes sense.

2 - Looks good and intuitive controls. Good designed game.

Fun

2 - It's worth a try but doesn't earn a full recommendation.

1 - This game have more potential. I think that author focuses on technical aspects of game and had too little time to polish gameplay.

Innovation

1 - The criterion in the guidelines for a score of 1 - \"Hack, slash, whatever\" - is perfectly applicable here.

1 - Standard 'hack, slash, loot' game.

Scope

2 - Fine for a 7DRL.

2 - Everything what I could expected from 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

2 - It's a turn based dungeon crawl with permadeath but it misses the points which make roguelikes what they are - tactics, a need for careful action, decisions which have weight and consequence.

2 - Typical roguelike, but without depths and rogue's spirit.

I have very mixed feelings about Little Warrior. At first I thought it was impossible to get very far, then I realised I'd missed something, then I realised the thing I missed didn't help much. Sometimes I like the game and sometimes I don't, usually in proportion to how much I've been playing it that day. \ \ It's a pretty simple dungeon crawl. Four-way movement, enemies with varying amounts of health and damage power but no special abilities that I've observed, and some treasure. You start off by the entrance to the dungeon, you go inside, and you don't last long. Repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat. After a while (about half an hour in my case) you start to wonder why there's a purple bottle with a number beside it in the UI. Maybe you've found some of these potions but they don't seem to do anything. Eventually you think \"This is impossible. I must be missing something.\" The next time you start the game (or die, since the game immediately restarts you without even a key press or mouse click needed) you decide to poke at the edges of the starting area, just in case. Can't leave that way, can't leave that way...but wait, you can go north! And east! \ \ Yes, there's a vitally important shop off to the east side of the starting area with no indication that any such thing exists. The only reason you'd even try to go that way is just on the off chance there might be another screen. And if you try west or south first, you might give up before trying the other directions, since they reinforce the original impression that there's nowhere to go. \ \ To the north there's a meat (healing) shop which is locked. East of that is a potion (magic) shop which is also locked. To open either of them you need to buy a key which is available in the shop to the east of the starting area. This place is essential if you want to get anywhere. It has spells, keys and more powerful versions of your basic sword and shield. You start the game with 55 coins, which is enough to buy a mid-tier sword or shield and a spell. I recommend tooling up before you even enter the dungeon. \ \ When I discovered this I cursed the poor design but felt relieved that I knew how to work toward progress. It's the classic RPG grind - adventure for cash, buy better gear which lets you get further, get more cash... Here, though, it rapidly becomes a little cumbersome. For a start, there's no way I've found to get back to the surface quickly, so every time you want to buy something new you have to trudge up through multiple floors, and then all the way back down again. This does serve to force a judgement call about whether to press on and risk being killed or make the boring slog to the surface yet again, but it still reeks of awkward design. \ \ There's also the question of acquiring the treasure needed to buy new gear. You don't get money for killing monsters, only for opening chests. This does put you in a very roguelikeish position where avoiding combat is usually a better option than fighting, but since treasure chest spawns are extremely inconsistent you can't really refine a viable approach. Sometimes you'll find 200 coins in the first couple of floors; other times you'll descend several floors and not even reach 100 coins. This inconsistency means it's down to luck of the draw as to whether you can buy the gear needed to survive in the depths - not a good position to be in. \ \ I could have resigned myself to having futile attempt after futile attempt and just making the best of the runs with plenty of treasure, effectively start-scumming - \"Is there much treasure on floor 1? No? Exit and restart!\" To mitigate this I did devise a workaround which involves casting the fire spell and then patiently kiting every enemy into the flames (the fire remains in place until you leave the floor) but this gets old quickly. \ \ The long and the short of it is that Little Warrior is a charming enough pocket-sized dungeon crawl but has some questionable design decisions which cause playing it to become an irritation altogether too quickly. I have some fun with it if I haven't played it for a day or two, but after several attempts in one day I start to get frustrated. Worth a try but too flawed to get a strong recommendation.

Little Warrior is game with good potential, but probably assumptions were too big for 7 day deadline. Game is completed when we look at technical aspects and underdeveloped when we look at gameplay.

Rogue Caravan

Completeness

2 - No bugs or crashes as far as I've seen, but the game definitely needs more work to make it truly playable.

3 - No bugs found. Very small scope, but does its job well.

3 - Works, is complete within its scope, and feels balanced and polished - good job.\ \ Only bug I encountered was that once I reached a town and a bandit was spawned so near I couldn't do anything but be beaten.

Aesthetics

2 - Everything is clear enough but I wouldn't say it's pretty.

2 - Simple controls that work fine. The game is nothing special to look at, but it is represented clearly. Be careful with red text. It's usually not a good idea.

2 - Standard roguelike aesthetics. Nothing special, but fully functional and clear. Lucid instruction screen at the start sets the player on her way nicely.

Fun

1 - In its current state it's too dependent on start-scumming to get a favourable map. Give it a miss.

2 - Replayability is not very high, but the game actually is fun for a time. Even though the premise is dead simple, there's a challenge. Hold down the arrow keys and you will die instantly.

2 - Fun enough for multiple crossings between towns. Neutral traders also traverse the landscape and can be attacked by bandits. Excitement is enhanced by the way you can hide in forests to get away from bandits, but movement between the two towns is basically all there is. Procedural maps keep it fresh for a while but basic bandit pathfinding is predictable. I think the game achieves what it sets out to do but I'm left yearning for a little bit more in the way of mechanics. Motivation to play runs out fairly rapidly once the mechanics are clear, maybe a scoreboard or alternative player goals would keep it up for longer?

Innovation

1 - Dodge letters on an open map.

1 - The terrain types are probably the most unique feature and that has been done plenty.

1 - It's refreshing that there is only evasion and no direct fighting but feel there's nothing particularly novel in the game, though that's fine in itself. Leading a caravan is a rich theme and it can no doubt be expanded on.

Scope

1 - Actually a little basic even for 7 days.

1 - Very small scope, but as a learning experience (per the dev) such as a small scope was really good idea.

2 - Compact, but a fine achievement for a 7drl. Maybe could have had some different enemy types, more terrain or more cities to travel to, but what content it has works well.

Roguelikeness

2 - Hints of roguelike in the positional elements but certainly there isn't enough here to really be a roguelike.

2 - You die in one hit. The level is procedurally generating, though I wish it was regenerated between cities or you traveled to a new city instead. No combat and no real complexity. You DO have to think about your positioning quite a bit.

2 - Definitely roguelike within its compact scope, the procedural map with mountain and forest sections is especially nice. Feels like movement decisions matter.

Rogue Caravan is fundamentally a simple game of dodging bandits as you run back and forth between two cities. It attempts to add some interest with benefits and drawbacks to crossing different types of landscape (forests, mountains) but it doesn't really work. The bandits can home in on you from a ridiculous distance, and your ability to move across the map even once, never mind repeatedly, is determined almost entirely by luck of the draw on map generation. You're partially hidden in forests, and both you and the bandits will move more slowly through mountains, so in principle you can use these features to your advantage, but in practice it's fairly common for every forest to be full of bandits or for your only available route to be entirely mountainous. The idea is fine, if simple, but the execution doesn't deliver. Skip it.

Rogue Caravan is simple. Get from one side of the map to the other and avoid Bandits! You can outrun bandits on open plains or hide in a forest. But if you spend too much time in the mountains, you'll surely be caught. There are also Trader characters that can distract Bandits, but they don't seem to affect gameplay very often.\ \ The idea of travelling from city to city is very appealing to me. I could see Rogue Caravan being expanded by 1) making it more open worldy, 2) adding some more terrain and NPC types, and 3) requiring travel to new cities. While it's not groundbreaking, the concept in Rogue Caravan actually works out pretty well.

Lead your caravan through forests and over hills between two towns whilst avoiding deadly bandits. Crossing hills slows you down and the dense forests allow you to hide from your foes, though you'll want to maximise profit by travelling between towns as fast as you can. \ \ Compact and entertaining little ROT.js-powered roguelike which works within its scope and is entertaining for a while. Echoes the overworld map portion of Mount & Blade.

Copy Frogue

Completeness

3 - The game is complete. No bugs found.

2 - Finished, but a little bugged.

Aesthetics

2 - Nice ascii. Pleasant colors.

1 - Graphics is simple and unpleasant, mainly due to too big font. Controls ok.

Fun

2 - It's probably worth to win it once.

2 - Copy Frogue is too simple, but fast paced and strongly addictive!

Innovation

1 - Nothing new here

2 - Frogger/roguelike. Not very innovative? Yup, but these trains, cars...

Scope

2 - Probably ok for a 7drl.

2 - Less than expected for 7drl's, but somehow all fit in this game

Roguelikeness

1 - It's not roguelike. Even not roguelike-like. Usage of ascii doesn't make any turn based game into roguelike.

1 - Definitely NOT a roguelike.

Neat little game, turn based interpretation of 'Frogger' classics. After several obstacles you have to choose one of 'gift gates' where you randomly gain positive or negative 'gifts'. Negative gifts are either distractions or outright death...

Fusion Frogger and roguelikes. Looks ugly, is little bugged, gameplay is trivial... But CopyFrogue is really addictive! You can want to check this game, despite low average score.

Famine Rogue (working title)

Completeness

2 - Core mechanics, UI and AI are all functional. Bugs include enemies spawning on top of cabbage tiles. The blight mechanic seems weird: often when you forget to plant cabbage on a tile, the next turn a blighted cabbage will appear.

2 - Not sure if there is a win condition but I was able to survive just under three weeks at best in the gruelling famine making it through multiple harvests. It feels like this game has all the features it is intended to have.\ \ I did come across a bug where a redcoat was spawned on top of growing cabbage and wasn't able to move. Since the scope is so contained, I would've expected a bug-free game.

Aesthetics

2 - Cool sprite interface and level screen. I liked the random messages given between levels.

2 - New art on top of the roguelike tutorial: new characters, new environmental tiles and nice farming and house art. Nothing exceptional but definitely fitting for the theme.

Fun

1 - Each level is more or less the same. No change in character ability or play, only difficulty increase. I couldn't really make it past level 8.

2 - The basics of the game interaction are very simple: you can move in four directions, you must avoid being hit by the British redcoats whilst ensuring that you plant seeds at the right time into furrows. The seeds then grow in two days once you've run through the level once again. It's a thematically appropriate mechanic that adds to the very basic core gameplay enough for it to be fun for a while.

Innovation

1 - A re-skinned version of the Unity 2D roguelike tutorial. The sprites are nice but the core mechanic is a bit lacklustre.

2 - The cross-turn farming mechanic works well in a one screen game because you can tactically leave some cabbages to be picked up in later turns.\ \ As far as I know, the Irish famine is an underexplored theme in games, so it's brave to have taken it as a theme. I do have a slight worry that jam games might ever so slightly oversimplify a horrific historical period.

Scope

1 - The game was playable and the food growing mechanic was interesting but the list of features was quite small.

1 - The game fills its scope, but given that it is so directly based on an existing tutorial and doesn't add much beyond the farming and art, I'd say the scope is less than what can be expected for a 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

3 - Proceedural generation, permadeath mechanics and turn-based play. Pretty roguelike-y to me.

2 - The game is based on a roguelike tutorial after all so it does have a roguelike feel at its core. There is tactical challenge to the levels and the farming mechanic adds to that. Not much in the way of interesting procedural generation or character development, so kind of feels like a small puzzle game too.

A Unity-based roguelike modeled heavily from the Unity 2D Roguelike tutorial. The food growing mechanic was added but I feel more could have been done with it. The UI and sprites were very nice for a 7DRL. The gameplay was challenging but a little more luck-based than I would have like. It's quite hard to manoeuvre the British without running out of food, so you just have to be lucky with the tile placements. Overall, since most of the code was grabbed from the Unity tutorial, I felt that more could have been done to make the mechanics a bit more dynamic.

Tactical farming simulator set in the Irish famine. Openly and distinctly based on the Unity roguelike tutorial, this game transposes the setting in the middle of a historical atrocity whilst adding new art and a fairly interesting farming mechanic.\ \ In a world of hack and slash it's refreshing that there is no fighting the enemy, only manoeuvreing and farming to survive. This is a very basic roguelike based strongly on an existing tutorial and so is limited in scope though probably achieves what it set out to do.

Gore Grounds

Completeness

2 - I'll err on the side of generosity and say the game gets a 2 here, because it's at least stable and free from bugs. The weird design nearly netted it a 1 though.

2 - Complete but unpolished.

Aesthetics

1 - The visual style is adequate but the attack menu, while initially appearing clear, is actually not that helpful. The rest of the UI functions fine but it's a bit cluttered and harder to parse than it needs to be in this day and age. The control scheme is so abstruse as to be a serious problem.

1 - Very harsh graphics, visible screen refreshing. Unintuitive controls.

Fun

1 - Could have been a solid 2 based on the detailed attack-move structure, but with its wonky combat activation and incredibly tedious delayed movement oddity, I can't say the game is enjoyable.

2 - Very good combat system, I like it! But game is too slow paced for roguelike/beat'em up fusion.

Innovation

2 - Potentially an intriguing combination of two elements.

2 - Innovative combat system.

Scope

2 - Just about scrapes a 2 by virtue of having specific body part damage.

1 - Minimal. Except combat.

Roguelikeness

2 - There's some roguelike in here, for sure.

3 - Definitely roguelike.

Gore Grounds sets out to be a beat 'em up fused with a roguelike, and offers a selection of different attacks which then change with the use of different weapons. Barehanded you'll have several attacks including 'jab' but pick up a lead pipe and you'll gain moves like 'wallop'. Damage to body parts will cost you the use of some abilities (lose a leg and you can no longer kick, for instance) but also as a gruesome novelty you can pick up severed body parts to use as weapons. It's all silliness but there's still something entertaining about beating a Lovecraftian monster until its arm falls off, then taking the arm and using it to beat down a tentacled horror, then using a severed tentacle to break down a door...\ \ Unfortunately this intriguing emphasis on exaggerated combat is let down by almost unplayably horrendous control. There's an odd pause of around two seconds (I counted) between one move and the next. It's not so bad if an enemy attacks you during that interval because at least something is happening, but if you're just walking across the room it's agonising. Step...one, two...step... It even seems to be intentionally designed that way, since your @ goes grey during the down time and then flicks back to white when you can take an action again. It's a bizarre choice which makes gameplay move at a snail's pace. \ \ The combat control is also clunky. There's no bump to attack here, which is fine. Your various attacks are assigned to letter keys, which is also fine. Pressing those letters does nothing, though. After a few minutes of experimentation it turned out that, as far as I can tell, you have to hold the key for your chosen ability, press a direction while holding that key, and then let go of both simultaneously. A second or two later, your @ will attack. It's incredibly cumbersome, and all the more so because the game doesn't have any help text or instructions, either in the Read Me file or in-game. \ \ It's a shame. The idea is pretty good, but some absolutely bizarre design choices make the game a chore to play, and I can't really recommend a chore to anyone.

Briefly.\ I regret that average score is so low. I really enjoyed this game, due to unusual and interesting combat system. Technical bungle are not so bothering and important, and gameplay is really pleasant.

High Tech Survival

Completeness

1 - The game seems complete and runs fine but it's missing vitally important information such as how to actually play, and it's far too complex for trial and error. I think the fact that it's missing so much information that it can't really be played brings it down to a 1.

1 - The developer indicated that the game is unfinished and it shows. There is still a game here, but sufficiently important features are missing that it feels incomplete.

Aesthetics

1 - Pleasant enough ASCII but the menus and interfaces are so labyrinthine and cryptic that the game is effectively unplayable.

2 - The display is clean enough and presents important information. The controls are sufficient (configure can be used to close doors). My only complaint is the color choice for “in darkness” or “out of view” since it can difficult to see what is on those cells.

Fun

2 - I'll give a 2 here because it's possible that someone out there will be able to figure this game out, so go ahead and try. Please.

1 - At the moment it is only interesting to play around with. There is potential for a fun game, but it needs more work first.

Innovation

2 - Roguelike survival has been done before but there are some nice ideas here. The machine idea seems novel.

3 - Some features of this are not new (harvesting resources, building contraptions, survival and escape, etc.) but they are unusual in RLs. However, the distance these features are pushed in this game is new. Even for someone who follows a lot of “minecraft in space” style games, there is much here that I have not seen or considered in a game before.

Scope

3 - Impressively complex.

2 - The developer obviously had a lot planned for this, but the currently available features are enough to play around with for a while.

Roguelikeness

2 - Brutally unforgiving, for sure. It does have a roguelike feel.

1 - There is procedural content, the constant threat of death (and permadeath too), but I didn’t feel like I was playing a RL. I felt like I was playing a sci-fi resource management game. However, this feeling could be changed by adding more strategic or tactical considerations (e.g., needing to protect machines from the elements, making decisions about power conservation or inventory usage, planning how to get food, etc.).

I should preface everything that follows by saying I hate survival games. I like the idea of them but in practice I almost always find them hugely frustrating to play. High Tech Survival is a prime example of the reasons. The game seems to offer a lot of depth - you can craft items, construct machines, lay power lines, and various other exotic sounding stuff. Very impressive attention to detail. This issue is that the game is horrifyingly abstruse. It doesn't even tell you how to get to the keybindings list ('h', like no game ever). I've figured out how to scan for minerals but I've never reached any. I die of thirst long before I get there. I can't find any food or water, I've searched every inch of the ship but...the whole game is just determined to be utterly incomprehensible. In the hour or so that I've tried to play I've walked across an empty landscape until I died countless times. That's this game, in its current impenetrable state. Walk until you die. There might be a great game here but I can't find it, and judging by the other review so far, I'm not the only one.

HighTechSurvival is aptly named. This is a game where your goal is to survive and find the resources needed to escape. The personal stats to manage are much larger than usual for survival games (i.e., it’s not just hunger), but they fit well with the theme. There is a lot of potential in this game that is currently unrealized. Your goal is clear, how you achieve that goal is not, and I’m not even sure it’s possible. Lack of instructions is a big problem (even a text file outside the game describing the purpose of the machines or machine components would help immensely); I enjoyed fumbling around, but without some sense of how I can get the needed materials harvested the fun was short-lived. I really hope the developer continues working on this, because I’d love to play it when it is finished.

KORZ-RL

Completeness

1 - Definitely needs more polish. The controls are frequently unresponsive, and they really shouldn't be. It often takes multiple key presses to register one press (at least while in 'action mode') while at other times a single light tap will cause a move of 2-3 spaces. It's not game-ruining but it's an issue. What is game-ruining is having an enemy collide with a wall. It's easy to do and seems to make all other enemies die instantly.

2 - Seems relatively complete and bug free.

Aesthetics

2 - Visuals are minimalist but fine. It's easy to identify the player's character, the enemies and the gems. It's even clear visually when you're using your whip. Control scheme is simple and logical. What isn't clear is that the stalk-like things represent resources for the whip. I played for maybe 20 minutes before I realised. Could be clearer.

2 - Looks just like pc gaming in the 80s, which is exactly the point. The ability to redifine keybindings is nice.

Fun

1 - The game's biggest weakness. In addition to the constant niggling frustration of wrestling with the inconsistent control sensitivity, it's far too easy to abuse the 'mode' system. Add to that the bug which kills all the enemies and in its current form I can't recommend playing the game.

2 - It's worth giving it a few minutes, check out the action-roguelike mode switch and think about the interesting things that could be done with such a system and more time. The game doesn't have much lasting fun however, as the AI is incredibly dumb and kills itself mostly. The roguelike mode makes the game too easy, such that you could probably play forever without dying once. A possible improvement would be for the enemies to behave differently in each mode.

Innovation

2 - A novel idea, certainly. I like the concept of alternating between turn based and real time, and of imposing a restriction on the otherwise overpowered turn based 'roguelike mode'.

2 - The action-roguelike mode switch is quite interesting in concept, especially when each mode has its own unique advantages for the player to exploit.

Scope

2 - Reasonable. Takes one or two ideas and focuses on those.

1 - Very bare bones.

Roguelikeness

2 - Not really a roguelike, more like an early console game (seems to be a theme this year), but there's enough of a roguelike feel to recognise the connection.

2 - The roguelike mode is too basic for me to really call a true roguelike.

This is an awkward one. I like the idea. The game is really two games meshed together - one a real version, and one a turn based version. The objective is basically to collect as many gems as possible and move to the next level. Enemies are trying to prevent this and they can be fought using a whip attack which swings in a circle around the player character. The novel thing, the thing I appreciate, is that the game provides the option to use the M key to switch between 'action mode' (in which the whole level is visible but everything happens in real time) and roguelike mode (in which vision is reduced to a small radius around the player character but time becomes turn based, allowing chance to think). \ \ Either would be fine by itself - a basic real time gem-collecting arcade game or a limited-vision turn based game. The problem lies in allowing freedom to switch between the two. Using the whip attack costs resources (stalk-like items scattered around the levels) but it's so easy to clean up by alternating between the modes. See where the enemies are in action mode, move towards them, allow them to bunch up as much as possible, then switch to roguelike mode for precision movement and take them all down with a few whip swings. Back to action mode again, and just hoover up all the gems and extra whips on the level. Repeat. \ \ The ease of this abuse would be an issue by itself but it's exacerbated by the erratic control. In action mode, it's often possible to press a key 3-4 times before you actually move, while at other moments a single press will send you sprinting 2-3 spaces away. This makes even just collecting gems in an empty level a chore. Worse yet, it's easy to trick an enemy into colliding with a wall, which (in roguelike mode) causes all enemies outside your immediate vision range to die instantly. This makes the game basically a non-game. \ \ I said the game is easy but, in fairness, I haven't got to the end. I don't think there is one - I played for some time, maybe 40 minutes, on my last run without any discernible increase in challenge or progression towards a conclusion. I suspect the game is a score challenge and, in its current broken state, it's fundamentally not fun to play. I appreciate the novel idea but I can't recommend actually playing it.

This blast from the past's most interesting feature is it's mode switch, which changes from real time action to turn based roguelike and each mode has its own advantages/disadvantages for the player.

Nebulous Infinity

Completeness

2 - No bugs, just questionable design. Polish is decent for 7 days.

2 - Seems to be complete, but some issues need development

Aesthetics

1 - Mostly fine but foreground obstacles which destroy you can often look too much like background objects you can pass safely. That single handedly makes the game hugely frustrating.

3 - Very stylish tiles, good controls

Fun

1 - It its current state, skip it.

2 - Simple but funny, as almost every shoot'em up.

Innovation

2 - Nothing we haven't seen before but it tries.

1 - Shoot'em up with random generated world

Scope

2 - Fine for one week.

2 - Adequate. Some enemies, backgrounds and powerups.

Roguelikeness

1 - Even calling it roguelike-like is a stretch. It's a shooter. Proc gen layouts do not by themselves make a roguelike.

2 - 1 or 2, I decided to give 2 due to Spelunky links. Roguelite-like.

Nebulous Infinity follows a few previous 7DRLs in interpreting 'roguelike' as procedurally generated retro shooter. Sometimes these are still reasonably fun but Nebulous Infinity suffers from some poor design. After a reasonably amount of time trying to play it, the majority of my games have been ended by a situation which is either impossible or very unclear. Sometimes there's no (identifiable route through a collection of barriers, or something which looks like a background feature you've seen before it actually a foreground feature. That's what scuppers the game, sadly. More clarity and it could have been an inoffensive, if mediocre un-roguelike shooter.

Oldschool shoot'em up with random generated space. Funny for coffebreak. Space generator should be more accurate.

NoirRL

Completeness

2 - Unfortunately original release has some serious bugs and it is rather slow even on quite modern PC, which is surprising for an ascii roguelike. Also the game feels incomplete. There are many buildings and objects that give you a feeling that they can be interacted with, but they aren't interactive.

1 - * Input recognition problems\ * Couldn't really advance to find out more

Aesthetics

2 - The game looks cool and stylish. Most complains are about controls and feedback to player's actions. Opening doors with separate keypress and one more keypress for direction is tedious. Especiall in addition to the fact that doors are autoclosed when you leave location, and you need to backtrack after each case. There are 'entrance' symbols on all buildings, but only selected few can be entered. And you don't get any feedback on attempt to enter a building that cannot be entered.

1 - * Really needs a look command or a legend somewhere\ * Entering buildings was very confusing: I kept trying to Open them, and only much later realized I needed to go up in the doorway.

Fun

2 - The game is collection of riddles and puzzles. Some are randomised, and some are fixed. Fun factor in this case is very subjective. But, unfortunately, replayability is very very low.

1 - * Great premise, just couldn't experience much of it.

Innovation

2 - It's not that there are no roguelikes with riddles, but there are surely very few where whole gameplay is centered around riddles.

1 - * It's too early to tell\ * Theme is great and would like to see it developed more.

Scope

2 - Judging from the number of cities there are quite some puzzles implemented. But aside from puzzles there is barely anything in the game. So it's probably ok for a 7drl. On a higher end of 2.

2 - * Scope looks much larger, but I couldn't experience it

Roguelikeness

2 - With a little bit of chasing and shooting this game could be called genuine roguelike. But as it is... You can't even die in this game!

3 - * Certainly aiming to be a roguelike\

NoirRL is collection of puzzles/riddles in roguelike-ish cover. Your brother is kidnapped and you need either collect ransom or find kidnappers. I wish this game had some 'action' in addition to puzzles.

Great premise, but I had problems getting my input recognized (e.g, opening a door took 2-5 tries; couldn't talk with NPCs), and I didn't know what many of the characters represented.

Outlaw Space

Completeness

1 - Lavish in some respects but at least one very noticeable bug, and seemingly no way to actually finish the game.

2 - The game runs well but there are still minor bugs (even in the 1.1 version). I also don’t know why there isn’t a quit button, but that’s a minor quibble on my part.

Aesthetics

3 - Gorgeous to look at. Almost looks like a Steam game. Clearly this is where the effort went.

2 - The UI is very clean and straightforward and the graphics are beautifully done.

Fun

1 - Niggly sudden battles from a JRPG mixed with dull wandering item collection with backgrounds which are conducive to getting lost. Skip it.

2 - The randomly generated items make loot (and shopping) interesting, and although the combat is not particularly deep it is still enjoyable enough to keep the game fun.

Innovation

1 - Sorry but it's just the combat system from a JRPG with nothing else attached.

2 - Not many RPGs of this sort do random generation of items and the world. Even though this is common for RLs, it is innovative for the style of game on which Outlaw Space is based.

Scope

2 - The visuals are a remarkable feat for one week, and if there was some game here this would have been a clear 3.

2 - Since this was a team effort, the content and graphical work (though excellent in quality) is definitely something that could be accomplished in the time available.

Roguelikeness

1 - Not remotely. Final Fantasy combat system (including sudden battles appearing from nowhere) combined with real time item collection. No roguelike present.

2 - There is procedural generation for most aspects of the game (including character, enemy, and item names), but the combat screen (and time-limitations) make it seem less of a RL than it could be. There is permadeath for your overall party too.

First off: Outlaw Space looks stunning. Nice pixellated sprites, verdant pastel-ish backgrounds - lovely. That's the good. The bad is that it's boring, broken and not a roguelike. In essence it's a tiny JRPG but with the dense plots of that genre removed in favour of wandering around at random, picking up spacecraft parts or something. This is made more of a chore by the fact that there are only a small number of area layouts, so navigation is bewildering and tedious. There's also a serious bug I've run into repeatedly, where one of the spacecraft parts doesn't get collected but instead is infinite. This means you can fill up to the total you're looking for in no time. What happens then? Nothing. Wander round, wander round. No next step, no way to end the game as far as I can see. 90 minutes of this spanning several attempts was too much. Lovely to look at but not to play.

Overall, this is a solid game. Explore a random world to find ship parts and bring them back to escape the planet. The combat is more typical of the active-time-battle system than the turn-based battles of RLs, but there is plenty of procedurally generation in this game that treating this like a JRPG is unfair. I found the combat to be somewhat shallow, but that is a general complaint I have with these kinds of games anyway; the inability to avoid combat means you just maximize damage output as best as you can, and supplement that with healing when necessary. However, there were times at which I thought about who should act first, to take advantage of damage stacking or multiple attacks, so the combat is not totally obvious. The controls are simple to use and the UI is clean and understandable. Remember that you can move items around in the inventory, which can help compare equipment. Definitely give this game a try, and also try to get the best shotgun for your medic if you can; that thing was the main reason I got through some of the later fights.

SalvageRL

Completeness

2 - I tested the 7DRL version and it felt rather complete; I don't know if there is an ending. More polish and balancing of the money is really all that would be needed (and less spawning in enclosed locations, but that only happened to me once).

2 - It's very weak 2. The game runs, with a few non-fatal bugs, but clearly is in early development stage.

Aesthetics

2 - I usually dislike 3D games, and 3D space games in particular, due to difficulties with the visuals and controls. Although I still found it difficult and disorienting, the control that this game provides is perfect; I was always able to reorient myself.

2 - These relics, or whatever they are called, look epic. That's for sure. But overall it's too dark, too grey and too confusing as a result.

Fun

1 - My frequent disorientation and inability to find things, despite good controls and visuals to help, made the game more frustrating than fun; but that is a common issue I have with 3D space games. If you like 3D space games, treat this score as a 2. Since the developer is continuing to work on this, future versions are likely to be more fun.

1 - You fly around and collect green boxes and get money for this. Earn enough money to unlock next level where you can earn even more money. There are enemies, but they do not pose any threat. The most irritating thing is radar range. You need to 'crawl' around and inside of a huge structure to find these boxes. And because everything around looks very samey it's really hard to tell where you have been and where not.

Innovation

2 - The theme and goal are unusual for RLs; although the need to balance your exploration with resources is usual for RLs it is less common with these types of action games. Overall then, it adds a few new things to experiment with.

1 - Nothing new here.

Scope

3 - The levels are quite large, with plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. There are some enemies and a variety of loot types (though they differ mainly by amount of money given). I feel this, along with the graphics within Unity, is a rather large scope for the game.

2 - Other than impressive randomly generated 3d structures there is barely any content here. Probably ok for a 7drl.

Roguelikeness

2 - This game has permadeath and maybe procedural generation even (I honestly can’t tell whether the levels are different or if it’s the same level and I just start in difference places). The game feels like a real-time action game, but it auto-pauses between movement; hence, it’s still closer to a turn-based game. However, I am sure people will still feel that this isn't quite a RL; hence the score of 2.

1 - procedural generation!=roguelikes. Realtime 3d space sim with procedural environment have nothing common with roguelikes, no matter how you look at it.

SalvageRL is a 3D space exploration game, in that you are exploring derelicts in space and have the full range of movement available. The goal of searching for valuables to salvage within this makes the game more about exploration and navigation than combat, and that is actually unusual for space games. There is also a turn-based aspect to the game, even if it seems on the surface to be purely real-time in nature. The environments are sufficiently large that you can get lost (something that happened often to me), and this is both good and bad. Given my inability to navigate well in 3D games, I was frequently disoriented and had difficulty getting too far in terms of finding loot; however, the controls for this game (and the turn-based nature of it) make orienting and positioning yourself easy. If there was more variety in what to do (or perhaps where to explore), I think it’d be worth playing for quite a while. At its current stage, more work is needed for it to be fun. It is still being developed though, so follow those updates if you want to see this grow.

3d realtime space sim in a randomly generated environment in an 'early alpha/prototype' stage.

The Hero Usually Dies

Completeness

1 - Game plays well, but there are several noticeable bugs. especially related to carrying survivors. Often, the game will start with a fire near the exit hatch, rendering the game unbeatable.

2 - Sort of has an endgame, by escaping the station. But the high score system seems arbitrary. Often would get a higher score from dying than escaping. Couldn't figure out what I was getting points for. I didn't figure out how to save the ship, if you can do that.

Aesthetics

2 - Controls are intuitive and graphics are easy to understand. Nice use of simple Oryx sprites.

1 - Pixel art assets were nice, but other graphics (like the fire) were an inconsistent style.

Fun

1 - I had some fun trying to evade the spreading fire, but the shallow depth of the game made it not really fun to play after 10 minutes.

1 - Has a lot of potential to be fun, but felt arbitrarily difficult or easy, depending on your seed. As a result, didn't feel like much was up to me.

Innovation

3 - I like the idea of the fire spreading throughout the space station, and the fire suit which makes you immune to fire. It's unique! I also really liked the overview map of the level and the ability to close doors to stop the spread of fire. With more work, this could be a very interesting mechanic.

2 - The idea of having to balance saving hostages with escaping, while containing fire and killing aliens, is interesting.

Scope

1 - Only one level, game can be finished in seconds if level is generated in a certain way. Only one enemy type, two attacks, and one objective as far as I can figure out.

2 - About what you'd expect from a 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

2 - It definitely feels like a roguelike, though it lacks many traditional roguelike features.

3 - Has permadeath, procedural generation, and cell based movement.

The Hero Usually Dies has an accurate title... usually! The level generation is extremely randomized, so it's possible to finish the game in seconds, literally. It's also possible to be in a situation where it's impossible to win the game. So, it can be a bit frustrating to play, but I had some fun with it.

A good idea with some interesting possibilities, but could use a lot of balance work. The fire spreads VERY fast, to the point that it feels impossible to deal with it unless you get lucky and can block it off with a computer that spawned right next to you. Doesn't seem to be much strategy for avoiding damage. Monsters can hit you from around corners, so sometimes you just have to get in their range and take a bunch of damage. If you can't get the fire suit, you will almost definitely die, but if you can get it, you're almost invincible. I always got the success dialogue, whether I died or lived. Survivor carrying message was reversed often, said I was carrying a hostage when I wasn't.

Ardennes

Completeness

2 - Stable and run, but definitely needs more work.

2 - I have feeling that not every encounter was implemented. At least there are cards that have no use.

Aesthetics

2 - Above average aesthetics but information is presented in quite an ambiguous way.

2 - The game looks good. But interface is somewhat weird. I have no idea why selection of the target tile was done on separate scaled down screen instead of big map. It's inconvenient and confusing. Card selection is quite cumbersome, as you have to scroll thru cards to select one that you need. There is more than enough space to display all cards at once. Also rolling animations and some transition effects are nice at first, but on nth playthrough they are irritatingly slow.

Fun

1 - I want to say it's worth trying out, but it isn't. It's a painful playing experience and I think that's mainly the result of it being a rush job on a project which is too big for one week.

2 - It's moderately fun to figure out details of rules and try different strategies, but after you win a few times, the game looses replay factor quickly.

Innovation

1 - There's a reason I'm awarding a 1 here. See the section on 'Roguelikeness'.

1 - Adaptation of existing game.

Scope

3 - Very ambitious, beyond the scope of a 7 day project. Unfortunately that results in it being a bit of a mess. But yes, scope is, in principle, very impressive.

2 - I think it's just about right for a 7drl

Roguelikeness

1 - It's a board game. It's not a roguelike, nor anything that resembles one. It's no more a roguelike than Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne are.

1 - This game has nothing common with roguelikes.

Ardennes is an ambitious attempt for a single week. It has a board game-like action and movement system based on card play, and wounds are determined in combat by slot machine wheels which act effectively as rolling dice. It is essentially a board game. The options each turn are fairly comprehensive, with each soldier in your squad able to select cards to perform a variety of actions, including movement, attacks and supporting benefits such as scouting out neighbouring hex spaces. Unfortunately the game doesn't really explain anything, and it takes an unacceptably substantial period of trial and error experimentation just to work out how to interact with the game. \ \ Even once you begin to get a handle on how to play, the game is brutally punishing. This is to be expected in our genre of choice, but here it's too much. Once an enemy appears (which has happened on the second turn in every one of my runs so far) you won't be able to move. Enemies block your movement and keep you trapped in place until they're destroyed, but with more enemies continuing to spawn on the same space every single turn, there's simply no way to progress. Even the weakest enemies I've seen in the game require multiple attacks to defeat, and that's if (a very big if) you roll hits rather than misses. In the time it takes to be one solitary scout, tanks and grenadiers will be constantly popping up. I've made repeated attempts to play the game and not once have I been able to move after the first turn, or defeat enemies faster than they spawn. \ \ It doesn't help that enemies are only susceptible to certain types of attack - sometimes just one - and action cards are cycled out of use, at least for a while. It's not uncommon for me to find my whole squad pinned down by a tank, unable to attack it because they don't have enough firepower cards between them. I tried splitting the squad up, but a lot of the time there's only one space you're actually able to move to, so you're forced to clump the soldiers together. Even when you can split them up, that just leaves them individually vulnerable. The whole thing is enormously aggravating. \ \ I applaud the developer's ambition in trying to port what is basically a squad-level wargame in the space of a week but the short time frame just harmed the effort. This needed more time. As it stands, it's barely playable.

Computer adaptation of a board game. I don't know if original game was easy, or this adaptation simplified some rules, but most difficult part was understanding of rules. Once I figures out the rules, it was peace of cake to win both missions.

Evil Robot Basement Cleaners

Completeness

3 - There's no win condition that I could find, but that doesn't really make a game of this type less complete - you just keep playing as long as you can keep up. Robots seem to sometimes spawn stuck inside walls and the spikes at the top of the screen can disappear if you get too close, but since neither of these has an effect on the gameplay, they basically count as small graphical glitches. Otherwise, the game seems to work perfectly for me.

2 - I didn't find any major bugs, though vacuum cleaners sometimes spawn in walls or overlapped each other. The game doesn't do much, but is fairly complete in what it does.

Aesthetics

2 - Comes with music, sound effects, tile graphics, and some juice (screen shakes, red glows when you're close to spikes, some particle effects, etc.). Doesn't really put all of them together into an aesthetic experience describable as more than \"mildly funky\ though."

2 - There's nothing wrong with the simple controls. The biggest problem here is that the game uses green and red text (red text is notoriously hard to read on a textured background). Many people will probably find the game a bit ugly, but I actually found it quite endearing. The crude pixel, wacky music, and bizarre setting reminded me strongly of old Klik n Play games and when I first started making games.

Fun

2 - It's fun for one round, at least. The second time around the slow pace at the beginning gets frustrating really fast.

1 - It's an easygoing romp collecting treasure. You can fight the vacuum cleaners (sort of) by standing still and letting them hit you, though this is never explained anywhere. Sadly, there's really no challenge and while it's relaxing and funny at times I can't say it's much fun.

Innovation

1 - Wouldn't have made a splash in an eighties arcade cabinet, let alone now.

1 - There is none.

Scope

2 - There's not many elements, but I've seen lots of smaller games, too.

1 - Kind of a toss up between 1 and 2, but there's just so little to do here.

Roguelikeness

1 - It's grid-based, yes, but really not for the reason that roguelikes are.

2 - Permadeath and a continuously generated \"procedural\" room and, surprisingly, it's grid based. Plays nothing like a roguelike though. There is health and experience and such but it feels very tacked on. A very low 2.

An arcadey action game wherein you collect various disgusting and comedic items from an endlessly scrolling basement, dodging a horde of randomly moving Roombas that also seem to have set up shop and are sucking up all of the dirty socks and other junk that you for some reason want to collect. You can fight them, sort of, by walking next to them, but since you do lose health doing that, and it doesn't really help you collect items, it seems more productive to dodge the robots as much as you can. Easy to pick up, but does not seem to have much depth. The screen scrolls automatically and the edges are deadly, and the scrolling speed increases with time, ratcheting up the challenge bit by bit.

I have a conspiracy theory: Edmund McMillen's master plan all along was to water down the roguelike genre by convincing everyone that the only \"roguelike\" on the planet is Binding of Isaac. The plan worked. Why else would Evil Robot Basement Cleaners be about an evil Mom cleaning up all your toys in a basement?\ \ Evil Robot Basement Cleaners is a slow paced walkabout where you avoid both spikes on the top and bottom of the screen and, of course, evil robot basement vacuum cleaners (Roombas basically). While you avoid these dangers, you also pick up \"treasures\": socks, VHS tapes, old pizza, and more. The treasures have procedurally generated names: \"World War II era booze.\" The robots have names too. The game is laced with plenty of crude humor. Depending on how immature your sense of humor is, you may get a kick out of it. It may not have you rolling on the floor, but I appreciate that the humor doesn't \"punch down\" as opposed to some other ill-advised attempts at humor this year.\ \ It's not challenging and it's not very roguelike, but the game seems to pretty much accomplish what it set out to do.

RNG

Completeness

2 -

1 - There are no instructions, the first screen tells you to roll the dice that is placed neatly in a nice dice throwing table. If you do so you will be rewarded by an image of dice bouncing around the walls of the dice table, but then slow down and spin forever. What it actually wants you to do, without telling, is drag the dice over the unlabeled grey box in the middle of the screen. Overall feels like something barely out of prototype phase.

Aesthetics

3 -

1 - There is some cute humor regarding the concept of dice and randomness built into the lore. The vector art is nice., as is the planet image generation. The controls don't make sense, and that's what hurts it the most. What are these unlabeled grey pads that I must drop dice on to? What options are the dice influencing? Why don't the dice don't show numbers on them?

Fun

2 -

1 - Sadly not very fun. The few actual decisions you need to make you get boil down to a binary choice: interact or don't. Combat is entirely automatic and I guess dictated by which dice you put into the ship at the beginning of the game. You can't change or move around the dice to adjust the ratios between power, shield, and weapons, so there is no real strategy here. The game only takes a few minutes to run through the encounter types and then becomes repetitive.

Innovation

3 -

1 - Playing around with selection of different sided dice to influence the potential set of outcomes from your choices sounds like an interesting idea for a game mechanic, but the idea wasn't really fleshed out or made transparent enough to be effective in this offering.

Scope

2 -

1 - Very bare on actual content. There seem to be only a few encounter types. The ways to interact with the game are very limited.

Roguelikeness

2 -

1 - Not a roguelike, something else entirely.

It took me a short while to work out how the UI functioned for this game, but I got there in the end. I like the random ship layouts, random ship encounters, and those rude colonists waiting for the perfect twenty (never did get it). The game has a good sense of humour and gets pretty intense when you’re trying to put dice back into your ship when trying to repair it mid-battle. It’s very loosely a roguelike-like, but it has a certain charm.

A non-roguelike 7DRL, more akin to a short choose your own adventure with a few repetitive passages and an unnecessarily obtuse control scheme. It feels very incomplete.

RoguePac

Completeness

3 - Complete game.

Aesthetics

1 - Harsh font, black-and-white screen, too chaotic board.

Fun

1 - Too simple, too easy and too boring to be funny. Or pleasure. Even the objective of the game is trivial!

Innovation

1 - Hack and slash with pacman influences.

Scope

1 - I though to give '0'. One enemy (ok, possibly 2), one 'item', simple goal.

Roguelikeness

3 - Roguelike. Yup.

Roguelike with PacMan influences. Waste of time. Game looks ugly. Gameplay is shallow as... as I-don't-tell-you-what. Enemies are most stupid ever seen - go straight to player, can not avoid obstacles, etc. For these reasons (and too fast player's regen-hp) is nearly impossible to die. You can make game easier by eating 'item' ('#') which make you stronger (or make enemies weaker...). The game would be more interesting (probably) if enemies were stronger and power-ups spawns during play.

To the West

Completeness

1 - Has the odd bug and could definitely use polish, but seems to work fine otherwise. However, providing only source files with uncommon dependencies (Lua and RapidXML) made getting it to compile in the first place significant work. If the game came with a precompiled executable, this score would have been at least a 2.

1 - I had pretty bad display issues on both Linux and Windows builds. On windows the target cursor for throwing doesn't appear. On linux the screen would corrupt often, I found that if I used the quit command and then cancelled it would fix the corruption, but then using that command counts as an in game turn so it has gameplay implications. The save/load functionality isn't implemented, yet the main menu has an option to load a saved game. I lost a lot of progress in a playthrough when I made the mistake of assuming that save/load worked.

Aesthetics

1 - The controls are good and sufficient instructions are given. The terrain is busy and confusing, but it is visually appealing in its own unusual way. Even though the instructions explicitly state how to differentiate monsters and items from terrain, the whole thing could have been avoided through better choice of ASCII characters and/or colors to begin with.

1 - The display needs a lot of work, mostly in the area of palette choices. The player character is a dark grey, which often gets lost on screen depending on what the surroundings look like. The environment glyphs have a lot of variety, but In general there's not a good demarcation in color between environment and mobs. In my opinion the dev should switch all non-blocking environment to dark and muted tones, leaving brighter colors for blocking walls and mobs. This would allow players to parse the scene easier.

Fun

2 - This game is a mixed bag. Some parts are tactically interesting and other parts are bland. The game was fun to play (hence a score of 2) but I don’t feel like there is much replay value here.

2 - I enjoyed seeing the variety of environments and the flavor text. The combat is very simple, but there's an interesting quality to the premise of having to travel mostly to the west while defeating each of the enemies along the way, sorta like you are Tony Jaa fighting your way up the stairs in that famous long take scene in Tom-Yung-Goong.

Innovation

1 - The idea of moving in a single direction isn’t a bad one, but it doesn’t feel particularly new (Nightfall, a few years ago, tried this with more success). The visual display is more innovative. Perhaps the problem isn’t the idea but how it was executed; maybe more interesting level design (e.g., more levels like the lava one and fewer like the plains/swamps), or some punishment for moving east instead of west would improve this?

1 - Pretty standard. The premise of moving to the west wasn't really explored to much beyond that all the monsters and the boss lie to the west.

Scope

2 - There are different items, a variety of monsters, and some special attacks. It’s not just a basic hack-fest.

2 - The biome generation is a fairly big feature, and has nice flavor text strewn about. Also kudos for having a boss fight.

Roguelikeness

3 - This is definitely a RL, no doubts about it: ASCII, random generation and permadeath, tactics and emphasis on combat. The tactical part is shallow, but if you don’t grind near the beginning you won't get to the mid-game.

3 - Just barely, the feature set is very small and simple but this does still feel like an RL.

To the West is a game with some interesting unrealized potential. The goal, as far as I can tell, is to travel westward across different areas to find and kill a boss (instead of the usual descending down through levels). The areas bleed into each other, so that it feels as though you are moving from a plains into a swamp and then into a forest (for example). The enemies are straightforward to kill, other than the Golems and Dragon, and there are some interesting, if sadly underwhelming, items. My favorite is the potion of lake which creates a lake where you throw it. Other than using it for easier passage over the lava area though, it seems useless. Even here, the lava area is the only one with terrain that matters and the second area with actual obstacles. Hence, a potion of lake effectively removes the only terrain challenge in the game. This is my biggest complaint; although the areas are visually distinct and come with their own unique monsters, there is otherwise no difference between them. Hence, it feels the same if you’re walking through a forest one-shotting wolfs or walking through a swamp one-shotting snakes. Greater mechanical variety in the enemies and levels, to provide some tactical challenge before the end, would greatly improve this game.

This is a simple RL about travelling west through a series of environments, swamps, forests, graveyards, each with their own flavor text and enemies. A boss waits all the way at the end of the map.

Cloak & Tower

Completeness

2 - Initially I was going to award a 3 here because the game is mostly pretty polished, but I don't think it can be described as \"feature complete\" when it only has one floor, repeatedly literally ad infinitum, and sure as hell ad nauseam.

3 - Besides a couple of maybe bugs it runs smoothly and without problem for me

1 - There is a gamebreaking bug. After a few minutes you loose ability to control character.

Aesthetics

2 - Again, could have had a 3, except that the 5-ish second loop of music seems like torture after what felt like hundreds of hours of listening to it.

2 - The controls are great and most things flow well. Practically a 3 but the eyeburn pink that permeates all levels caused my eyes to hate me a bit more then I would prefer.

2 - Sprites are okay, but pink colors in walls and floor do not suite skeletons, slimes and bat theme.

Fun

1 - Here I really have to shoot it down. Could have had a 2 if it had stopped at 10 floors. As it is, no. Far too repetitive.

3 - While not varied in the enemy department it is interesting to fight them and the methods of attacking work well while providing a good bit of fun.

1 - There is some potential, but in current state it very boring.

Innovation

1 - Almost the textbook definition of low innovation here - \"hack, slash, whatever\".

2 - You can shoot the bombs you throw and they blow up right away if you hit them. Also the method of attacking has a nice limit put on it which is interesting. In the end though it only twists, it doesn't turn.

1 - Blatant attempt to clone an existing game

Scope

1 - I really have to score it low here, because in effect the game is 1 short floor. That's actually not a lot to build in 7 days, and awarding higher than a 1 would be an insult the 2-scoring games that actually tried to add varied content and scaling challenge.

2 - This is the product of someone who either knew what they where getting into or even harder to do, was able to cut things they realized they couldn't fit. Definitely falls well within the range of what I expect from a 7drl.

1 - Description says that the game uses existing sprites and existing engine. It looks like a few existing things were quickly glued together.

Roguelikeness

2 - It has that 'real time shooter in a dungeon' thing going on. Almost the definition of roguelike-like.

2 - I have avoided it till now but for this I have to say it. The game falls under roguelike-likes in the same way Binding of Issac does.

1 - In it's current state - it's not even -like-like.

Cloak & Tower started off so well. Or at least, reasonably well. An inoffensive little Binding of Isaac-alike, stripped down to the bare minimum. No upgrades, items or shops - just shooting a bow with left mouse, swinging a sword with right mouse, and using a bomb with f. That's it. Not even any ammunition concerns. \ \ For a while it was ok. I've certainly played less competent games in this mould which were made in more than 7 days. Control is smooth, visuals and music are fairly nice, enemies are simple but functional, no bugs in sight... But the problem is that it doesn't last for just \"a while\" - it lasts *forever*. Well, I assume it does. I played for as long as I could bear to, before quitting in a string of curses. \ \ You see, the game is one floor repeated. The layout changes but everything else is interchangeable. The same three enemy types, the same boss every floor. No items beyond a health pickup, no variation in visual style or music, not even an increase in challenge. Floor 25 might as well be floor 1, as might every floor in between. \ \ I recall that when I felt it was starting to overstay its welcome I looked at the floor count - level 7. \"Well,\" I thought. \"It's probably a 10 level game then. I'll push on to the end.\" Floor 10 ended, I went down the stairs and there was floor 11. Same old, same old. I swore (quietly). \"Ok,\" I thought. \"Probably either 15 or 20 then. I hope it's 15 because I'm bored now, but I'll force it til 20 if I have to.\" Level 15 came and went. So did level 20. Bear in mind that it started to get boring at level 7, identical floor after identical floor, with no variation but layout, and no increase in challenge. And it's not a difficult game in the first place. \ \ When I descended from level 20 and found level 21, I swore again - this time loudly. \"Alright!\" I raged at my monitor. \"I'll go til 25, and if that's not the end, I ******* quit!\" \ \ Level 25 came and went. I quit. \ \ The game is mechanically fine. Simply but competently executed, and inoffensively pleasant enough for about 5 floors. It goes on far too long though - either forever, or at least longer than my patience can stand. The crushing negative is that it never varies, and the 25th floor (and presumably many more thereafter) is fundamentally the same as the first. \ \ Started alright, but ended up horrible. Avoid it.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OLBhTjESEI

Looks like a failed attempt to make The Binding of Isaac clone. BoI itself takes inspiration from older zelda games, but it brought ideas of zelda to completely different level. This game is barely a prototype.

Challenge Accepted RL

Completeness

2 - No bugs that I've noticed. A bit lacking in polish but not problematically so. Acceptable.

2 - While basic it is stable and runs well. I did see what might have been a bug but nothing to break the game.

Aesthetics

2 - Presentation is very basic but works fine. There can be a little bit of difficulty picking the enemies out from the walls, but it's only an occasional issue and solved by examining with care.

2 - It was a tough choice between giving it a 1 or a 2. If I could it would get a 1.5 but seeing as I can't give it that I will err on the side of a better score.

Fun

1 - I feel bad giving this a 1 but it's the only option that fits, really. It's not that the game is no fun - it's an entertaining enough diversion for a couple of minutes - it's just that I wouldn't suggest anyone hunt it down to play it. That's option 1 - \"skip this one\". Sorry.

1 - Very basic to the point of almost being a waste of time. Unless your looking to play all of the 7drls from this year you can probably skip this one.

Innovation

1 - I'm sure even the developer would agree that there's no innovation here. Pick up the red orb and then leave. Avoid or attack anything that gets in the way. Innovation isn't necessary but since that's what this score is about, it gets a 1.

1 - Nothing innovative in the game.

Scope

1 - Again, this isn't really condemnation. The game does what it's meant to do, it's just a very small, very simple game. One level (though procedurally generated) which can be beaten in about a minute if you pay attention to what you're doing.

1 - Almost just an @ walking on the screen. It at least has enemies and a win condition.

Roguelikeness

2 - What's here is roguelikeish enough, there just isn't much of it.

3 - It is a roguelike though barebones enough so as too almost call it into question.

This is a very, very small game which does it's thing perfectly well but isn't substantial enough to be recommended. The game is one level, the layout of which is procedurally generated, and it restarts upon completion. Get to the red orb and then reach the exit, which is always in the bottom right corner. There are some enemies around which inflict varying amounts of damage. One nice feature is that enemies won't try to reach you if they can't see you. This might have been a technical limitation, I'm not sure, but in practice it means you have some choices for manipulating the movement of the enemies. \ \ Again, the game is very small and very simple. It's perfectly competent at what it does, and the developer's notes say it was made in very little time - there just isn't enough to it for me to recommend going out of your way to play it. A pleasant enough couple of minutes but that's all.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lwcBbKHEqA

D[e]ad: Trading Card Rogue Like

Completeness

1 - * Game crashed when attacking enemies that didn't move\ * No documentation\ * Numerous typos\ * Rendering was incorrect when moving (or tile data was incorrect)

1 - I think game is on alpha/early beta stage. Empty rooms, lots of bugs/freezes/crashes, harsh graphics.

Aesthetics

1 - * No documentation\ * UI included what I assume are non-functional elements (e.g., the bag)\ * Numerous typos\ * Text truncated\ * Unclear what some elements do (e.g., \"Deck\" value)

1 - Boring dungeon tileset, fuzzy tiles of characters, ugly cards and UI. Text doesn't fit to window. Controls - ok.

Fun

1 - * Too broken

1 - Gamplay is shallow as... as ****. To make matters worse I doesn't see any goal or main objective.

Innovation

1 - * Hack and slash\ * Card element wasn't distinguished enough from standard RL inventory\ * The TCG aspects were either unclear or unimplemented

3 - Fusion roguelike and card game is rather unique..

Scope

1 - * The planned scope is very large\ * Implemented scope was minor and broken, as moving the player didn't render correctly\ * Enemies appeared to behave identically\

2 - Some cards and enemies. It's enough for 7DRL.

Roguelikeness

3 - * Roguelike elements are visible, just the implementation is broken

3 - Roguelike.

The documentation on D:TCRL is nonexistent, which is especially problematic for games trying to take novel mechanical approaches. Movement relies solely on the numeric keypad with 5 waiting a turn. The space bar centers the display on the player's character. The view otherwise automatically centers on the player after moving a few tiles away from an edge.\ The brown rectangles at the bottom work as the player's hand and correspond to the main keyboard's numbers 1-5. Some cards are one-use items, such as healing potions, while others when used are equipped in one of the three light gray/purple rectangles on the right. The yellow rectangles in the bottom-right store stat-changing cards that are not equipment. Descend stairs by pressing >.\ I encountered numerous game-breaking bugs while playing, from rendering issues to the game freezing when attacking creatures who seem to lack an AI. The variety of creatures behaved identically, beelining toward the player and attacking. The game provides little feedback during combat, only showing the HP value in the upper-right decreasing. When the value becomes negative, the game resets—again with no feedback other than refreshing the screen.

First - average score is too high for this game. But inovative idea and 100% roguelike in roguelike raise the mark. A pity to waste words for this game, but I give one reason why you need to keep away from D[e]ad: Trading Card. \ Some enemies are not active - they are immobile, doesn't attack or anything else. If you attack him, game crashes. \ Thank you, I'll stand.

High Upon The Mountain

Completeness

1 - Either incredibly buggy or incredibly poorly designed. Either way, low on completeness.

1 - My first instinct was to run off the edge of the village map. Crash. It's a reliable crash too. I experienced other game crashing bugs several times. Sometimes attack don't appear to register and no feedback is given as to why. Occasionally zombies will run away from you inexplicably. The game *might* be beatable, but it seems impossible and there is not enough documentation in or outside the game to convince me otherwise.

Aesthetics

1 - Not pretty but the visual do their job. Seeing the villagers trotting around is fairly endearing, and icons are functional. The UI is kind of a mess though, with illogical and inconsistent button usage. For that reason I can't quite justify a 2 on this front.

2 - The fog of war looks pretty neat, especially the way it is so angular. The menus have nice designs, though putting white text on a swirly grey background isn't a good idea. I liked the way each house was connected by a road.\ \ The controls mostly work, but the actions are non consistent. If you're next to a door, Z will close it, but once closed you open it by walking into the door and now Z does something else. That's confusing.

Fun

1 - In principle it should be worth a play, but the game is so badly executed in practice that in its current state it's not worth the time.

1 - The zombie that spawns each night comes from a random corner, which means I have to run around the perimeter of the map just so I can fight a single enemy. No thanks. When you go into combat, you are probably doomed. And anyway, there is very little to it. You either bump them if you are melee or shoot them with your arrows (which will last no more than 2 nights). Taking actions in the village doesn't appear to influence the outcome of the game. Inevitably, villages stop helping you and you quickly die to the zombie or to the elements.

Innovation

2 - Part simple roguelike, part simple village management. Not a bad idea.

2 - Good job on trying something new. The resource management, survival, bleeding, and fence building were all good ideas, even if none of them were implemented very well.

Scope

2 - Scope is fine.

2 - About average. There are 5 classes, which is a nice touch.

Roguelikeness

2 - Not a roguelike but the influences are just about there. It's a stretch but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

2 - The only part that plays like a roguelike is the once-a-night bump combat. Sure, there's a procedurally generated village, but WHY? The village doesn't add anything mechanically speaking. This game could be handled almost exclusively with FTL style menus.

High Upon The Mountain tries something quite bold - blending survival-based village management with roguelike interludes. In principle, it could work fairly well. Each day you assign tasks to villagers and/or to yourself, such as chopping wood, hunting for food, building fences, etc. These tasks are simply selected from a menu and then you get a report on the result; you don't actually play them. Performing these tasks makes you cold and hungry, so you have to make sure you use wood and food to keep yourself going or you'll die. Logical enough. \ \ Each night, the village is attacked by monsters and this is where the roguelike aspect comes in. The monsters come from randomly chosen directions and you can either fight them yourself, bait towards any villagers who you've trained to be warriors, or a combination of both. Generally I find the village warriors are much more likely to survive than I am, even when I choose the fighter class at the beginning of the game. I'm meant to be the village hero but I'm the squishiest person there! \ \ If you survive the night (and that's a big 'if') the day commences as before, with more survival tasks. The problem is that this time no villagers will help. Without fail, the second day commences with a message saying no villagers volunteer, which means you can achieve almost nothing during the day as your tasks bring back results of zero or very low yields. I've played this game for over two hours and I can't figure out any way to make even a single villager volunteer on the second day. The game effectively ends there, because even though you can soldier on through more nights of combat, you'll soon starve or freeze without the villagers' aid. After the first day, they're happy to let you die. \ \ The combat is also pretty shaky. It works on roguelike principles - turn based, bump to attack, f to fire a ranged weapon if you have one. The bizarre thing about this is that while combat will sometimes function just fine, with damage given and received, many times you will just show zero after zero, regardless of your equipment or combat skills. All it takes is two or three hits from an enemy (or sometimes just a single hit) to inflict 'bleed' status, and then you'll bleed to death in a couple of turns. There seems to be no way to stop the bleeding, no bandages or medicine. You can collect healing herbs during the day but they have a negligible effect, and you're already having enough trouble scraping together food and firewood all by yourself, without devoting half a day to picking a single herb. \ \ Ranged combat is scarcely better. Firstly, you have to equip your bow in the inventory with z, then equip and arrow in the inventory with Enter. Why different keys? No idea. The you have to reload after every shot, which is kind of realistic I suppose, but a real nuisance gameplay-wise. The arrows are pretty effective when they hit, but they often miss, and as far as I can tell you can't retrieve used arrows so once you've expended your tiny supply of half a dozen or so, that's it. You're done with archery. There's no shop for you to buy more arrows; there's no way to craft more from the wood or other supplies; there are chests in the villagers' houses but I've never found an arrow in one of them. A few shots and that's it, you're done with archery for the rest of the game. \ \ There are a few possibilities here. It could be that the game is riddled with bugs. It could be that it's just badly designed. It could also be that there are ways around all of the problems I've listed here. If there are, however, then the game obscures them so much that I couldn't figure them out. I've been playing video games of various sorts regularly for almost 30 years, and I slogged away at this game for over two hours. If I couldn't find a way to make any of the parts of this game work in that time, then something is wrong one way or another. \ \ The idea is interesting but the gameplay is excruciatingly frustrating. Skip it.

High Upon The Mountain has a straightforward routine to it: select several actions (chop wood, hunt, or collect herbs) and then fight a zombie. Wake up the next day and do it all again. Survive for 12 nights and you win. That's not a bad idea, but the implementation has convinced me that it is impossible to survive for more than a night or two.\ \ The game is plagued by bugs and things that just don't work as expected. Often attacks do 0 damage. Sometimes you don't even get the 0 damage indicator. The \"luring zombies to villagers\" isn't a great strategy because usually the zombie ignores the villagers completely.\ \ I never really got to explore the effect of my choices each day. By the second day, none of the actions appear to have any effect: 0 villagers assist you and strangely your solo actions result in 0 output as well. You quickly starve/freeze to death and you have to continue to kill zombies that can deal a fatal blow (because of bleeding) in one hit. I will share one tip on how the game might be beatable, but I didn't have the patience to continue trying: [*SPOILER ALERT*] the zombie waits every 6 turns, so you should be able to get free swings in and kill it that way.\ \ Currently, the one other review of HUTM describes the exact same experience. If both of us have missed a legitimate way to conquer the game, that is unfortunate but even so it would mean most players would be just as confused.

TradewarsRL

Completeness

2 - The game suddenly closed at one point, although I'm not sure whether that was a crash or because I died. Either way it shouldn't have happened.

2 - Ran well but at the end of my play it closed. I don't know if that was a crash or I died and it didn't tell me or something but the fact that I can't tell says a bit.

Aesthetics

2 - A low 2. It's text-based, so there's no graphics to speak of, but the text highlighting works well to distinguish important things. Controls are simple and generally explained well, although I had to look in the readme to figure out how to attack - it's not listed in the in-game help.

2 - Decent control scheme and if not for the increasing numbers you have to type to get around it might have been a 3.

Fun

1 - Fairly dull. You travel to different sectors, find enemies, hit 'A' until they die, sell their remains, repeat. No interesting decisions to be made at any point.

2 - An enjoyable time that was worth it but not a required play.

Innovation

1 - Nothing I haven't seen before.

2 - It is a twist on roguelike stuff but despite the flavor of the setting they used it was somewhat vanilla otherwise.

Scope

1 - I was expecting that the time saved through making a text adventure rather than a roguelike might have been spent adding content, but no - everything is very bare-bones and about as simple as it could possibly be.

2 - It is what I expect from this sort of thing.

Roguelikeness

1 - It's a text adventure, not a Roguelike. The universe is randomly generated, but that's about it.

1 - It is missing to many thing all at once. Stuff just became to abstracted from the roguelike formula. Maybe if the combat had been more roguelike or there was actual equipment to deal with but no. It is a good game but it isn't a roguelike in my book.

TradewarsRL is a text adventure based on Trade Wars which doesn't do much to earn the 'RL' part of its name. Nor does it have much to offer outside of that; it's a little too basic at the moment to be worth playing.

For those interested you can view my entire time playing this game on my Youtube channel at the following address - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef0kBPEBQgY

Alien World

Completeness

2 - Visual polish is nice but gameplay design needs work.

2 - Has a nice level of polish in some areas, but not in others - movement is animated and it has a nice juicy game-over screen, but dead enemies simply vanish instantly and it feels a little unfinished. The advertised elemental effects also seem not to have been implemented, at least not reliably.\

Aesthetics

2 - Mostly pleasant and clear but the 'elements' are a mystery. I assume it's something to do with the four types of ground but there's no discernible effect or feedback.

3 - Very cute cartoony graphics and watching the level generate itself is cool. Controls are simple and easy.\

Fun

1 - Too basic to be recommended, plus slowed down to a crawl by the one-by-one enemy movement.

1 - Almost a 2, but there's just not enough to it to provide any real interest. All enemies move the same way so there's hardly any variety. Supposedly the different tile types affect your 'hero status', but I played for an hour and couldn't see any consistent effect from this. Sometimes enemies wouldn't die from one hit, but this seemed random and I wasn't sure if that was some deep mechanic at play or just a bug. If there is something more complicated going on then it desperately needs to be better communicated to the player!

Innovation

1 - Move and jump on things.

1 - The multi-level hex map looks interesting, but it doesn't really add anything to the gameplay. Other than that, there's nothing I haven't seen many times before.

Scope

1 - I'm going to have to score it low here. This doesn't seem like a week's worth of work.

1 - Very simple. There are four tile types and four enemy types, but the tiles don't seem to do anything and the enemies all act exactly the same way.\

Roguelikeness

1 - Nope, not a roguelike. Lightweight puzzle game maybe.

2 - A randomised hex-grid and the turn-based gameplay make it pretty roguelikey, but there's simply not enough complexity for it to feel like much of one.

Alien World looks nice, with a visual style which seems intended for mobile devices. Bold and colourful, there's certainly nothing to complain about there. Unfortunately the game is very dull. Jump on enemies until they're all gone, then the level ends. According to the description, there are four elements in the game which \"affect your hero status\" but I never noticed any effect of any sort from any element. You just jump on enemies. I will, however, be very glad when 7DRL participants stop forcing you to wait while every single enemy on the map moves, one at a time. It's very tedious. A few levels into the game you seem to spend more time waiting for enemies to painstakingly move than actually playing. Give it a miss.

A nice-looking game with a great cartoony art style, but at present its too simplistic to have very much to offer.

Chess+

Completeness

2 - There are some noticeable bugs, but they don't subtract from the experience too much.

1 - Very unpolished and undevelopment, more tech demo than complete game.

Aesthetics

2 - Very simple aesthetics, but they work. My only complaint is that the walls (solid blue) are difficult to visually distinguish from the dark floor tiles (solid black), and so at times, I didn't see the walls.

1 - Simple dungeon-like levels in chess style on on-colour background. Controls ok.

Fun

1 - I enjoyed the chess mechanics, but there were a few things preventing this game from being much fun. The levels are very large, and it takes a long time for the pieces to get close enough for interesting things to happen. The AI wasn't very intelligent, so encounters usually consisted of waiting for them to make a bad move. The pace was also quite slow, so it took at least 20 minutes to finish levels that were only sparsely populated. Traditional roguelike dungeon generation didn't work very well here, especially the hallways, which were basically barriers for bishops. A larger-than-normal chess board with randomly-placed obstacles would have worked much better, in my opinion.

1 - 'Fun' with this game is impossible. Levels are quiet big which is not good fusion with game mechanics. When I must go through whole map with pawn I feel monotony and boredom.

Innovation

2 - The ideas of having pieces move in a chess-like manner and capturing pieces to become part of your army are pretty unique.

2 - Roguelite game with chess elements. Not very innovative, but still rather unusual.

Scope

2 - The scope was a little limited. I would have liked for a few additional mechanics other than moving and capturing.

1 - \"Scope? What is this?\".

Roguelikeness

2 - It sits somewhere between actual chess and a roguelike.

1 - It is not roguelike - although Chess+ use the roguelike aesthetics.

Chess+ is an interesting idea! The player and enemies move like chess pieces. The game works, and has some good ideas, but the room generation and movement limitations make it a bit slow to play.

This game is one big mistake.\ Idea/theme is nice, but implementation is extremely bad. And worse. Gameplay is annoying, rules are unclear and graphics is coarse (but letters, or pieces, are nice and smooth).\ Waste of time.

Cipher Trials

Completeness

1 - * Rendering bug on pillars going down\ * \"Untitled\" window\ * Level generation can make it impossible to enter rooms without being spotted by a statue\ * Froze after completing 4 trials.\

2 - No bugs. I guess it's complete. Small rooms with two enemies near the doors make it so you can't enter the room since enemies don't move when off screen.

Aesthetics

2 - * Graphics are servicable\ * Greek glyphs clear\ * Border floor tiles a bit hard to distinguish from walkable floor tiles\ * Understanding the glyphs that appear over the player's head in the main room took a while (This was listed in the initial instructions, but I couldn't review the text until I restarted).\

2 - Looks fine, controls fine.

Fun

1 - * Procedural levels and rune pairs encourage replay\ * Repetitive gameplay for essentially a matching puzzle game\

1 - Once you figure out what to do, it's just a matter of running back and forth brute forcing every combination of the remaining runes. Avoiding the enemy's view was kind of fun but the running around and checking the journal all the time quickly becomes tedious.

Innovation

2 - * The glyph system is essentially a large element system with 100% effectiveness\ * Nice to see an alternative glyph set used, albeit marginally.

2 - Enemies that require a special attack have been done before but not to this extent. Dodging the enemy view and coming back with the correct rune gave it a bit of stealthy-backstabbing feel.

Scope

1 - * Minimal scope with shallow gameplay\

1 - Rooms and simple back-and-forth enemies. The art is nice though.

Roguelikeness

2 - * Procedural elements do little to vary the gameplay experience\ * Basic tactical bumping, vision\ * Plays more like a matching puzzle game\

1 - Other than being turn based it doesn't have any features in common with roguelikes. Didn't really feel like a roguelike to me either.

Cipher Trials is an example of having roguelike elements (turns, procedural levels, random elements) that don't create a roguelike feel. Instead, it feels like a turn-based matching game that may be interesting for people interested in Greek letters.\ \ The trials of the title consist of gathering Greek letters, called runes, that are 100% effective or ineffective in destroying moving statues based on the randomized relationship between runes each play session. In one game, ? may destroy µ, while in the next it may destroy ?. Incorrect usage leads to a mistake, and five mistakes mean restarting from trial one while retaining the automatically-updated log of the rune relationships.\ \ The resulting gameplay is relatively shallow: Determine what glyph you need to destroy and then either 1. choose it and destroy all the statues with that glyph or 2. pick a glyph you haven't used to try and successfully continue from 1 or take the mistake. Ideally, players would experiment to identify glyphs while they have mistakes available, but I didn't find a need to in my play through.\ \ Aside from a bug preventing me from advancing past the fourth trial, the game looks complete; however, I'd be interested in seeing a version that used Greek letters more in the playfield, perhaps for the statues. As it currently stands, Cipher could be fun for some light puzzling.

A puzzle where you don't immediately know what to do or exactly how to do it. I won't give away the details because I think that's the neatest part. The gameplay becomes repetitive and tedious after a while though.

Curse of Dry Hills

Completeness

1 - A game-breaking bug/design flaw which renders it impossible to play.

Aesthetics

2 - The forest looks nice, with spade and club shapes in greens and browns. There are also pleasant illustrations of enemies while fighting. The inventory is just a list of all items, though, and there's no list of keybindings anywhere.

Fun

1 - Skip it. The game can't be played beyond the first level.

Innovation

1 - In the one floor that's accessible, it's a standard bump/loot affair.

Scope

1 - I can't comment on the overall scope since only the first floor can be played. Maybe there is only one! I have to judge on what's actually accessible, so it earns a 1.

Roguelikeness

3 - Definitely a roguelike.

Curse of Dry Hills is a fairly straightforward vanilla roguelike in most respects, with simple bump-to-attack combat and a selection of enemies which vary only mildly. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and Curse of Dry Hills does have a couple of pleasant visual touches. Unfortunately the game is completely scuppered by an insurmountable technical bug - it's impossible to descend to the next level. I tried literally every key, with and without Shift/Ctrl/etc, and nothing happens. A fellow reviewer peeked at the code and saw that it should be assigned to > but this does nothing. No one so far has been able to progress. Sadly, this makes the game effectively unplayable. A shame - it has potential.

Randomized Action Arena

Completeness

2 - There are no game crashing bugs, but the game otherwise feels very incomplete. The \"512x512\" label on the tiles is the first thing that makes me think this was thrown together quickly. A single level could work in an infinite shooter, but the enemies stop spawning after a while, at which point you're punished by not being allowed to claim a score.

Aesthetics

2 - The 3D has potential and the swirly effects look nice. Perhaps the game is best played with a controller, but I don't own one. Instead I tried to use the \"single stick\" mode where you can only shoot in the direction you are moving: a total non-starter. The \"dual stick\" mode was better, but very counter intuitive because you use the mouse to rotate your aim instead of simply moving to where you want to aim.

Fun

1 - With more fluid gameplay, it could be fun. As it stands, the stop-to-shoot mechanic is very frustrating. The speed boost is neat but you have to use it constantly because enemies spawn right on top of you nonstop.

Innovation

1 - Afraid not.

Scope

1 - A single level with 2 kinds of enemies.

Roguelikeness

2 - It's a shooter. Because I hate the \"but is it a roguelike\" debate, I always hand out at least a 2 if permadeath and any sort of procedural content are included. In all other aspects, this is NOT a roguelike. A single floor and the enemies stop spawning in less than 10 minutes (so permadeath means nothing). No items, no exploration, no discovery, no complexity. If you're going to throw out the staples (grid based, turn based, hack and slash), I'm totally fine with it, but try to keep the heart and soul.

Randomized Action Arena is a top-down shooter with very basic 3D graphics and little hint of roguelikeness. As a shooter, the concept sounds OK on paper: one basic weapon, a more powerful weapon that recharges, and a \"speed boost\" that gets you away from enemies. But it just doesn't work: whenever you go to shoot, your character stops completely. At that point, you are surrounded by enemies. Your only hope is to constantly speed boost around the map and fire a few potshots at enemies while you run with your tail in between your legs. Once you complete the single floor, this is nothing else to do.\ \ It appears that the developer also happens to have released a very good looking game on Steam, so I'm going to chalk this up to not enough time/effort put into the challenge.

RogueMan

Completeness

2 - Has an endgame, could use a high score system of some sort. I got the amulet of yendor a couple times, but it seems like you get stuck when the screen starts shaking.

1 - Only basics. Game is rather bugged-free, but very unpolished and lack of... lack of everything.

Aesthetics

2 - Nice graphics, good variety of level and enemy sprites.

2 - Pretty nice tiles and monsters' sprites.

Fun

1 - Very easy. The hardest levels are the initial ones, when you have no items or gold, but it is very easy to accumulate money and become basically invincible by using your considerable amounts of gold to buy swords and killer potions. Even without any items or gold, this game might still be very easy.

1 - Non-grid system isn't good for this game, enemies are spawned to often, and RogueMan is too underdevelopment at all.

Innovation

2 - Combining roguelikes with classic arcade games is an interesting concept.

1 - Just pseudo-turn-based PacMan.

Scope

2 - Has an endgame, includes a variety of levels with different enemies, each with their own unique powers and movement patterns.

1 - Game isn't too ambitious and only basics are done.

Roguelikeness

2 - Has permadeath and procedural generation. Movement is semi-realtime (you can move freely, but enemies only move when you move)

1 - This game has almost no similarities with roguelikes.

An interesting idea that will require some polishing to make it a solid game. Controls were a bit funky and unresponsive on Firefox, but on Chrome they seemed to be fine. Hitboxes of enemies and player could be a bit smaller, felt like sometimes enemies were hitting me when I wasn't very close to them. The semi-realtime movement is interesting, but I'm not really sure it added much to the game. It is rarely used by the player to avoid enemies. Might be more fun as a realtime game.

Directly - playing the RogueMan is waste of time. The idea is totally unambitious and - in addition - game is done wrong. Floor isn't grid based and PC often is blocked with walls, enemies are spawned too frequently, and only what player can do is colletc money and going to stairs.

Transfix

Completeness

1 - Considering it's barely playable and barely a game, I'd give it zero if I could.

3 - Finished game. A bit unpolished, however.

Aesthetics

1 - Confusing and nonsensical. No.

1 - Very rough graphic, motility is difficult.

Fun

1 - I'd rather clean the toilet. Seriously.

2 - it can be could - if you can blow a graphics off.

Innovation

1 - The innovative 'not making an actual game' approach to game jams.

2 - Fusion of roguelike and IF/VN is very unusual, but not innovative as such.

Scope

1 - Impressive scope for 7 minutes.

2 - Transfix has everything what 7DRL needs, but not more.

Roguelikeness

1 - Could scarcely be less roguelike if it had Soap MacTavish on the cover.

2 - Interactive Fiction / Visual Novel with roguelike influences. Then 2? Then 2,

Oh dear. \ \ TransFix is a point & click game with a tactless theme about a transgender woman being hunted in an all-male prison. In a generous mood I could say there might be a way to explore meaningful issues there, but that's not what TransFix is. Instead it tries for humour, which just leave a bad taste in my mouth. \ \ Even if you were to peel away the unpleasant theme and ignore the fact that the gameplay is as roguelike as my left slipper, there's still the problem of it being badly designed. You have four choices of direction in each room. Some of them don't work - it'll say that direction is blocked - but there's no way to tell which ones are inaccessible until you try to move that way. Rooms are also inconsistent. Move east to the next room, then move west back to the first room and it will be a different room with different exits. Many rooms contain combat encounters but these consist of clicking either 'fight' or 'flee' and seeing what happens. Even the visual presentation doesn't make any sense half the time - many rooms use an identical image, and you start off in an area consisting entirely of white shapes on a black background which look like a default screensaver. \ \ This is a dreadful effort - incredibly lazy game design wrapped thoughtlessly in a sensitive topic which should be approached with care and respect but here is half-heartedly bandied around with scorn, and to top it all off there isn't the faintest sign of a roguelike here. Get it away from me.

Good but problematic game. Nice fusion of RL and VN, suffering bugs (in design) resulting from that combination. May be worth to play it for while, but not for roguelike purists.

UNRoguEALike

Completeness

2 - Feels more like a tech demo, albeit a complete tech demo?

Aesthetics

2 - A little painful to look at. Controls are standard FPS - intuitive. In-game messages are helpful.

Fun

1 - Not really too much fun. Certainly has promise.

Innovation

1 - Fairly basic FPS shooter, but the levels are procedurally generated.

Scope

2 - About what I'd expect for a 7DRL taking a first time crack at Unreal engine.

Roguelikeness

1 - Doesn't feel like a roguelike.

A barebones procedurally generated FPS made using default unreal engine assets.

Cadaver Country

Completeness

1 - I haven't run into any bugs but the game is imbalanced to the point that it's not really playable. Feels like an incomplete early build.

1 - Very incomplete prototype.

Aesthetics

2 - The block colour/path texture hybrid is pretty ugly but everything does its job and the blobs are cute.

1 - It looks bad. Strange colors of 'buildings'. Too bright 'grass' or whatever it is.

Fun

1 - Not really much fun. There's promise here but some design choices cause problems. Poor balance is the biggest culprit.

1 - No game no fun.

Innovation

2 - Zombie survival - not innovative by itself but not usually handled this way in roguelike spheres. It's basically a sprint from building to building, grabbing resources.

1 - It's hard to tell about innovations as there is so little implemented.

Scope

2 - Seems as though there could have been more to it, even in just a week, but it has a few different elements going on, so it's a solid effort in that respect.

1 - Not enough even for 7drl.

Roguelikeness

2 - Limited roguelike resemblance, but it is just about there.

2 - Potentially it could be genuine roguelike, but in it's current state there is not enough game for score 3.

I know many of us have had enough of gratuitous zombies but the idea of survival under duress in a world stripped of the things we take for granted is a decent idea and merits exploration. It's certainly a good basis for a game as unforgiving as a roguelike. This isn't that game, though 'unforgiving' certainly applies. \ \ It's basically a dash from one block of colour (building) to another, search each for supplies. Search a building involves just entering it, followed by a short wait. When you're done, move to the right towards the next screen. Simple. Unfortunately you're constantly in danger of dying from hunger and/or thirst, and this is where the problems arise. \ \ It's not particularly unusual for a building, when searched to yield no supplies at all. Considering that every single turn advances you towards your hunger and thirst limits of 50, you never ever EVER pick up food and water fast enough. Even if you found food in every single building you would probably starve before long, because food doesn't reduce your hunger bar by very much (water lowers your thirst far more, and is thus much more effective). You will need to eat multiple times on every screen, but might find only a couple of food items, or even none. \ \ Worse yet, searching buildings is guaranteed to spawn zombies. They're unlikely to wear down your health but it can cost 5 or more turns to bash one of them down, which just further eats into your already badly depleted satiation. Avoiding buildings will prevent zombies spawns but you won't get further than maybe two screens before you starve. Nor can you dodge around spawned zombies, as the movement is only 4-directional and zombies move at the same speed as you. If there's a zombie to your right, you MUST kill it to proceed, and as soon as you start fighting the game is essentially over already, because the time taken to fight will doom you. \ \ Just to rub salt in the wound, movement doesn't auto repeat - that is, you can't hold the button to move, instead having to press once for every step. This becomes in irritation with repeated plays as the game makes you walk the full width of an entire empty screen at the start of every attempt. \ \ The game could work if it was developed more and refined quite considerably. As it stands, it's an unpleasant experience which has the feel of being a work in progress. The description says it's a prototype for a fuller game, and it shows. Avoid.

The game is an attempt to create zombie survival rlg. But this is so early prototype that it's really hard to see the game.

Rhyacian

Completeness

2 - No bugs that I could find, although as a 7-hour game there's not a lot of polish either.

1 - Missing a lot of polish. The game features a sort of player health, but this is not shown anywhere, nor is the number of levels the player has descended. There is no in game help which is a major feature that I feel completed games should implement. The win/lose is a default windows alert popup that looks very out of place and tacked on.

Aesthetics

2 - Simple controls. Clean ASCII.

2 - Very simple color scheme that doesn't hurt the eyes. Controls make sense.

Fun

1 - You have to evade the single enemy on each level and find the exit. There's no combat and nothing else you can do, so besides the mild stealth gameplay of escaping the 'E' that's pretty much your lot.

1 - Too unfinished and simplistic to bring me any enjoyment nor would I recommend it to others. There are are some potential directions that this could be taken while retaining the basic premise. For example if the enemy had a movement rule where if the player remained in line of sight with the monster for x number of turns, the monster would gain a ton of move speed or teleport very close to the player. This would force the player to do more than simply dodge around it.

Innovation

1 - Unless the extra-restrictive timescale counts as innovation, nope.

1 - While the idea of avoiding an invulnerable enemy has some merit, it isn't really a new thing nor did the author really explore such a theme in great detail.

Scope

1 - It's a large scope for a 7-hour game, but for consistency I have to score it by the standards of 7-day games, which for obvious reasons it doesn't come out of well.

1 - Very barebones, not a lot of content at all.

Roguelikeness

2 - Looks like a roguelike and plays a little like one, but I think to fully qualify it would need to have a bit more complexity and content.

2 - Missing too many features to be a roguelike, but definitely inspired by.

Rhyacian is a roguelike made in 7 hours rather than seven days and by those standards it's fairly impressive. (There are certainly worse games which took the full time allowed!) But, as you might expect, there's not really anything to it.

Barebones RL involving racing to the bottom of a 10 level dungeon while evading an invulnerable foe.

Space Scavenger

Completeness

2 - Every time I hit restart I get a Love blue-screen-of-death. The level up squares do indeed work, as I found by exploring deep space to work around to one.

2 - Playable, but with some bugs. Retry crashes the game.

Aesthetics

1 - Excellent music and sounds. The still images have a nice look. The controls, however undo all this goodness. First, the WASD controls are relative to the ship facing, making it very hard to know how I'm to move - if I'm to strafe and fight, I need absolute movement controls. Inertia just makes things worse. Tough controls can always be a feature, but when the pistol doesn't even shoot straight, I can't really fault my own use of the controls! It doesn't matter how good I get at aiming if it decides to shoot in a 10 degree arc anyways. Why ammo is on the same menu as weapons is unclear, likewise, health packs I have to switch to a random inventory entry, use, and switch back whilst in middle of combat. There has to be some visual indicator of being hit other than just slowly lowering the health bar. Likewise, death is way too abrupt, you need a moment of denouement to realize what happened before the restart menu. Where can I see my point total?

1 - Looks nice. resolution options would be preferred as its pretty tiny on my screen. The music is good and the sounds work. The real problem are the controls. The controls operate relative to the rotation of the player. This control scheme just does not work for me with the fixed camera view. Even after more than an hour i just wasn't getting it.

Fun

1 - There are moments of fun to be found - realizing you can break into deep space, for example. Likewise, there is a lot of potential with corralling those orange circles around, leading them into traps you can kill them in. Or there would be if either I could shoot more often, or with more accuracy, or had any chance of getting a weapon power up. Starting with a guaranteed weapon powerup might improve things significantly, one could then learn the different weapon types on different play throughs. Treat the crappy pistol as the last-resort fallback. (Or when you realize the plasma gun empties your ammo too swiftly)

1 - There is balance issues. The starting weapons are terrible against the never ending spawn of tiny, fast enemies. Just one or two can easily kill you if you don't have perfect aim, which cuts short many lives before really getting started. I don't mind difficulty, but the difficulty should feel fair and I should feel like it's a challenge that can be overcome If I play better. But with these controls, that's not likely to happen.

Innovation

2 - A sort of rogue-meets-survivor, the wall breaking approach is a clever solution to the map-building dilemma. It also dovetails nicely with the theme of the game.

1 - Didn't seem to try anything new that I could tell. There is a nice feel when floating around and peacefully collecting items, however it all flies out the door when combat starts. Perhaps a future attempt at this style could focus on exploration and scavenging rather than combat.

Scope

2 - A reasonable amount of content was intended with this game.

2 - There seems to be a decent variety of weapons, some of which are useful. Due to the soul crushing difficulty, I didn't make it very far so I'm not sure if the levels change in themes or if there are more than the 2 monsters.

Roguelikeness

1 - This is more a 2d-vector shooter with procedural elements.

1 - This is a twin stick shooter with some random level generation. I learned a while ago that random levels does not a rogue make. Sadly it misses all my marks for roguelike-ishness, but this is hard to do in real-time games. Perhaps try turning this into a pseudo turn-based game as a couple of 7DRLs have done with real time engines in the past.

Space Scavenger makes me feel like I'm an invasive cell being swarmed by anti-bodies. At least that is how I envision the little orange circles that swarm you and bump you to death from all sides. It looks and sounds nice, but is very frustrating due to highly random components outside of your control.

A twin stick style shooter with random level generation and awkward movement controls.

Sting Quest

Completeness

1 - Seems like it is missing a lot. \"bare bones\" is a good description.

1 - I haven't noticed any bugs but \"obviously missing features\" is an understatement.

Aesthetics

2 - Graphics are a nice change of pace but everything seems a bit flat. Maybe varying the tiles somewhat, or adding lighting (or even field of view) would help break things up. Otherwise the giant screen of walls/floor is a little off-putting. Controls are obvious and the bug fix to make movement quicker (holding down keys instead of tapping) was very welcome.

2 - Visual style isn't particularly decorative but it does its job and information is clear enough.

Fun

1 - Not too much fun, unfortunately. I did like the intro though.

1 - Give it a miss. There isn't enough game here to warrant going out of your way.

Innovation

1 - Not too much new here. The story intro was a nice touch, maybe use that mechanic more instead of just keeping it based on numbers? Like instead of picking a 13 Attack, ask another story-based question like 'how tough was she?'.

1 - No innovation, which is fine for a practice run. Still, it has to be a 1 here.

Scope

2 - Normally would expect a bit more from a 7DRL but the graphics are all original and the menu is very nicely done, so a solid effort.

1 - Barely more than an @ on a map - a sprite on a map.

Roguelikeness

2 - Certainly a roguelike in terms of main play experience, but not much in the way of actual tactical movement or item usage. You do die a lot!

2 - It's certainly aiming for roguelikeness.

This roguelike is a bit bare bones, but has an interesting starting mechanic and clearly defined stats. The levels feel a bit empty and the combat seems very harsh! You are going to die a lot and there does not seem to be much you can do about it - e.g. no tactics apart from melee attacks and knowing your stats. A good base for a game though.

No ill will to the developer, making a game isn't easy and everyone has to practice, but reviewing the game on its own merits there isn't really any reason to play it. It's incredibly basic - just walk, dodge or bump enemies, and descend. According to the dev's notes there's no end, it just goes on infinitely. Combat/stats are pretty wonky - even when I choose the 'tank' class (snail) and pour all my points into defense I can be almost one-shotted by first floor enemies. All other classes might as well just never try to fight because they don't have a chance. It's a practice game and that's absolutely fine, but as a reviewer evaluating it as a game I have to say don't bother playing it.

DOWN, DOWN, DOWN

Completeness

2 - Feels incomplete, clipping with the holes is buggy or just badly done.

Aesthetics

2 - Simple looks and controls.

Fun

1 - Gameplay lacks depth. Could be a lot more fun if enemies moved a bit slower and there was a better sense of control over the character.

Innovation

1 - Very simple game

Scope

1 - Extremely small game that takes under a minute to see fully.

Roguelikeness

1 - Real-time, highly twitchy, random content but not procedural, no tactics.

A very basic game where you dash for the hole each level, with enemies chasing you in real-time. Each level lasts about a second or so, and it's hard to get past more than a few levels. The enemies move too fast to make this anything other than a random reaction game.

Hebrac's Dungeon 2015

Completeness

2 - The game works for the most part, but crashed several times.

1 - * No binary\ * Didn't see a clear way to exit other than ctrl-c\

Aesthetics

1 - Horrible information presentation, horrible controls. The game might ask you to input inventory slot of magic potion and you have to scroll up, look at inventory display and count slots... Even numbers for directions are awkward. 4 is west, 6 is east. ok that's cool. But why 8 is south and 1 is north??? Make 8 as north and 2 as south and navigation will be a little easier with keypad.

1 - * Monochrome\ * Nice ASCII title\ * Very simple\ * Interface difficult: Level redraws only on movement, hard to identify and use items in inventory\

Fun

1 - With better implementation it might be a little fun. But as it is, it's just supertedious.

1 - * Good as a proto-roguelike\

Innovation

1 - As an adaptation of existing game I don't think it can count as innovation

1 - * Proto-hack and slash\

Scope

2 - Probably ok for a 7drl

1 - * Very limited gameplay\

Roguelikeness

2 - It's very weak 2. It's just different kind of game. It doesn't feel like roguelike.

2 - * Proto-roguelike

Looks like an attempt of adaptation of a card game. Not too good attempt I think. It's not even curses. It's pure terminal program that prints status and asks for input.\ On top of that controls and information presentation are so cumbersome that it's incredibly tedious to play this game. Here you need to collect 4 artefacts that are laying around randomly. But there is an encounter that can unconditionally steal one of already collected artefacts...

Hebrac's Dungeon plays like a game from an earlier time and wouldn't be out of place in books like BASIC Computer Games. The distribution method is also similar, being available only as source that only requires the standard C library.\ \ The digital game is based on the solitaire card game. Floors are created by dealing an enemy card and a treasure card into a 4x4 grid. Slaying the enemy card allows the player to take the treasure card, with the goal of collecting four aces. Players can advance to the next floor after clearing half of the rooms.\ \ It's difficult to play Hebrac's today with its user interface consisting of prompts with the occasional screen redraw, and it's hard to recommend to play as a roguelike. However, it functions well as a proto-roguelike and could be of interest for people nostalgic for typed-in games.

Rogue For Hire

Completeness

1 - Seriously problematic. I've played the game a number of times over the last 40 minutes or so - quite a number of times - and so far it has frozen up/crashed after a couple of minutes' of play every single time. Basically unplayable, sadly.

1 - Looks like more like technodemo/prototype than more or less finished game.

Aesthetics

1 - Traditional roguelike aesthetic - inoffensive ASCII, nothing strikingly bad or good. Scenery is brown and enemies are purple/blue, for ease of identification. Unfortunately one crucial piece of information is missing. The game tells you that a is aim and f is fire but doesn't mention that you have to press enter while aiming to be *able* to fire. A glaring oversight which caused a good five minutes of frustration at the outset.

1 - Typical libtcod look, But controls are too cumbersome for a game focused on ranged combat. You have to aim at enemies for every single shot. Your aim is not preserved between shots! Press 'a', move cursor several tiles away, press 'f'. Repeat.

Fun

1 - I have to score it very low on this front too. I'd like to score it higher but there are a couple of game-ruining problems. One, of course, is the fact that the game crashes every couple of minutes, which means you never get past the very beginning. The other is that the aiming mechanic, while novel, isn't enough by itself to make for an enjoyable game.

1 - There is no actual game implemented. Aiming mechanics doesn't really have any sense. Just adds lots of unnecessary keypresses.

Innovation

2 - The game is based around an aiming mechanic which is a small but neat twist on standard roguelike aiming. Essentially your chance to hit is modified by an aim meter which increases with time, so the longer you aim the more likely you are to hit. Not ground breaking but a nice idea.

1 - There were numerous roguelikes centered around ranged combat.

Scope

1 - It's hard to comment with certainty on the scope of the game since it's impossible to get more than a minute or two into it. For all I know, there could be cities and dungeons galore just over the horizon. It's impossible to find out, though, so based on what's accessible I have to score it a 1. An @ on an open map, shooting the letter b over and over.

1 - It's '@' walking around and repeatedly shooting at 'b'andits with a chance to meet one of bosses, that are just a little beefier versions of 'b'andits.

Roguelikeness

3 - Yes, there's roguelikeness here. It's not really a game but what there is of it definitely reflects the genre.

2 - Too simple to be called 'true roguelike'.

Another one that doesn't work. That seems to be one of the themes for this year. I enjoy the Wild West theme (cowboy roguelikes are an untapped resource!) and the aim mechanic around which the game is based, while not earth shattering, is a nice addition which could be built into other games. The longer you aim at the target, the more likely you are to hit as your aim bar fills up each turn. Unfortunately your aim bar seems to fill just as quickly even when you're moving, so there really isn't much of a downside, which means that waiting for the bar to fill becomes busywork rather than a tactical decision. \ \ There's also an oversight in the UI. Key functions are listed (a to aim, f to fire) but one is missing - enter to confirm the target so that you can start firing. This led to several minutes of snarling and gnashing of teeth as I tried to work out how to actually shoot anything - which, after all, is the point of the game. \ \ The biggest problem, though, is that the game doesn't work. Every single time I've played it (which is now well into double figures) the game has frozen up after a couple of minutes. No error messages or anything, it just stops responding to commands. This means that I've never been able to see if there's anything else to the game beyond the very basic shooting gallery of the first minute or two. \ \ On this basis, my advice is to avoid it. Nice idea but it's pinned on a game which seems very very shallow and, if not, hides its depth behind a reliable early-game crash. A shame; I like the Wild West setting.

This game is an attempt to implement gunfights of wild west. Not very successful attempt. Too little was implemented.

Roli

Completeness

1 - * Couldn't mute or change sfx/music volume\ * Running into raised blocks only stopped the player\ * Could bounce over depressed blocks \ * Could get trapped falling into depressions without causing a game over\ * Nice title screen\ * No documentation on keybindings \

2 - All you can do, as far as I could tell, is change direction. There's walls to bump into, pits to fall into, and things to collect.

Aesthetics

2 - * Reasonable keybindings not too hard to figure out\ * Good contrast on the colors\ * A bit confused by being \"assimilated\"; some context would be nice\ * Context might help the textures make more sense\ * Main block texture repeats obviously and is a bit noisy\ * Cube rotation & blinking well done\

2 - Unity cubes, capsules, and menus. Direction keys to change direction. There's almost not enough of a game to do the controls poorly or exceptionally well.

Fun

1 - * Incompleteness hurt\ * The block changes didn't seem balanced

1 - Not really....

Innovation

1 - * Infinite runner\ * 3D rotation didn't feel like a core part of the gameplay\

1 - Moving from one face to another was neat. Nothing particularly innovative though.

Scope

2 - * Jam-level scope

1 -

Roguelikeness

1 - * Not a roguelike.\ * The lowering pieces didn't come across as procedural levels; instead, they felt like enemies\ * Strong arcade game/infinite runner feel

1 - Changing direction while forced to always move and speed up is about as far from roguelike as you can possibly get.

Roli is a good game jam game, being playable with a limited scope, but it didn't quite hit enough roguelike points to feel like a member of the genre.\ \ The blocks change while the player is on the cube's side apparently at random, and this randomness made the blocks feel more like random enemy attacks (with the start-up highlighted by the flashing red) than a generated level in which the player performs other actions. Subsequent levels didn't seem to vary the generation; instead, they increase the speed of block changes. Together, these issues combined with realtime gameplay and collectibles situate Roli as a arcade game.

If you like \"run and collect\" games you may want to try this. Not really a roguelike though. A fine tech demo or attempt at a Unity project and I hope the creators keep making games.

Gem Acquisition Operative

Completeness

2 - The game is complete, but very simple and it lacks polish. It doesn't restart on death. It doesn't end! Some counter with moon icon next to it just becomes negative.

2 - Game finished, rather bug-free, but unpolished.

Aesthetics

2 - Lo-fi pixel art. Character is cute, but terrain is very monotonous and lacks variety.

1 - Ugly and very repetitive tiles.

Fun

1 - Too boring. There is no challenge beside oxygen counting.

1 - You must collect gems, avoid deadly pools and check your oxygen level. Nothing interesting.

Innovation

1 - Nothing new or interesting

1 - As in 'Fun' paragraph. Nothing new.

Scope

1 - It looks more like 24h gamejam entry, not 7drl.

1 - Minimal scope, poorly and modestly. The game looks more like a 1DRL than 7D.

Roguelikeness

1 - It's way too simple to be called roguelike.\

1 - Nope. GAO has roguelike elements but without roguelike feeling.

Walk around the base, pick some gems, return before oxygen runs out. Repeat. Infinitely. Looking at game's description it's planned this way.

This game is too simple, too boring and definitely not roguelike.

Koobas

Completeness

1 - Barebone technodemo.

2 - You can play through a level or die trying. Combat works too. It seems like much more content was meant for the game but didn't make the cut.\ \ It would appear that the ambition was to have sound in the game, but there is none. Also, there is a bug whereby it's possible to see gates and object from far away down long corridors, but when you get closer a wall gets rendered in between.

Aesthetics

1 - Generic 3d. Too bright for a dungeon.

2 - Animated 2d sprite enemy in a 3d world, otherwise basic dungeon surroundings. Has a sword-swinging animation too.

Fun

1 - Not fun at all.

1 - I did not have fun playing this game. Combat was straightforward: by just walking backwards and tapping space to swing at my enemies I became unbeatable. The turn rate of the character is very slow and makes for anxious moments when bats attack from behind, it would be good to adjust this. \ \ There was no map to look at, so I spent a lot of time just wandering around the dungeon but since it all looks the same this was not interesting. There were no puzzles or particular mechanics of interest to play with. I persisted in the dungeon for a few dozen minutes to get all the keys and find the ladder and after I'd annihilated all the bats there was really nothing of interest.

Innovation

1 - Generic first person dungeon crawler.

1 - Nothing out of the ordinary.

Scope

1 - It probably took some time to implement technological part of this game. But 7drl challenge is not about technology. It's about gameplay. There is not enough gameplay for 7drl.

2 - FPS game with a completable level and some combat is a fair accomplishment for a game jam.

Roguelikeness

1 - Nothing connects this game with roguelikes.

1 - The level seems to be the same every time I play, not procedural at all. Real-time combat. Reminds me of Dungeon Master and Ultima Underworld.

Technodemo of first person 3d realtime dungeon crawler. No game here.

Be the scourge of nasty bats in this first-person real-time dungeon dwelling game where you need to find three keys to unlock gates and get to the next level. \ \ It's a completable game but offers very little fun in its current state with only one enemy. This is a fair beginning of a game system that could lead to something like Ultima Underworld and as such is a nice accomplishment for a jam but it needs a fair bit more work before becoming a good game.

R@gueX

Completeness

1 - Very buggy. The game frequently crashes when you touch the stairs to the next level, usually on the first level. The player's @ symbol often disappears entirely. This happens on most levels, and sometimes it happens as soon as you enter the level so you have no idea where you are. Fundamentally not functional and probably shouldn't have been declared a success. I'd give this a zero if I could.

Aesthetics

1 - Not aesthetically pleasing but the minimalism is at least clear...sometimes. Quite often, multiple enemies will stack up on one space which results in a mass of mingled letters. It becomes basically impossible to tell what's there or how many there are.

Fun

1 - Hard to say, since the game seldom runs long enough to get much feel for how it progresses as it moves along. As far as I've been able to get before it crashes, it's a basic 'walk to the stairs' affair. Don't bother.

Innovation

1 - Walk to the stairs, sometimes bump an enemy if it's in your way. Allegedly there are items but I've never seen any.

Scope

1 - Almost literally just an @ on a map.

Roguelikeness

2 - Just about scrapes a modicum of roguelikeishness - turn based, descend from level to level, bump to attack.

I'm sad to say this game is a wreck. There's at least a 50/50 chance of the game crashing when you touch the stairs on the first floor. If it doesn't happen on the first floor, you seem to be ok for the rest of that run. Unfortunately that's only the start. The player's @ symbol often disappears for a while - this seems to be geographical and if you leave the area of the level where you disappeared, you'll reappear. That would be inconvenient but not game-breaking, except that sometimes you've already vanished when you spawn on a level. With no up stairway, there's no means of identifying your location. I've never had a death in this game - I've always either had to quit because I can't see where I am, or been kicked by a crash. \ \ Even without the technical issues, the game is very basic and not really worth the time to play. With the tech issues, it's a clear case of 'avoid at all costs'. Unfortunate.

We have a Bug

Completeness

1 - Feels like it's still only half done.

Aesthetics

1 - Misleading doors make for irritation.

Fun

1 - Skip it.

Innovation

1 - A hundred others have been here before.

Scope

1 - Too unfinished, even for 7 days.

Roguelikeness

2 - It has that roguelike-like thing going on.

A Binding of Isaac-like shooter. Unfortunately the rooms are devoid of features and look primitive. Every room has 4 doors but they don't all work - there's no visual marker for non-functional doors so you just have to try them all. Sometimes a door doesn't work on the first visit, then when you leave and return it starts working. You're meant to shoot with the arrow keys but it doesn't work at least 50% of the time. The game is broken; don't play it.

You Only Have One Dog

Completeness

1 - Not even a game.

Aesthetics

1 - (Intentionally?) hideous.

Fun

1 - No.

Innovation

1 - Again, not a game.

Scope

1 - Pathetic.

Roguelikeness

1 - Even if it wasn't a flagrant joke effort, it would be a point & click pet maintenance game. As roguelike as a sofa.

You Only Have One Dog has to be an exercise in trolling. The game is a point & click of sorts - you click various options to do things like feed your dog, go to work, and go to bed. The graphics are sloppily drawn line scribbles in something like MS Paint, probably intentionally so. \ \ After a few seconds of clicking around, my dog was suddenly stuck in a tree. Clicking the button to rescue it just kept refreshing the crisis, so the only other option was to click the button to do nothing, which killed the dog. The game is now over - permanently. Short of uninstalling (it's a Game Maker game and has to be installed) there's no way to have a second attempt - not that I particularly want to. \ \ It would only take a few minutes to uninstall and re-install but this 'game' isn't worth it. It's a joke entry - a troll to the reviewers and players - and I have no interest in wasting any more time on it.

Zoo Tycoon RL

Completeness

1 - * Display broken\ * Couldn't seem to die\ * Actions in README didn't seem to function

Aesthetics

1 - * Liked the idea of emoji\ * Strong contrast between solid glyphs and colored glyphs\ * Couldn't perform actions

Fun

1 - * Too broken to enjoy

Innovation

1 - * Using emoji is innovative, but current implementation makes it problematic\

Scope

1 - * Planned scope seemed much larger\ * Even movement failed

Roguelikeness

1 - * Fixed map\ * No permadeath, or couldn't get it to work\ * Too incomplete to really tell

ZTRL is distributed as python source code, requires Urwid for its console interface, and GNU Unifont. Upon doing so, I was only able to move haphazardly while blinking between walls. Building walls didn't seem to work, nor was I killed after running into traffic.\ It's hard to recommend ZTRL in its current state, but I did enjoy its attempt to use emoji. Perhaps future 7DRLs will do so more successfully.