 |
The 2020 7DRL Challenge Evaluation Process Click a table header to sort. 2010 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 |
| Name | Author | Runs on | Play | Completeness | Aesthetics | Fun | Innovation | Scope | Roguelikeness | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Res furtiva | Paweł Ślusarczyk |   
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.89 |
| Fable on your Table | Lone Spelunker | 
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.83 |
| Taraman Castle Oni Story | thp |
| Play | 3.67 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.72 |
| Beneath Faelin Wood | Super∴Try |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.72 |
| With Hooves of Fire | Chao |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.72 |
| Atgtha in Absurdia | FourbitFriday |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.67 |
| Scrolling Scroll Rl | rubybliels |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.67 |
| VoidShell-7DRL | PNJeffries |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.67 |
| Kingdom Cards | Numeron |
| Play | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.67 |
| Food of the Gods | Cancelion |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.61 |
| slime99 | gridbugs |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.56 |
| Book Hunter | watabou |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.56 |
| Cardinal Gun Prospector | st33d |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 |
| Descendants of the Hellbeast | shp |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 |
| Dreams of Dragon's Fire | DragonXVI |
| Play | 3.50 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 |
| Emmanuel de Rouge and the Amulet of Quetzalcoatl | Zoltan Kosina |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.50 |
| Potion Curse | petet |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 |
| Space Marines | AdamAlexandr |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 |
| The Darkness | Spicy Chicken |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 |
| The Legend of U-101 | TajamSoft |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 |
| Wind Vane Wanderer | Le Slo |
| Play | 3.67 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 |
| A Streetcar Rogue Designer | progrimon |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.42 |
| Barn Battles - Strategy Tactics Roguelite | TimRuswick |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.42 |
| CATSTLE | topatisen |
| Play | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.42 |
| Cardlock | Will Lewis |
| Play | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.42 |
| Devil Disco | hairmachine |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.42 |
| Intergalactic Juice Syndicate | Nanolotl |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.42 |
| Plunderball | Mon amiral |
| Play | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.42 |
| Pyro Pest Control | exezin |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.42 |
| Runelite | Jay |
| Play | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.42 |
| Stickers & Dragons | JfranMora |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.42 |
| A Delver and Her Dog - A 7DRL | Mental_Inaction |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 4.00 | 3.39 |
| Catacombs | Geoff Blair |
| Play | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.39 |
| Kingdom of Rogueing | ZapJackson |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.39 |
| Rogue Sails | tndwolf |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.39 |
| Crypt of the Bone King | Tinytouchtales |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.33 |
| Dead Man's Hand | bleakley |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.33 |
| Ons@ught | badscribbler |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 |
| Project SUBURBION | Auroriax (Tom H.) |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 |
| Seven Samurai RL (7SRL) (7DRL) | benhem |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.33 |
| Super Normal 7 Day Roguelike | KhaoTom |
| Play | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.33 |
| Two Button Berserker | jhowl |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 4.00 | 3.33 |
| War of 1812 | jmlait |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.33 |
| Rogue's Delight | OtspIII |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 |
| BeamLike | Ahmed Khalifa (Amidos) |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.28 |
| Holy Duck! Hunt For the Golden Loaf | hacked.design |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.67 | 2.33 | 2.67 | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.28 |
| KALQL8TR | Gamepopper |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.67 | 2.33 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.28 |
| Emerald Woods | Slashie |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.25 |
| One Of Us 7drl | AdamStrange |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.25 |
| Six Months to Die in Space | FrankieSmileShow |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 3.25 |
| the strigoi | Cole |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.25 |
| Rogue Dealer | IceBoxr |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.22 |
| Thine Cometh | nartier |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.22 |
| Tower of Tension | Lauren H |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.22 |
| Chicken Scratch | redxaxder |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.17 |
| Dark Space | shadowofthefallenstar |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.17 |
| Dragonoscopy | Figglewatts |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Ember Deep | Verdagon |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Equipmentris | anttihaavikko |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.17 |
| Game of Centuries | Spferical |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.17 |
| JoustRL | ibGoge |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Live Long and Prosper | samspot |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.17 |
| Pointy End | Ian MacLarty |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.17 |
| PortalWorlds | Mark Damon Hughes |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Rogue Emoji | Aaron Z. Best |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.17 |
| The Unreliable Cartographer | kkairos |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.17 |
| Verminator | teamkalamakkara |
| Play | 4.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 | 2.00 | 3.67 | 4.00 | 3.17 |
| Wizard Chess 7DRL | Eldar Bogdanov |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.00 | 3.17 |
| FallingCarefully | jaw_felt |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.11 |
| Autorogue | Jonathon Yule |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.11 |
| CARRIER | queenjazz |
| Play | 2.67 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.11 |
| Mall Crawl | wasdmachine |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 4.00 | 3.11 |
| Mechrl | jzhang113 |
| Play | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 3.33 | 3.67 | 3.11 |
| Svendarogalik's Dungeon | nik_sg |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.67 | 3.11 |
| Bitesize Tactics | Kawaii Solutions |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.08 |
| Bombfinder RL | Ryan Kubik |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.08 |
| DataHaven | DynamicSporadic |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.08 |
| Flume | Classicwook |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.08 |
| Hooked | sundowns |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.08 |
| HospiceRL | Blue Rook Studios |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.08 |
| Just Deserts | Tommy Tkatchenko |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.08 |
| Legend | Draconis |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.08 |
| Monster Garden | never_k |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.08 |
| Runner Gunner | savagehill | 
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.08 |
| Sow | gruebite |
| Play | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.08 |
| TankRL | CodeBison |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.08 |
| The Infiltration of Citrus Fortress | tonyrobots |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.08 |
| MushLike | JayDude |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 4.00 | 3.06 |
| Robot Racers RL | Balmonec |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.33 | 3.06 |
| Yendor March | Arsonium |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 3.06 |
| 7 Day Rogue | katerberg |
| Play | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.33 | 2.67 | 4.00 | 3.00 |
| Ambition of the Jelly Lord | Robot Loves Kitty |
| Play | 3.67 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 3.00 |
| D.rogue #7DRL 2020 | pvp |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 |
| Dreams of Collapse | an npc dev |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 3.00 |
| Dungeons of Makius | tb1 |
| Play | 2.50 | 4.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 |
| Four Gates | alexanderknop |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 |
| IronTowerRL | MagnusFurcifer |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 |
| Nayr Odyssey | Daniel Savage |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 |
| Nemesis on the High Seas | relsqui |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 |
| Of Mist And Shadows | Lênon Kramer / Nomad Hermit |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 |
| Reignited Lands | AuxRuul |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.00 |
| feederRL | ldd |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 3.00 |
| Bad Dreams & Sad Memories | MuffiTuffiWuffi |
| Play | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 2.94 |
| Bomblike | Waynetron |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.92 |
| Break 2020 7DRL | blockerz |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.92 |
| Ponto Sneak | peteandwally |
| Play | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.92 |
| PulseEXE | Supbscripter |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.92 |
| Scrap World RL | xbcw |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.92 |
| Station Salvage | Aviv |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.92 |
| Lash | hadiDanial |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 2.33 | 2.89 |
| Archipelago: A 7DRL | voidset |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.83 |
| Chronotherium | wurthers |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.83 |
| ElementalRL | Kiazi |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 2.83 |
| Galen's Enchanted Emporium | TailCraft |
| Play | 2.33 | 3.67 | 2.67 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 2.33 | 2.83 |
| Hostile Skies | mrhthepie |
| Play | 2.67 | 3.33 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.83 |
| There are SLIMES in this DUNGEON | nuzcraft |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.83 |
| Serpent RL | ExciteMike |
| Play | 3.33 | 3.33 | 2.67 | 3.00 | 2.33 | 2.33 | 2.83 |
| 7 Days in Purgatory | CriticalMissStudios |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.75 |
| City-Ship: Mercury | Introspection Games |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 2.75 |
| ESC_APE | StabAlarash |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.75 |
| Hostile | olberg |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.75 |
| Mainframe: Hacker Adventures | kogyblack |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.75 |
| Raccoon Delver | PackageEdge |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.75 |
| Roguecraft | underww |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.75 |
| Rogues Among the Stars | Deathray |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.75 |
| The Cycle of Rent | Panda-K |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.75 |
| X001 Infiltrator | viila |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.75 |
| mallRL | Nikolas Mählmann |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.75 |
| Cat Colony | TigerJ |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 |
| Dungeon Crasher | Cole Dunham |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 |
| Infector | Cosmocat |
| Play | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.67 |
| Key Cave | Scott Ethington |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.67 |
| Raccoon Librarian | ChrisLHall |
| Play | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.50 | 2.67 |
| Slumber | Seilburg |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.67 |
| StationCrawl | frater |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 4.00 | 2.67 |
| The Dragon's Dungeon | Neon |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.50 | 2.67 |
| TheSpicyRL | radman |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 4.00 | 2.67 |
| Guns-Like | Richard08 (Ricardo Reyes Paz) |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.67 | 2.00 | 2.67 | 2.33 | 2.61 |
| Baby Worlds Eater | Luca Giacometti |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.58 |
| ClueRL - 2020 7DRL | ifman1 |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.58 |
| Damage Control | TotallyGatsby |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.58 |
| Dungeon Knights | stacksta |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.58 |
| Last Login Failed (7DRL) | Mantis-Eye Labs |
| Play | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.58 |
| Parasomniac Dreams | FurioDjeex |
| Play | 3.50 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.58 |
| Rogue Wizard Quest | OddBall Interactive |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.58 |
| A programmer's dream | BrosCrewStudios |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 |
| Death Robot Island (7DRL 2020) | Jonathan Lorenz |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 |
| Dungeon Crawl | skryking |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 4.00 | 2.50 |
| Escape Plan B | Insane Scatterbrain |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 |
| NecromanZer 7DRL | tairesh |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 |
| Necromancer Necropolis | some_games |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 |
| Rogue | videogamejesus |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 |
| Unnamed 7DRL20 | BordListian |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 |
| Wizz's Bounce Fiasco | Michael Carstairs |
| Play | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.50 |
| Cats are Delicious | verbalshadow |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.42 |
| Havoc Cab | Scayze |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.50 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.42 |
| 2035 - Creta's Point of No Return | dcybroz |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| Bloody Crates | Iksonik |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| NeetMeat | OutburstCursed |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.33 |
| Nothing Left to Lose | Redacted Games |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| Rogue GOL | Sergio Yukio |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| Rogue Zombie | Jack Le Hamster |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| Xomb | thrig |
| Play | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.33 |
| Crabbington | deathmtn |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.17 |
| Rogue Soldier (Jam Build) | Brandon JS Lea |
| Play | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.50 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.17 |
| Rook Warp | gaming chef |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.17 |
| The Minotaur's Lair | Jary Jurax |
| Play | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.17 |
| Wuhan CORONA China Virus | sesangsokuro |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.17 |
| Bug Stomper | Yanni |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 |
| Dungeon Hackerer 2 | Fengol |
| Play | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 |
Reviews
Res furtiva
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
4
4
Innovation
4
4
4
Scope
3
4
4
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
The premise is fun and the pixel art is charming. Cinematics and music are top notch! The guards' vision fields and sound indications work well, but concealment is difficult to read. There's a lot of tactical freedom, but killing and incapacitating seem to be mutually exclusive, which adds to the difficulty considerably.
Great atmosphere and setup! Used all the different tools and weapons and eventually found the guy to capture. Epic battle dragging him away was great fun! Lots of strategy, great achievement in seven days.
Thank you very much for submitting an entry into the 7DRL! Looking at your entry, I can see that you had a lot of fun putting it together. It's very creative. Great job on putting together the intro animations and story to hold everything together. I am absolutely terrible at these kinds of stealth games, but I still had a lot of fun. I enjoyed that the first mission (my only mission) briefing and goals were slightly different each time along with different generated maps. I hope you can keep working on this entry!
Fable on your Table
Completeness
4
Aesthetics
4
Fun
3
Innovation
4
Scope
4
Roguelikeness
4
The artwork on the miniatures is professional level and the miniatures themselves are surprisingly complex. Even in black and white, the dungeons, with all their scenery and characters, resemble a high quality table top game. There's a variety of enemy types and each level is capped with a boss fight that features some interesting, but small, gameplay twist. Balance is shifted considerably in the player's favor, and understandably so. Play through of a single level might take ninety minutes. Playing with the back-to-square-one RL convention would be inconceivable. The length is a result of the player being responsible for all characters, including enemies, and processing the rules for the encounters. While the core mechanic is simple, there are a great number of layers of rules that sit on top. Where another game may have bugs, this one has only ambiguities. There are a few, although none is high impact enough to stop the game. The stock characters are very helpful, both to allow a quick start into gameplay, but also to give an idea to the player about what a character is supposed to look like. There's a variety of weapons, but their balance needs more tuning. Some character builds are obviously superior after only a few rooms. The overall impression the game leaves is less of Rogue than of a solitaire version of DnD (full circle I suppose.) One standout difference that carries over from the CRPG roots of the game is the webapp that runs levels. It doesn't go as far as to move enemies for you, but it does remember rooms after you return to them with every undefeated enemy and unopened chest right where you left them. This hybrid approach seems to have a lot of potential. I don't think it gets used to its fullest here, but it's a remarkable first draft.
Taraman Castle Oni Story
Completeness
4
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
4
4
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
4
4
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
What a fantastic entry! I was excited to play this one, and I hope you had just as much fun building it. The idea is definitely a unique one. I even learned a few words. The extra effort going into the "small details" like a title screen and "death" screen were worth it. Great choice of music, it really helped build the ambiance of the map you were in. I loved having multiple floors to explore. Maybe I didn't get far enough into the map, but I was definitely on the lookout for shuriken. P.S. get some flowers for Laurie! :)
"Taraman Castle Oni Story" is a beautiful game, you folks can be proud of it! I loved the atmosphere - great thematic music, stories and descriptions of every creature, the overall look of the game. Bonus points for shoji panels! I played the game for much longer than 1 hour intended for rating, but still couldn't finish it, even though I was abusing what I think is a bug (see below). Perhaps levels 4 and 5 are too hard? I kept circling floor 5 trying to find a page, but failed. There were some noticeable issues with the game: -The inventory becomes bugged after dying - see screenshots on my comments - I think there is a bug with damage calculation that leads to player's strength or spirit increasing when the other one decreases during some attacks. (I'm not talking about maximums in parenthesis, but specifically current values.) Or perhaps some creatures' attacks are meant to do this to you? Sounds more like a bug. -The game slows down significantly when I run around on the ground level - perhaps due to the amount of units? - Not a bug, but a suggestion: picking up pages shouldn't really need an inventory slot I gave 3 for completeness due to these issues, and 3 for innovation - the rest is a stellar 4!
Very impressive submission that feels and looks like a proper roguelike. The duality of body and soul is an interesting concept that keeps a player focused.
Beneath Faelin Wood
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
3
4
4
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
4
4
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
What an excellent entry - thanks a lot for participating in the roguelike jam! Wow! A very indepth game with the ability to use 1 of 3 druids PLUS adding shapeshifting PLUS storylines and dialog. The music -- ohhhh the music. An excellent accompanyment to the gameplay elevating an overall "Druidy" feel. I really enjoyed this entry, I hope you and your group had just as much fun putting it together!
With Hooves of Fire
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
4
4
Innovation
4
4
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
Great use of a limited palette. Distinct meaningful colors, no more than needed, nothing wasted. Movement hints strike the perfect balance between readability and obtrusiveness. The sound design is excellent overall, but the hoof beats in particular do a lot to establish a gameplay rhythm. This rhythm, along with the momentum mechanics, combine to give gameplay a tangible feeling of fluidity and speed that doesn't seem like it should be possible in a turn based game. A remarkable achievement, and the most fun I've had playing any entry.
With Hooves of Fire is a beautiful ASCII game with momentum and stealth mechanics. The game is complete and no bugs were encountered during play. The controls are simple and easy to learn, the movement UI is excellent, and the game pushes the boundaries of what can be done with ASCII graphics. The momentum physics, and the feel and pacing of combat felt truly original; other games feature similar mechanics but With Hooves of Fire executes this flawlessly. The game is turn-based and procedurally generated, but lacks any character progression or levels and is quite short compared to a traditional roguelike.
Easily one of my favorite entries in this jam, even though I never got past 87%. But the thrill of the ride, with a band of enemy riders on my back, is unforgettable. The only critical feedback I have is that the bottom menu covers map in a way that lets enemies see me before I notice them, essentially making movement downwards rather undesirable.
Atgtha in Absurdia
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
4
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
4
4
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
Atgtha in Absurdia is a coffee-break roguelike set in a world packed with puns and humor, and where things are not always what they seem. The game's use of ASCII art in a modern style is a standout for the genre and is a true merging of the traditional and the new. Atgtha's gameplay is driven by movement/combat tactics and savvy resource usage. The game is complete and has a good deal of content for its scale and length. There are odd behaviors in messages and maps/display which were hard to label as either bug or part of the "absurdia" theme. The controls are simple and easy to learn, and the UI for items and attacking is quite good. The game is a blast to play, I'd recommend that everyone try it. Atgtha in Absurdia sits at the edge of what I'd consider a traditional roguelike, with a few mechanics deviating from the formula such as no free resting, no passive health regeneration (and healing being relatively rare in general), general lack of character progression/stats (although I did encounter one system that allows for this).
I really enjoyed this entry. From the very stylish and cute approach, to the clever bouncy animations and audio, this one has a lot going for it. A very great entry especially when done in 7 days! A very minor observation, but I found the health bar / log area quite "busy". Curious if you've experimented with the health bar either at the top-left, or perhaps even vertically on the left side. I also found the mouse either "point"less (haha) or just in my way. I'd maybe suggest an option in the controls to hide it (?). Other then that, kudos on this entry!
It has a large variety of distinct enemies, weapons, ranged items, and support items
Scrolling Scroll Rl
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
3
Fun
4
4
3
Innovation
4
4
3
Scope
4
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
This grew on me quickly! Very addictive "chase scene as RL". The ASCII, while initially obscure, made sense and became intuitive the more I played it. I really like the mechanics and combination of enemies and scrolls. The confluence of scrolling and scrolls was great.
"Scrolling Scroll RL" is really well designed. After learning to right-click on stuff, I finally understood what was going on, and played for a while. Took me at least half an hour to get a win though :) I enjoyed the variety of scrolls and enemies - in spite of supposedly monotonous march forward, the game is highly replayable. I didn't notice many issues, but here is a nit: - The board doesn't fit on the screen in fullscreen mode (Macbook Pro + Chrome) My scores for everything but Scope and Roguelikeness are 4 - I think it's a great entry. In terms of scope, it feels just right; As for roguelikeness, I felt like you took an interesting approach to the genre that warranted a higher score in innovation, and rounded Roguelikeness down because of it.
A very interesting take on the dungeon generation. The game is well balanced - challenging but winnable. The variety of enemies is interesting. I had a good time playing it.
VoidShell-7DRL
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
4
4
Innovation
4
4
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
3
3
Wow. I really dig this. PNJeffries has managed to put together a game that's truly innovative, decently featured, well-balanced (though still hard), pretty darn polished (though the visuals are a bit sparse), and most of all FUN. I really appreciate the character of the flavor text throughout, particularly the intro/tutorial lines as the system is booting up. I've played about an hour, and have quite completed it yet -- those big bugs are particularly nasty -- but I've gotten close. Some (hopefully constructive) thoughts: - Looking should be free. Perhaps I'm too influenced by SuperHot, but I really feel like looking around shouldn't advance the clock. It just feels kind of .... cheap? And also pretty un-roguelike to not be able to take your time to assess the situation. I realize that's what the scanner is for, to an extent, but I'm not sure I agree with the design decision there. Of course, I could try it the other way and hate it, but my gut says it would work better, and feel less like an FPS and a bit more thoughtful and almost turn-based... In short, more RL. - Upgrades a little underpowered. Sniper upgrade was pretty useless, since the projectile didn't seem to increase speed. Maybe I suck, but I couldn't hit anything at distance with it. Or perhaps better to say the basic gun had plenty of range for my purposes, so I didn't feel the upgrade there. Especially since it required a VERY valuable energy point. Maybe if it were hitscan it would feel like a real upgrade. I didn't even bother to try the rapid fire (IIRC) one, for the same reason (energy cost). The shield seemed like it could be valuable but I didn't notice much effect if any. Better to avoid damage than to mitigate, probably, so I found myself using thruster more often. (Along with heal and bomb-making.) - It could be hard to tell how far the object of interest (green smoke) was. Really couldn't tell where to go next a lot of the time, as I could see a few plumes of smoke in the distance, but had a hard time discerning which plume was the closest. I think that's it. VoidShell is certainly one of the stand out games of the jam for me. Highly recommended.
Very good game. Superhot-esque timestop mechanic (time only moves when you do). Looks nice and feels quite good. Obviously not quite an RL (first person, only sorta turnbased), but among the better roguelites I've played.
Kingdom Cards
Completeness
4
4
3
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
3
4
3
Innovation
4
4
3
Scope
4
4
4
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
Completeness 4 Hands down felt like a fully-featured game. Likely because you started from the previous year's work, but I definitely forgot I was playing a 7DRL during moments of my playthroughs. Aesthetics 4 The sprites were beautiful, the controls all made sense and that initial transition from castle to over world was certainly mind blowing and something I had never seen before. Really nothing to add here, just a beautiful game Fun 3 After playing this one a few times and failing to win and, despite all the things it does well, I found myself actually dreading subsequent playthroughs because of how functionally tedious card and unit management became. The attrition damage a player takes in this game is significant, and well-warranted, however it encourages using your ranged cards as much as possible for every single enemy which takes more than one hit to defeat (so most all of them). Furthermore since there's no player notification about where and when you might find health potions or additional cards, you feel the once-again tedious need to explore every single house/location and take the least amount of damage possible. The game was certainly worth my time playing, but perhaps due to lack of variety or interesting decisions I found I had to put it down. Innovative 4 Holy cow what a neat take on the nearly-overdone deckbuilding mechanic. Very interesting to have essentially a party-based tactical RPG but only one party member can act at a time. It's a concept that has a ton of potential and was very exciting to have the opportunity to play. Scope 4 Between the art and balance, definitely above and beyond what I have seen in the typical 7drl. Again hard to calibrate expectations without knowing what you started with coming into the 7 days, but a very strong showing nonetheless! Roguelike 3 Definitely plays much like a traditional roguelike, but without any sense of progression beyond collecting and adding cards to your deck it lacks the sort of hero/character development, either though levelling or unique items, that is part of the typical roguelike fare
Few others could have put together a 7-day-game experience of such refinement than twelve-time 7DRL creator Numeron. Kingdom Cards (v1.0 reviewed) is a straightforward roguelike with excellent production values and a twist: you control a revolving "deck" of characters who are played one at a time from your "hand." Completeness (4/5): Honestly, how much more complete can a game be? Kingdom Cards is "polished, balanced, and practically bug-free," utilizing its tilesets brilliantly. I loved the victory and defeat screens, the elaborately produced procedurally-generated maps, as well as the addition of the "rogue challenge" mode (which was far too challenging for me). But one of the things looked for in a 5/5 for completeness is a game that is "supremely well balanced across multiple playthroughs," and this description has me quibbling to reward that very rare 7DRL jam score. This is because, although Kingdom Cards is an all-around solid game, the v1.0 balance has a certain floatiness to it. This might be inherent to the randomness of the revolving card mechanic, how randomly the enemies and reinforcements are distributed, and how combat lacks much technical feedback to inform the player of resolution with enough precision to make very fine decisions about whether or not one more bump against the enemy is warranted. The floatiness means the player doesn't "click" well enough to feel whether or not the balance is innately rewarding. As for the multiple playthrough consideration, the "rogue challenge" adds exactly one additional playthrough. Other than that, once you have beaten the demon there is little need to do it again. Aesthetics (4/5): Graphically, Kingdom Cards' utilizes its assets magnificently. The tiles were animated well, and I was very impressed with the seamless overmap transitions, the level of detail in the procedural generation of the village, city, and dungeon, the minutiae of the roads and paths, and so on - it was all so good I had to go back and make sure it was not simply hand-crafted. I enjoyed how defeated enemies will convey a sense of being knocked back with an angled blood splotch on the ground. The screen shakes when hits are exchanged, and at times the environment takes damage from the ferocity of their blows (such as carpets getting messed up beneath combatants' feet). The aesthetics rating also takes the functionality of communicating gameplay concepts in mind. I mentioned issues "feeling" the balance, as the health bars and numbers on the cards were the players' main feedback as to how combat went or would go, and they performed a serviceable job. The special effects of things like wizard spells and projectiles were well-executed, but not particularly over-the-top. There's no sound or music, but that's not required or expected. If there's any particular quibble I have about the aesthetics, it's that it's a little too minimalist and streamlined. Roguelike fans are often not intimidated by statistics, but rather quite interested in seeing more of them in order to understand the game systems. Though overwhelmingly elegant, the casual-friendly approach to Kingdom Cards' UI obscures some vital details from a player base with a strong tendency to be hungry for more information. Fun (4/5): Without a doubt, I would have missed out if I did not play this game. The excellent aesthetics support a suitably involving core combat mechanic. The brilliance of Kingdom Cards' card-draw mechanic is that it prevents the player from getting stuck in a rut of an existing playstyle because the player cannot accurately predict just what moves are going to be available for them until they are drawn. This is enriched by how the cards have health bars this time around, necessitating healing them, reserving them for later, or sacrificing them, and the random draw may not always give you a choice. The overall result forces the player to think on their feet, there's no autopilot in Kingdom Cards, and I truly respect an involving game. That said, the v1.0 I played had some minor details undermining the finer details of the mechanics. The overall "floatiness" I mentioned earlier is the foremost of them. Look at it this way: with Slay The Spire, everything is on the table before I play the next card, I know exactly what's going to happen so I can plan more accurately. Adding a bit of randomness to that can, in some circumstances, make things a bit more exciting but here it complicates things unnecessarily because the randomness of the card draw gets compounded with the minor randomness of damage resolution. It's unclear how much health the enemies have without a lot of play experience, and even then it's sometimes hard to determine with a mere health bar when the enemy's health is halfway depleted or *almost* halfway completed. The simplicity of the cards is also a little self-limiting in just what I could do with them, and my tactics were often flummoxed by having an active fatigue counter or too little time units left to leverage my unit, as though two counterbalances to abilities were in conflict. If these issues were ironed out, the card draw twist to the roguelike formula could prove to be stronger than it felt here. Innovation (4/5): Innovation is an inherently difficult thing to gauge when it comes to any field, including games. I am skewing above average in the case of Kingdom Cards because (obviously) the card draw mechanic is definitely bringing something fundamentally new (and core to the experience) of a roguelike game. But, to garner the quite-rare 5/5 in innovation, I think we would probably need something stronger than a collectible card mechanic implemented into the core roguelike game loop as a substitute for units. There is even a Wikipedia entry for "Roguelike deck-building games" which no doubt annoys the roguelike fundamentalists. Kingdom Cards is definitely more like Rogue than the average example of what Wikipedia contributors think a roguelike deck-builder is, but the idea is more novel than new at this point, but still more innovative than the average 7DRL jam entry. Scope (4/5): The 7DRL judges' definition of a "4/5" in scope is, "beyond what you think could be done in seven days, with extensive features or very heavy on content." Kingdom Cards is most certainly that. In fact, I am pretty sure I have seen some preliminary work on Kingdom Cards' discussed on roguelikedev that is well outside the 7-day window, but I believe that this is permitted as an offshoot of an existing project in much the same way Polybot-7 was created using much of Cogmind's resources. In any case, when judging the scope of completion of Kingdom Cards we certainly have an above-average level of content and refinement here. If it were a bit deeper and had more longevity to it, I would consider it an outlier for an even higher score. Roguelikeness (3/5): One of the least fair parts about being a 7DRL jam judge is to judge a game based on the feature set of Rogue and its derivatives. It's like judging the Mona Lisa for not being enough like The Scream: its lacking resemblance does not make the Mona Lisa any less a masterpiece, but it does impair its score for a 7-Day The Scream painting event. Kingdom Cards is turn-based, tile-based, has (incredibly well done) procedural maps, bumping to attack, random enemy placement, and (in lieu of any item other than health potions) random unit location. In terms of the average entry of this jam, Kingdom Cards' has about as much in common with Rogue as they do. However, the card draw mechanic detracts from its roguelikeness somewhat, and I suppose it goes to show that if one were to get both a high innovation and roguelikeness score it would be necessary to innovate in a very specific vein of Rogue enhancement. However, there are a number of additional major Rogue game mechanics omitted such as character progression, hunger clocks, inventory management, and so on. Just a few more of those features would have been enough for me to say it was above-average in Rogue likeness. Overall: Kingdom Cards is pretty great. You're quite good. I have seen worse games made professionally that performed well among their audience. I'd score it higher but, as you might have gathered, 5/5's are quite rare in the 7DRL event.
This submission demonstrates the value of pre-made resources and engine which let you focus on experimental features while still being able to make a beatiful, polished game during these 7 days. Card mechanics are interesting, but I think that the deck-building aspect of the game is minimal. I kept accepting all the characters I met without dilemmas and that seemed to work, because even a weak card was like additional HP taken from enemy (I bet the game during first play). Would be great if I had to use my brain not only for planning combat with my sequence of cards, but also for creating “my” deck and experimenting with tactics.
Food of the Gods
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
3
4
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
4
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
This game has excellent aesthetics and solid mechanics. The execution on display is extremely impressive for a 7DRL. While it doesn't set out to blaze new trails in the definitions of roguelikeness, there are a huge variety of visually distinct and interesting maps types, a wide variety of enemies, and and impressive atmosphere. The mechanics are relatively simple and constrained, with bump combat and a very limited set of skills. That doesn't mean it's easy, though - I've sunk three hours into it and did not get to completion. It's not particularly innovative or complex, but it is solid, and impressive as a submission. Special note that this has hands-down the best map generation of any of the 7DRL submissions I've yet played.
I really enjoyed the focus on eating everything in sight and figuring out which enemies gave what abilities; although I really struggled to stay alive before a few levels. Good work on the line-of-sight with curtains and foliage.
A solid roguelike. The way you structured it kept me coming back for more after each death - it's truly worthy of the "learn, die, repeat" tagline. One minor downside was that after multiple playthroughs, levels seemingly started to repeat (I'm not referring just to the Butcher level, but the others as well), although not to a point where I'd memoize them or get bored.
slime99
Completeness
4
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
3
Fun
4
4
3
Innovation
4
4
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
I have a few complaints but only because I really love this entry. 1. I wish there was a combat log, it's sometimes hard to tell what happened. 2. I'm pretty sure the enemies get a free hit on you after you descend. This game is very cool. I like that there is a hard "die" condition, and you just plain need to manage that. Definitely more room to explore some more interesting techs, maybe conversions that trade an attack for defense for example. Great entry.
Interesting small game, somewhere between roguelike and broughlike. It takes classic roguelikes elements and puts little puzzle-ness at the top. Didn't encounter bugs, yet game could use more balance. slime99 looks really nice, in classic style, and everything is clear and readable. Flashy colors fit the setting, but it's a bit eye-tiring. I really like the main game mechanics - player needs to _collect_ attack moves and defense layers, as well as utilities. I'm a bit torn about the "fun" score, but finally I decided to give higher mark. But, if you read this, gridbugs - game would use more balance. The puzzle mechanics is not as meaningful as could be due to amount of enemies and (looks like that) complete randomness of loot. I had some series of attack findings only, and I had to save myself by blinking away too often. ...On the other hand, isn't that base premise of roguelike? You are thrown into the dungeon and use what you find in any way to survive... The dungeons itself are like the whole game - simple, rather traditional, but with unique twist; it feels almost organic. To sum things up - good game that could be even better.
This is a really unique and creative roguelike that has a combat system quite unlike anything i’ve seen recently. It’s essentially a deck builder where your attacks, defends and special moves are cards you can play, discard or shuffle, which are replenished or modified with pickup. It’s an initially perplexing play but once it clicks it becomes incredibly intuitive. It becomes an interesting mix of strategy and spatial reasoning, reminding me a little of Into The Breach in how every single move and choice matters more and more as you ascend the levels. The music and visuals are lovely too - I appreciated mouse support for targeting my warps and mouse over for identifying foes, and I liked the colour pallet too - very evocative of the cyberpunk slime world setting. The information is presented clearly too - after a short time playing, I knew precisely the stakes of any given situation and what my choices were. Really excellent - I think it’d work well scaled up into a full game too as the complexity already here is really compulsive.
Book Hunter
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
3
4
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
4
Book Hunter is a turn-based arcade-like stealth roguelike. The game is complete and no bugs were encountered during gameplay. The controls are very simple, but the mechanics are very opaque (even the tooltips for Sanity and Resolve feel lacking). The tiles are well-done and fitting, the L-space view is nice, and good visual clues are given about the enemies and their intents. In its current form, the game plays a little more like a turn-based arcade game than a traditional roguelike.
Book Hunter is a very enjoyable game, great job on producing it in a mere week! I think the mechanics of sanity/resolve/progress are non-intuitive and should have been explained in-game, but don't consider it a big enough issue not to rate this 4 for completeness. I especially enjoyed the L-space: the concept, sound effects, and balance behind it are top-notch. It is the reason I gave 4 for innovation. The game also played roguelike enough to me to earn 4 in roguelikeness, even though you call it more of a roguelite. My only complaint, and the reason I give 3 for fun, is that the player has to reenter the same scene many times (sometimes even on Easy) to achieve favorable positioning of the librarians. This repetitive back-and-forth is a bit underwhelming :(
I was so endlessly impressed by this game. I still have the music playing as i write this as I find it so pleseant. This is an excellent game. It has a brilliant concept which is executed perfectly with just the right level of depth for a coffee break roguelike. I appreciated the difficulty levels, which seemed perfectly tuned for one's own desire for challenge. And the music, art and systems were just so expertly implemented. I honestly can't think of many ways in which this could be improved. There was a wonderfully tactile nature to the verbs of play, and the changes in sound and graphics made for a game that felt strangely immersive. The RNG also seemed to provide pretty excellent levels generation - not to mention the book titles themselves. The basic gameplay loop of managing 3 different stats took a moment to click, but once it had I found myself really enjoying the puzzles that emerged from it. I can imagine myself returning to play this again - very nicely done indeed.
Cardinal Gun Prospector
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
4
3
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Cardinal Gun Prospector first "clicked" for me the moment I sidled into a second weapon and it attached itself. So I can have 4 weapons, one pointing in each cardinal direction? Now we are getting somewhere. The game has a terrific aesthetic, beyond just the lovely 8-bit visuals and sound -- it really feels intentional in a way you rarely see. There's an elegance to the game play, which is challenging but fair; in the tradition of the best roguelikes, when you die, it's usually because of your own carelessness. It has a really pleasing learning curve as well, as you don't really know what's going on at first, but the game starts to reveal itself to you, and you learn the mechanics, the enemy abilities and patterns, and the capabilities of the weapons. Cardinal Gun Prospector is something like an ideal 7DRL game, to my mind. It takes a simple , elegant concept and executes it well, with suitable polish. It feels decidedly roguelike, but it pushes the genre in new directions. And it's really rather fun. My only nits would be that it would be nice if there were some sort of level goal. (If there is one, I never achieved it.) And as some commenters mentioned, there's not much to orient you, and you're mostly left to explore blindly. The hints like "shot gun nearby x:7 y:-3" are meant to ameliorate that somewhat, but it feels half-finished, and like there could be a more elegant solution there. Also not sure the gold and light are needed, as they didn't add anything useful or fun as far as I could tell, but maybe I'm missing something there. All in all, a highly recommended entry. I'm certainly going to spend some time perusing the creators extensive back-catalog, too.
Completeness (4): I personally don't quite dig the games without a goal (achieving a high score doesn't count), and to me all the wandering felt a bit pointless. However, the game feels polished and feature-complete, so I assume that you achieved exactly what you set out to do. I'd rate this 3.5, but since it has to be an integer, rounding this up and will round down Aesthetics. Aesthetics (3): There isn't much to pick on here: the controls are super simple as they should be, and the game has the intended old-school look. I think sprites could look a bit better though, and with Completeness rounded up, I'll round this down to 3. Fun (3): The game presents an interesting puzzle-ish challenge, and I enjoyed playing it for a bit. If it had levels, or other goals, I'd likely try to finish it. Innovation (3): On one hand, this is an unusual roguelike. On another, it borrows from other genres like platformers in a way that doesn't make the game feel truly unique. Roguelikeness (3): I think the game plays a bit more like a puzzle than a roguelike, even though it checks the marks of turn-based, grid-based, etc.
Descendants of the Hellbeast
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
4
4
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
3
3
Congrats on the well-rounded, polished, complete game! It's beautiful, has great controls, and it's one of the most fun games I've played so far this year. I particularly liked the roguelike-ish prefixes on the items, that was a nice touch. I also really liked the limited screen size and the darkness, it really added to the tension. Nicely done!
Not very roguelite'ish, but still the random level generation and power modules give a nice impression of variety. The learning curve is well adjusted. I had alot of good fun with it and have to admit I sank a bit into it. Also it just looks nice with its dark atmosphere lighted by bursting bullets.
Dreams of Dragon's Fire
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
4
4
Innovation
4
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
Burninating all the peasants~ and the thatch roof cottages!!!!
Completeness 3 This game looks and plays beautifully. "Balance" is a part of the rating for this category and that is the only factor keeping it from a higher score. Despite having a TON of fun with it (see that section below), it was very much too easy. Food was extremely plentiful and I found myself retreating and holding the spacebar down to refill my fire any time i was remotely worried Aesthetics 4 Really great looking game. I believe I've seen these sprites as part of the standard set of oryx tiles, but they still certainly work well together. The controls work just fine and I never noticed any problem with them. Enemies could attack me on the diagonal while i could not attack them (in melee), which is always frustrating but I figure I'm a huge dragon so I didn't mind. Fun 4 Entirely too easy of a game. That being said, oh man it was fun to go around and nuke these little villages. The fire spreading mechanic was awesome and fun to watch and create. Retreating from a town and then attacking it from another side at a distance was very satisfying. I'm not sure I'd replay it, necessarily, but I thoroughly enjoyed getting to and murdering the king! Innovative 2 It was beautiful to watch the helpless villages try to defend themselves from my onslaught, but at the end of the day this game was indeed just a mix of melee and ranged attacks with a spread of ~5 different enemy power levels. They all worked great together, but didn't necessarily bring anything new to the table Scope 3 Pretty standard based on the game description. Again I loved seeing my dragon fire spread around the map, but when considering the pieces that were implemented it all amounts to standard fare. You can kill things, eat things, level up and continue your rampage. Roguelike 4 Definitely fits the bill of a roguelike. Turn based, levelling up, permanent death. Would be cool to see modifiers like items or even more enemy types (ranged enemies, as you describe on your game page).
Emmanuel de Rouge and the Amulet of Quetzalcoatl
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
4
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
A traditional RL experience at core, with a fresh theme and a clever addition. As the player delves the dungeon, they encounter rival adventurers. These rivals aren't much in the way of actual competition, but they add a lot to the atmosphere. The usual RL tactical options are in effect, with the exception of the boss fight, which features a slight twist. The memorable aspect of the game though, is the theme. Basic, but well executed art and music set the mood, which is further built on with genre specific weapons and monsters.
Lots of good things about this game: -Thematic music -Cute art -Alternative ASCII mode -Interesting concepts, like opponents with the same goal, and the final puzzle Some downsides: -The opponents don't seem very smart. Can they ever win if I just hang outside the temple? I feel like I never saw or cared about them after level 2 or so. -The stairs often generated too close to each other, letting me skip some levels almost entirely -I assume numpad allows diagonal movement, but people without a numpad have to resort to clicking with mouse And some glitches: -Sometimes, when I enter a new level, my character starts moving on its own - I never figured out if I was accidentally pressing the touchpad, or there was some input queued, or what. -Perhaps due to the previous issue, sometimes I'd just enter the level and find myself dead immediately. -Are shots supposed to have an echo, or it's a bug that they trigger the sound twice? If it's meant to be an echo, I felt like sometimes it felt off. I gave 3 in completness due to the glitches, and 3 for innovation since there are interesting elements, but mostly the game is rather straightforward. The rest should be self-explanatory :)
Potion Curse
Completeness
4
4
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
4
3
4
Innovation
4
3
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Excellent game. Combining hunger clock and potion id together yields a fun frantic experience. Very well done!
I liked "Potion Curse", it was fun to explore the potion effects. The game was bug-free from what I could tell. Things I liked: -Potion discovery mechanic -Balancing: the potions, hunger clock, and monsters provide for an interesting experience, and it doesn't feel like I am looking for some specific imbalanced item to do well -To expand upon balancing, timing the level-up to heal was a core challenge -Frantic search for a cleanse when I'm dying in 100 turns It's cool that you folks drew the sprites and tiles, although I had a bit of trouble parsing some of them. Probably too used to ASCII chars :) Some critical feedback: -Sometimes the game became unresponsive for a second or two - it would ignore my commands -A bit confusing that you can die, and then your opponent might die of burning, letting you level up, showing that you have full health - although you're dead -The slowing and freezing effects were a bit confusing - I had to play a couple times to realize that opponents had extra turns on me during these effects -I almost never found invincibility useful - its effect is too short to really matter. Perhaps it's useful at the last floor I never reached?
Taking one of the mechanics from Brogue - the throw or drink potions dilemma - might be a risk, but here it’s isolated and amplified to excellent effect. I found this to be a taut and somewhat hilarious game to play as I stumbled my way downwards quaffing like mad... I loved the notion of the PC having an unquenchable thirst and so being constantly forced to drink potions, and this fits perfectly into the gameplay, forcing you to make constant decisions based on risk/reward. I really enjoyed the feeling of making decisions based on the glimpses of what i’d seen before, and I think the ‘clues’ you get into a potion’s nature as you move through play into this dynamic really well. Visually too, I thought the animations were charming and achieved a lot with very little. The simplicity with which stats were displayed and damage communicated clearly and helpfully. The lack of sound might have been a strike, except the Brogue-like nature of this means it’s excused from such parameters. I found this immersive, intelligent and rich, and would happily play this for a long time.
Space Marines
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
4
3
3
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Wow, I really enjoyed this one. The core 'overwatch' mechanic works well -- it's a nice distillation of an X-Com-like tactics game, stripping away all of the unnecessary bits. Scope is tightly focused, but it's in service of the design rather than a shortcoming. Despite the simple visuals, there is a real sense of atmosphere and danger. The use of the static-filled screen when the squad members died (individually and at 'game over (man)') really contributed to that. I do wish there were some UI quality of life improvements, though -- for example I found myself wishing for a way to group the party to move them all together. (Probably as a "snake-like" linked entity?) Also found the text log at the top left kind of useless, but stylistically it does give the whole thing a bit of a text adventure feel. All in all, this was a very tight, well-designed, and truly fun experience. Highly recommend.
The squad-based tactics and alien-infested spaceship setting make Space Marines a unique roguelike experience. The art and style are effective. The controls are very manageable but switching between squad members did not feel as fluid as you'd like. The game remains a true roguelike while incorporating squad-based mechanics not often seen in the genre. The core "overwatch" mechanic was very effective at its goal of making the squad-based mechanics more user-friendly, but movement still felt tedious. I'd love to see this concept explored more in the genre!
Very nice take on mechanics which I knew previously from Space Hulk board game. The game sticks to its atmosphere and tension, but the effect is a bit weakened by slow pace — moving around with 4 characters on big levels is tiresome. Maybe smaller levels or some kind of automated “follow” mode would help here. The UI impressed me with style and clarity. I think I was close to finishing it (many, many eggs around on last level), but I ran out of ammo which wasn't fun. Maybe there should be no limited ammo in the game (it made the gameplay too much dependent on luck for me).
The Darkness
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Really enjoyed this one. Feels like a great example of what a 7DRL should be -- tighly focused, nicely polished, and exceedingly roguelike but an interesting gameplay twist. I should mention that in my 2 or so hours with the game I was not able to win, so I'm not even sure there is a win condition. But I did thoroughly enjoy it nonetheless. As mentioned, I appreciate how the design here has taken elements of traditional roguelikes, and distilled them to the point where there are no distractions from the central conceit. Light is life, and death lurks in the darkness. So there is no loot other than simple upgrades, and just one type of enemy -- shadows. The aesthetics here are beautiful -- the art has a distinct and polished style and the music/sound are excellent. Really love the flickering light effect; it contributes a lot to the atmosphere. I only wish I had the option to scale things up a bit; I found the minimap especially hard to use. (This may just be because I'm on a 4k monitor, though.) As far as nits, I did encounter a crash at one point, but only the once. And the two upgrades per dungeon level limit is a bit un-fun. I get how this might help the balance, but it takes a bit away from the sense of discovery and value of exploration once you've hit your limit. Very nice work! Definitely recommend that all 7DRLers give this one a spin.
I found this to be an excellent game! I was unable to beat it (I almost got to floor 4 a couple times), but I felt that was due to my poor play and not poor balance. It feels complete, and the lighting is very well done. Aesthetically, the only thing I would have liked to see is some horror elements; the gameplay would be well suited to some creepyness. The game is quite fun, though there is some tedium trying to find the last golden pot once a level is clear, especially if it's tucked in a corner. I really liked the idea of enemies being stronger in the dark and the player being a light-source, but only if carrying the torch. The player has to choose whether to fight a weaker enemy with a torch or a stronger enemy with the sword. Great Job!!
The Legend of U-101
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
4
Innovation
4
Scope
4
Roguelikeness
3
This is an incredible amount of work for 4 days. The scope is way what I imagined could be accomplished in a week, although there are some bugs and missing features (at least the empty pages for all the submarine systems), which reduced my completeness score to 3. The visuals and sounds are great. Watching the sonar pulse alone gives me chills. Controls-wise the game is tough to play, especially the submarine - perhaps I played it wrong, but I wanted to alternate between periscope / targeting / other systems pretty often, and constantly pausing and clicking between them wasn't as enjoyable. Hence the 3 in aesthetics. I was divided on the scores for Innovation and Roguelikeness. The game resembles certain games of the past, but at the same time plays in a unique way I hadn't experienced before. It also doesn't feel like a normal roguelike to me, but should have undeniable appeal to roguelike players willing to invest the time. I ended up giving 4 in one category and 3 in another. Overall, this is a bit of a niche game, but I'm certain would find its player base if you invest a bit more time into it. I'm excited to see the ending - never got that far during the rating phase.
Wind Vane Wanderer
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
4
4
4
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
4
Inventive and elegant. Pixel art is simple and understated, without being minimalist. A lot gets done with a deceptively limited number of sprites. The palette meets the gameplay requirement of distinctive colors while still being attractive and coherent. The gameplay is not immediately obvious, but doesn't take more than a few play throughs to be mostly understood. The difficulty curve and overall length are basically perfect for 7DRL. Overall excellent execution.
Wind Vane Wanderer is a lovely puzzle 7DRL, rock-solid and well-scoped, featuring a vision of a desert merchant society as a theme. Completeness 4/5: An excellent UI, intuitive gameplay, and would seem to be rock solid. The compass UI element on the left does not seem to do anything and the victory screen simply says "The End" instead of "Game Over," but this is otherwise a very complete (if feature lean) game. Aesthetics 4/5: Though the actors feature only one recolored sprite, they do animate, and the graphics of all the sprites lend well to the presentation. The inclusion of sound effects and suitable music work to bring together the illusion of wandering these windy desert marketplaces. The most impressive thing is that the UI is able to innately communicate the details of moderately complicated gameplay mechanics. I very much wanted to give a 5/5 here, though the merchant stalls do have a minor flaw in that you cannot see what they are selling if there is another stall in front of them. Fun 4/5: A well-balanced mixture of begging, stealing, moving and buying gives the player plenty to think about while granting them considerable agency. While the experience is short and the game fairly easy, the intuitive UI helps to communicate the hustle and bustle of these desert marketplaces and the elaborate social dance involved, resulting in a solid (if somewhat simple) gameplay experience. Innovation 4/5: I was immediately impressed at how this game successfully turned the usual violence inherent to roguelike conflict resolution into more of a social and economic game. I was also impressed with the choices made to communicate various game elements to the player and the novel desert merchant setting. I have no doubt that it was a better than average entry on the innovation front, though I would not say that it did enough new things to garner a higher score. Scope 3/5: Though accomplishing what was set out to do inside the 7-day deadline with aplomb, the scope was not particularly ambitious. Four identical maps except for increasing size and adding another kind of merchant, and then the game ends. Roguelikeness 3/5: The gameplay is grid-based and turn-based, the marketplace map is procedurally generated, and there is a hunger clock (and a thirst clock as well). However, a number of staple roguelike gameplay pillars are discarded, and it ends up feeling more like a puzzle game than Rogue. The overall roguelikeness is fairly average for this jam. Overall, Wind Vane Wanderer is a very solid entry that reflects your growing skills as a crafter of quality game experiences. I would be surprised if this was not one of the better scoring games in this year's jam.
I tremendously enjoyed this game. The way you managed to describe game rules and mechanics visually, without needing any text at all, is fantastic! Adding a new type (color) of wanderers on each new map was a nice way of increasing difficulty as well. Wind Vane Wanderer was definitely one of my favorite entries from this jam. Some notes: > I don't know how this discussion is going to end, but want to let you know that more than one person wanted to give you 5/5 for aesthetics here. > While the game certainly feels original, I didn't think that it had enough novel mechanics to qualify for a 4 in innovation > The scope feels just right, and our guidelines say it's 3 for what feels right for a 7DRL. > I did not find begging useful at all
A Streetcar Rogue Designer
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
4
3
Innovation
3
4
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
There was something compelling about Streetcar Rogue Designer that made my doomed attempts to pick up my girlfriend all the more entertaining despite the suicidal pedestrians, homicidal cops, and a car trip that seemed so prone to interruption that it was hardly faster than walking. But walking alone won't get you to the girlfriend in time (believe me, I tried) and so our wild roguelike car trip begins. Completeness (4/5): Playing the V.02 released before the deadline, I find this to be a reasonably complete game. Sure, I have to start it over by re-launching the game when the run fails, and I was unable to get far enough to verify the girlfriend is actually there to pick up, but what I have seen is a pretty solid effort for a 7-day project. It's free of crashes (car crashes excepting) and sporting a remarkable amount of polish. Perfect scores are rare in the 7DRL Jam, and here I can cite a few balance issues and missing features. Given how it was usually a game-ender, I would have liked some kind of way to determine how close I was to becoming wanted by the cops. Aesthetics (3/5): Sporting a traditional ASCII look, much of a roguelike games' aesthetic appeal comes from sheer user functionality, and along those lines I found this game to be easy to pick up thanks in part to the integrated help and tip system. However, some of the part icons were a bit confusing, such as differentiating a door (double-pipe symbol) with a heavy structure (equal sign) and there was not enough contrast to clearly notice brighter bluish elements such as a cooler or telephone booth against the light grey background of the road (which is extra problematic because the telephone booths are something the car can crash into). Fun (4/5): This game is compelling in the way good roguelike games should be! Something about the uncertain path and the distribution of parts and obstacles you'll face leads to an urge to take to the road one more time. Sure, the pedestrians' tendency to cross in front of you is a little frustrating, as is the cops' lack of patience, and the girlfriends' scorn is a hunger clock with no solution, only delays (as in real life). But all that is par for the course for a roguelike experience. Innovation (3/5): Roguelikes that include working cars are relatively few and far between, but the ones I played (mainly Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead) have a very similar implementation. The setting is certainly novel: no mere dungeon but rather a wandering road through a maddening world of death prone pedestrians and raining car parts. A fairly one-trick pony in that it was focused entirely on this car trip, but it was still reasonably innovative where it matters. Scope (3/5): A very solid showing for 7 days of effort, it stuck to one mechanic (the building of the car) and did it well. The level of polish is considerable but that's really more under the category of completeness. I would say that the general dearth of content (just a few parts, terrains, and NPCs) sets the scope score at about an average for this jam. Roguelikeness (4/5): I don't really like scoring inside the realm of fundamentalist definition, but there's a very fine line between that and defining something's roguelikeness. This game sports a fairly average number of similar features for this jam: tile-based, turn-based, procedural, has an inventory, hunger clock of sorts, and even an ASCII presentation for you purists out there. Of course, a purist would also say that a Roguelike ought to play more like Rogue, and the central focus of the game, the car customization grid, is an entirely different form of progression and alien game mechanic to the genre. However, based on the fact that it feels fun in the way good roguelike games do, I've decided to skew the roguelikeness score to a 4/5. Overall, I think A Streetcar Rogue Designer turned out rather well, I certainly had more fun with it than most of the entries I judged, great job!
This game is an attempt to introduce grid and turn-based gameplay to race car simulator genre. While the idea is crazy, I really like how it was approached and explained for the player. Physics are reliable, learning curve is accurate and sense of speed gives some dose of adrenaline. I liked how open and easy to pick up the car design system is.
Barn Battles - Strategy Tactics Roguelite
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
I have mixed feelings after playing this game. Initially I was absolutely wowed with the music and graphics - the aesthetics are through the roof, and the game is a sight to behold. One downside for me during playing were the controls. On the first sight, it seems like mouse should be enough, but some things are impossible, or I haven't figured out a way to accomplish, with mouse alone. For example, if I have my unit selected, and then want to check stats on one of the opponents, it seems like I have to use Tab to cancel selection and then click an enemy. I kept right-clicking, Escaping, and what not for a while before I got used to this. Another downside was the enemy AI. It keeps making incomprehensible moves (and I'm not referring to the pieces that have special attack patterns; I'm referring to pigs standing next to me and deciding to skip the attack in favor of that duck at the end of the board making a useless move), and while it certainly makes the game easier, it still feels... wrong. So my overall judgement is that game needs some polish to match the aesthetics level it provides to the player. This is reflected in my rating of 3 for fun. The score of 3 for innovation is due to me having seen similar concepts before (even in this jam), although the barn twist on chess pieces is pretty novel and cool.
Excellent game with an impressive amount of polish. I loved how pick up and play this game was, with the mechanics very obvious from the start but with lots of emergence in the possibility space. It only took me a couple of moments to work it out, and the subsequent game of strategy drew me in. There's shades of Into The Breach here, and working out the trade-offs of absorbing damage and acquiring extra units was really distinct but very satisfying. The clear communication of every units capability was key to this. My only issue was the rootin', tootin' soundtrack which drove me up the wall! But aside from that, an excellent game that provided instant fun.
CATSTLE
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
The controls work really well for this 3d perspective, fast and fun.
Charming and fully realized dungeon crawler that mostly sticks to the tried and true. The one deviation on offer is a 1D movement interface that trades uncrossable wall tiles for uncrossable lava tiles, allowing the camera to swing around and maintain a ground level side view. The snaps, squashes, bumps, and bounces in animation and control are a feast of gamefeel. However, there are very few tactical options available to influence combat. This lack of options results in a trivial early game, and a boss fight that will succeed or not depending mostly on rng providing a friendly level.
Cardlock
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
This game is a neat blend of deck-building games and grid-based tactics games in the vein of Into the Breach. Cardlock is very well-polished, and feels and plays like a complete game. It has a nice art style which is simple but effective, and has an overall cohesive aesthetic. The game is fun to play and leaves the player wanting to try new strategies, tactics, and synergies as they learn more about the gameplay. Cardlock doesn't bring anything fundamentally new to the table, but is an original blend of mechanics and systems pulled from other genres. The squad-based mechanics are not for everyone, and some players may not enjoy managing several characters/decks. I found myself wanting some kind of description for the various enemy types to understand the type of AI and "combat styles" I was up against. I also think some minor UI features could go a long way towards the player having easier access to information about the playfield, and in particular a stronger indication that turns switched between the player and enemy was desired. Overall this game has a lot of potential.
Really polished look and fun to play! Controls are intuitive and the game feels complete for a 7 day project. Maybe you could add an 'undo' button for movement as too many times I found myself moving the ranged character to a tile where they were out of range for attacking enemies. Thank you for creating this.
Devil Disco
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
4
3
Innovation
4
2
Scope
4
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Played much longer than I expected! Enjoyed working out what the moves do. Simple concept executed really well. I would play this on my phone regularly for scores!
The game works fine, doesn't crash, but quite shallow and have some visual glitches. Target marks can stuck and sometimes main character and devils are starting to move out of sync. This is a big NO NO in a disco! :) While it's not too hard to figure out the meaning of special abilities, it woldn't hurt to have a few words of a description for each. It's quite fun to win a few levels, but then you realize that the game don't really keep promise of getting more difficuly. It takes longer to win the level, but I haven't noticed any changes to the difficulty. Aside from the theme, which I think is not fully explored, and doesn't affect the gameplay, the game doesn't offer anything new. The topic of positional puzzlish games was quite well explored in the past. It is on a weaker side, but more or less ok for a 7drl scope-wise. Consequences of your actions have quite some weight in this game, but it cannot be qualified as a true roguelike.
Intergalactic Juice Syndicate
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Intergalactic Juice Syndicate introduces a card-based combat system into the traditional roguelike template. Players build a deck and play cards each turn in combat which either deal damage or raise their defenses for the turn. While outside of combat, the player has the freedom to explore the dungeon, kite enemies, find loot, purchase goods from shops, etc. The card drawing system was a bit awkward and often required running away to replenish your hand, this is an area that could be improved. The game felt complete, with a scaling dungeon difficulty and even a final boss encounter and a true ending. No bugs were encountered during my games. The game's art looked good, fit the theme, and has a uniform style. The UI was nice -- in particular I liked the summary of everything in your vision that is available at the bottom of the window -- but some of the mouse controls for using cards during combat felt a little clunky. Also I did not find a way to see cards in your deck, draw pile, and discard piles. Despite the card-based combat, I actually think this game leans slightly into the description of traditional roguelike due to the grid-based, turn-based movement, dungeon exploration, "hack and slash" combat (with cards involved), and character progression.
The game runs without any crashes, no bugs encountered and it is fairly polished. UI could be a little more convenient and movement a little faster, probably with automove when there are no enemies in sight. The game could end turn on which you kill an enemy automatically when there are no other enemies around. It is quite surprising how many interesting combinations one can get with relatively small number of cards! It is definitely fun to try to build some tricky decks and see how it workout against different enemies. It is definitely not the first deck building roguelike around, but this one have something unique about it. As I mentioned there are quite a lot of interesting situations and both your current deck and your position on the map are important. It is one a more relaxed end of the definition, but I think it is definitely a roguelike.
Plunderball
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
4
3
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
2
This is really cool and a good result of a collaborative effort. The roguelike (or roguelite) elements are all there: procgen areas, tactical play thwarted by randomness, exploration... all wrapped up in a decent pinball sim. I had some problems with it on Linux in Firefox but it worked a charm on Chrome.
I don't see relevant roguelike elements in this game, apart from procedural generation of “tables”. While it's a nice twist to pinball game (as well as active captains and parrots), it's still not much more than a pinball. Still, the game is polished and graphics and music style is nicely playing with pirate setting.
Pyro Pest Control
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
4
Innovation
3
4
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
This is a cool concept, with a nice aesthetic, but ultimately it didn't totally come together for me. The description says the turns are executed simultaneously, but somehow the enemies always seem to know where I am headed. Also, the game is all about ranged combat, but the enemies close so quickly the 'anticipate where the enemy is headed' aspect is negated -- he's just stuck to you, attacking. It also seemed like the enemy got a free move before you cast a spell; either I'm not getting the mechanic or it's a bug. (Probably the former!) I do really like the concept and feel like with another week of tuning and balancing this could be really nice. Will keep an eye on it!
Thank you so much for putting together an entry for the 7DRL jam. Great work! I really had a good time with this, and it was interesting to go through. I didn't want to, but I felt I had to knock one point off the "Aesthetics" category just due to how tiny the tiles were. But apart from that I had a great time. I really urge you to try and take some time to put into this now that the jam is over. Maybe some background music and/or some sound effects.
Runelite
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
4
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Thanks a lot for participating in the 7DRL, and getting an entry submitted. I enjoyed this one quite a bit - once I figured out how to not kill myself with fire spells. The rune / spell system is a neat idea, and it doesn't take long to figure out the rune combinations that work for your style. Great sprites - I urge you to continue building on this one if you have some further ideas you want to pursue here. Thanks again, and hope you had a great time putting this together!
A lot of great stuff about this game, and a lot of room for improvement. Will try to document my ratings: Completeness (3): My main complaint is that inventive spellcrafting isn't needed to win the game. There aren't many (any?) situations when I really need to think what to use; I think I won without using poison and force. If I understood correctly, fire and ice are identical as well. You could add resistances to enemies, more puzzle elements like doors that open when you use the correct rune, and probably lots of other stuff - the base concept is great and it should be easy to extend it! In addition, I think it would help to know what level the player is on - I lost count and took a while to realize that I was on the last level, and should use that portal in my inventory to win :) It's not clear what attributes each item has, beyond simple max HP increase. Aesthetics (4): I liked the art, especially the visuals of spellcasting and all the different enemies. I did not enjoy the waiting time after every action, although I understand the technical limitations behind it. Fun (3): The game was still enjoyable enough to finish, but I think it can be much more fun with the abovementioned additions, and perhaps a final boss? Right now it doesn't pose much challenge after the player learns the spells. Innovation (3): This seems to resemble Magicka quite a lot conceptually, but I can't bring myself to give it a 2.
Stickers & Dragons
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
4
2
Innovation
4
3
Scope
4
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
Great art style, love the way the stickers are 3d. Enjoyed working out what moves were available to each enemy and what order to defeat them. This is a game that plays well on a cold night with a hot cup of tea, it’s got nice atmosphere,
Stickers & Dungeons is a deck-building roguelike where you face a series of turn-based encounters while drafting cards and building your deck. One thing that makes this game very different from most card games is that you don't discard your hand and you only draw one card per turn, which shifts the strategy quite a bit from a typical deck-builder, but also increases the variance of each encounter as the first hand you draw has more impact than anything else. Cards also have durability, which is a neat mechanic but it lead to me losing all of my games by running out of cards to play rather than being defeated by the enemy (also you don't seem to shuffle your deck during encounters so if you play all your cards then you have to flee). The art style, execution, general UI, and animations were all stellar; although I felt I couldn't give a max Aesthetics score due to the game missing some UI elements essential to card games, such as being able to see your draw pile during encounters. Another complaint is that the animations made certain encounters feel very slow, especially if you are just trying to pass turns to draw an attack card so you can finish the battle. Due to the slow combat pacing and lack of recourse for simply running out of playable cards mid-game, I couldn't recommend this to others in its current form; but the polished art style and base gameplay have a lot of potential to become a great game (perhaps even a commercially successful one). The game is not a traditional roguelike, but is a welcomed addition to the ever-growing-in-popularity genre of deck-building roguelikes.
A Delver and Her Dog - A 7DRL
Completeness
3
4
3
Aesthetics
4
4
3
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
3
3
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
This is a very nicely-done game, with tons of charm and aesthetic polish. It's also got a nice, innovative concept -- the main character can't engage in combat directly, she is dependent on her dog to protect her, and participates by giving encouragement of various forms (which are like spells, and use SPs), and by occasionally flinging a rock or a shock mushroom (? don't recall if that's what the item was called.) For the most part it works well, though once I discovered the ability to switch control and take over the dog directly, gameplay felt quite a bit more traditional. The music, freebies taken from opengameart.org, was really great too, and rounded out the overall package. Just a couple of nits with the game.... One, the controls felt quite sluggish, making movement around the map kind of laborious. Second, as currently constituted (and I should note that I played the 1.1 bugfix version), it's far too easy. There was just no challenge at all, and I cruised to a win without having to use any items at all after the first level or so. I also think the return to the surface once you've found the prize ore is unnecessary and anti-climactic. I was hoping there might be some tough monsters that stepped in to try to stop me from escaping, but it was just the same old toothless geezers. That's really mostly a balancing issue, and I totally understand how balancing falls by the wayside under a time constraint like this, so I won't judge it too harshly for that. Oh, one more postive -- the minimap ("M") works really well. It's an element that so many games get wrong, but in this case, especially since the main view is rather zoomed in, the minimap is very useful and nicely rendered for readability. Nice work, excited to see this continue developing!
I really liked the twist on the fighting/exploring gameplay loop of having two swappable characters with separate responsibilities.
A Delver and her Dog is a great game, although it comes with its own pack of frustrations :) Most of the scores for me were somewhere between 3 and 4, so I ended up rounding some up and some down: Completeness (3): there are some small issues here and there, plus the fact that there was a bugfix (although minor, judging by the devlog), which account for this. The issues I noticed with 1.1 were: -Sometimes I can still move into enemies. Happened to the girl when the dog was out cold and we were in a closed space with two enemies beside. -When I was coming back up, nothing could really hurt me (was about level 9 on both characters) - feels a bit unbalanced -Enter is supposed to bring up instructions at any point, but doesn't do so in Look mode Aesthetics (3): I liked the art and the look, but waiting for animations, along with non-queued input, was rather tiring Fun (2): The game is certainly fun, but in the current version doesn't seem very challenging, and coupled with the input queueing thing I found it a bit tedious to play. Innovation (3): Nice unusual mechanics, but not quite groundbreaking. Scope (4): Compared to most games I've rated, this one achieved quite a lot, and I want to round this one up to acknowledge it!
Catacombs
Completeness
4
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
A solid roguelike. Play as a skeleton who drinks a potion to regain his humanity and try to maintain it as you battle through a dungeon in search of gold and food. It’s a challenge to see how far you can get before needing to regain your humanity in order to take on tougher enemies. The game doesn't do anything particularly innovative but the sounds and visuals are clean and charming and the simple controls make it easy to jump in for a quick coffee break run or two.
Catacombs is a fun game about a skeleton trying to become human again, descending floor after floor beneath a graveyard in the process. The procedural generation is simple but generally effective, if occasionally repetitive, and there are tactical elements to play (especially in special levels) that are very appreciable. Players who play extensively are likely to hit one or two glitches, but the overall experience is pretty stable, and if you want a light, arcadey roguelike, this is a good choice. Completeness: The game is very polished, but has at least one major glitch. When an enemy knocks you "offscreen," there is a small chance the game will freeze. Aesthetics: Keyboard controls and charming pixel art are all you need. Nice and simple stuff here, working in the game's clear favor. Fun: The game is fun, and the tactical situations are generally fun to play around in, but there seem to be more and more lose/lose situations as the game progresses, and some of the time, it seems like you're pressing your luck with an RNG more than anything (looking at you, bat movement!) Still, what it is is fun! Innovation: This isn't really much new; bringing in a "Souls-esque" progression made sense, but it wasn't clear to me which benefits aside from capacity to have more health really came with being human-form. Scope: On the high end of "expected for a 7DRL". Had it built to an endgame with associated bosses or special enemies instead of being endless, this might have gained a higher score. Roguelikeness: It's not super-classical in style, but this one rates as a roguelike for sure.
Catacombs was very easy to get started on and rather enjoyable to play. It's a bit unsatisfying that there is no ending to it; I prefer speeding towards some goal :) There was a minor bug (getting knocked out of the room) but I don't think it's enough to warrant a Completeness deduction, hence rating of 4. Aesthetics-wise, the game is surprisingly easy to play. I saw your comment regarding not adding the "skip turn" button and agree with both justifications - less controls and more tactical demand this way. Innovation-wise, the mechanics are nothing new, but being reduced down to a skeleton that needs no food was a nice twist, hence 3.
Kingdom of Rogueing
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
4
4
3
Innovation
3
3
2
Scope
3
4
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
Kingdom of Rogueing is an adventure rogue-lite in the recognizable style of Kingdom of Loathing and West of Loathing. The game features free-roaming of areas while engaging in RPG-like turn-based combat encounters, lots of randomized equipment and consumables, and an emphasis on taking advantage of events and interactions generated in each environment to gain every possible advantage as you progress through the levels and attempt to achieve a high score at the game's end. The game is complete and refined, with no bugs encountered during my playtime. The controls are straightforward and intuitive. The style is strong and cohesive, the familiar hand-drawn aesthetic and humorous narrative-driven experience from the classic Kingdom of Loathing browser-based game. There is a lot of fun to be had in finding loot with randomized properties and, in a way, putting together the "puzzle pieces" of equipment, consumables, and buffs that are most suited to taking full advantage of each area. I would not consider Kingdom of Rogueing to be a traditional roguelike, but it features heavy use of procedural generation and fills a unique niche of exploratory adventure roguelike with RPG-style turn-based combat and strong narrative support.
Well. I'm both good and bad for judging this game. Bad because I'm somewhat biased. I love KoL and WoL. Good because I have very good idea where SWOL ends and KoR begins. So, let's go. The game is definitely feature complete and feels very polished. Yes, it uses an existing (tweaked) engine. But it's definitely not against the rules! Combat controls could be better, to be frank. Target selection, especially healing by an ally is confusing. It's hard to estimate DoT damage to an ally. But all this doesn't reduce funniness too much. First runs are disaster. But the more you play, the more meta you learn, the easier the game become and hard mode doesn't look like impossible feat anymore. As for innovations. Different parts of this game were already implemented in other games, but all together they provide quite refreshing expereince. It is hard to estimate amount of work poured into the game based on existing game. But I'm pretty sure that a lot of work was put into KoR. Metaprogression, classes, pets, bodyguards, randomized locations. And on top of that it is quite balanced! Not supereasy, not incredibly hard. As for roguelikeness. It's definitely not a classic roguelike. But amount of customization and choices is definitely enough to call it roguelikelike or roguelite.
A lot of what feels polished and well-executed about this entry seems to come from it building on the West of Loathing RPG, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it *does* feel polished and well-executed. The gameplay is largely very simple, but its decision points come in with character build and combat choices. I appreciate that in combat there's a distinction between using your standard attack, using other actions (which can sometimes be attacks), and using items. The allocation of action points for doing extra things gives the combat more depth than I initially expected. Of course, there are bound to be questions about how roguelike-ish it is. It's certainly not a pure roguelike, playing more like a cross between a point-and-click adventure and a JRPG, but I'd say it falls solidly into roguelite territory, which is completely fine. Kingdom of Rogueing is a good effort overall. I don't know how much the gameplay alone would support lots repeat play (e.g. the five locations seem to be the same every time) but providing unlocks for completing multiple runs is a nice touch to add incentive to revisit. A solidly enjoyable effort, and good work for a single week.
Rogue Sails
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
4
4
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Rogue Sails is ambitious in scope, and emerges mostly successful, though inevitably when you try to tackle this much in just 7 days, there are going to be a few rough edges . The "captain on the high seas" theme is great, and a nice idea for a non-traditional roguelike milieu. There are a number of different systems at play here -- a trading system ala drug wars (or the old Apple ][ game "Taipan"), a naval combat system, a quests system, a skills/leveling system, and on top of all that a traditional dungeon-crawl system as well. The main issue is that all of the systems are quite simple and rather undeveloped, leaving an assemblage that falls a little short of potential. Given that this was all completed in a week, though, that's to be expected. And it's to the creator's credit that the systems do all function and hang together as well as they do. Some nits & notes: - I wish there were some way to tell what a given city/dungeon name is. A quest would tell you to deliver something or recover something from such and such place, but as far as I could tell there was no way to tell which island it was on, except for following the quest guide arrows. If there were some sort of reference map, or indeed labels on the game map, one could possible avoid the need for quest guide arrows at all. Same for when you are in a dungeon -- it would be nice to have a label indicating which one it is, and what you might be looking for if you have a quest there. - The icons on the bottom are in a style that don't match the 8-bit, Atari 800-esque art. It's a small thing but stylistic consistency goes a long way. - I wish there were a clearer indicator of when your ranged weapon was ready to fire again. I eventually noticed the icon refills, but the effect is very subtle. - The running out of gold = death mechanic was rather jarring. I wish I had gotten some warning before it happened. Makes trading a dangerous game! - I never made it to the secret "unchartered waters" area but that seems cool; I wish I had been able to get to it! This is more on me being a bad player, perhaps, but it would be nice if progression was a little faster. 500 gold (for 1 level of advancement) feels like a lot when you are only making 30 or so per quest and 15-20 per trade. There's a lot of promise here, and with a little fleshing out on each of the systems at play, I could see this coming together really nicely. Even as it currently stands, it's a really remarkable achievement to do all this in a week. Nice work!
Completeness 3 I was very impressed with how complete this game was and how much it managed to accomplish. There is no doubt this score would've been 4 stars were it not for losing two games due to crashes. It felt like a living world and I was motivated and excited to move around and be a part of it. Really nice work. Aesthetics 3 The game's pallete and 8 bit nature worked well and looked clean throughout. Every sprite was drawn intentionally and I felt clearly represented the thing it was supposed to. Part of the score for Aesthetics is based on controls and that is the only place where this game lacks. I'm not sure if it was intentional but despite having arrow-based movement, diagonal movement and attacking is both possible and quite annoying. I found being attacked by enemies diagonally early on to be frustrating, and when I found out I could move diagonally myself (by pressing 2 keys at the same time) I found that just as frustrating as I would occasionally miss. Fun 3 I'm very torn on this category. The things you managed to include in your submission were all fantastic. The quests, the upgrades, the mix of land and sea fighting were all well thought out. However, the tuning of the upgrades and money was an absolute miserable grind. 500 gold for a +1 to your attacks was absolutely insane given that the hardest quests were barely worth 50 gold AND certain death for an under-leveled character. I found myself either aimlessly wandering around the map buying items for 9 gold and taking every Green quest I could and even after I purchased my first Swashbucking upgrade I was disappointed that 30 minutes of effort barely made a difference in fighting tough foes. And then the cost went up to 1000?! I will say that the fact I'm frustrated about aspects of the game speaks well about my enjoyment because I would like it to be tuned differently so I could play it again sometime! Innovative 3 Due to the excellent mix of land and sea combat, I feel pretty positively about this game. It doesn't necessarily improve on aspects of either of those mechanics, but seeing a mix of the two in a 7drl submission is quite impressive. Well done! Scope 4 Implementing 2 kinds of combat, an upgrade system, procedural island generation, quests, trading and maybe more is certainly beyond what I would've expected to see in a submission. Even though each feature was mostly basic at it's core, getting them all working together and mostly bug-free from my experience is quite a feat. Roguelike 4 Turn based, permanent death, (frustratingly tuned) upgrades. Your game checked many of the boxes for me and I would consider it a fully featured roguelike.
I thoroughly enjoyed your game. Even though there are only 3 types of quests, and limited number of enemies, Rogue Sails manages to convey a sense of exploration and wonder. I never managed to reach the unknown seas, mostly because the game keeps crashing every 10-20 minutes. Some feedback below: -Would be nice to have a map or some other way to remember what cities and coves are out there. Arrows pointing at quest locations are very helpful, but don't assist in choosing quests optimally. -I assume enemies moving diagonally is a balancing feature, but I've played several games that only allowed diagonal movement on numpad (which I don't have, playing on built-in Mac keybord), and wondered for a while if I'm handicapped. -Looting a chest for the first time brings up the "I have already looted this" message -Chests being selectable with Tab/Q, and even shootable (nothing happens to the chest, but player ends up needing to reload) is a bit uncomfortable -Enemies (at least pirates) don't know how to go around stairs and gold -Sometimes the CPU usage spikes to 100% Notes on scores: -3 for completeness due to endless crashes - I lost patience trying to remember to save the game frequently. That said, the rest of the game is reasonably polished for a 7DRL! -3 for aesthetics due to the animation lag (I know you called it out in the devlog), and just in general I think the sprites are a bit too pixelated :)
Crypt of the Bone King
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
2
Innovation
4
4
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
The game was initially difficult to control and understand, but with some persistence I got to a point where things fell into place. There is a nice amount of depth to the gameplay so it was worth a play. The sliding dungeon row/column mechanic is fun, and I think would be fun to explore in a more traditional roguelike too.
A Roguelike version of Gridcannon where you shuffle lines of tiles and cast spells. The art style is fantastic and looks great. Controls work but are not particularly intuitive and take a lot of getting used to, especially since lots of actions require you to hold down the mouse button for a long time and the action you actually perform is very contextual. Often things do not work and it takes a bit of trial and error to work out why. There are quite a few complex rules in place which make playing the game a bit of a brainteaser, although beyond the challenge of figuring things out the actual gameplay isn't particularly enjoyable. Because spells are tied to location, the key to combat often seems to be to camp in a row/column with a useful spell and wait for the enemies to step into range. The necessity to arrange bone piles around specific directions of the exit is tedious and frustrating, especially since the exit seems to show up at the end of the 'deck' and this limits the ability to slide it to a suitable location. Adding to this, enemy movement doesn't always seem to be predictable so it can be difficult to maneuver them into the place you want them.
Dead Man's Hand
Completeness
4
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
4
3
Innovation
4
4
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Carefully simulated, but understandably small in scope. The way that the card games are integrated into the play mode is thrilling and fits well with the modeless RL style. The town's NPCs bring it to life and offer something outside the card games, but it's deflated somewhat by the lack of an overall goal to work towards.
It's kinda hard to judge this one. I really wanted to like this game as Wild West theme is underexplored theme... Yet nothing really works in that game. Combat is cluncky - but OK, maybe that's not game about combat. Let's try poker, then... I was close to just discard that game because even on the poker table I could only wait, yet... I discovered that player needs to actually *target* a poker table to play. The game itself is quite fun, even if interface needs more work. But the biggest problem is the discoverability of the game mechanics.
Ons@ught
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
Onsl@ught is the unholy product of some maniac who thought to themselves "What if I refigured Smash TV as a roguelike?," and then didn't stop to think if they should, just whether they could. At least I think it's called "Onsl@ught" -- depending on where you look it's refered to variously as "OnS@ught" and "Onsl@ght" as well. It's just that kind of chaotic sloppiness that gives this game a kind of off-kilter charm. It's a cool concept, and mostly works, though the gameplay is a little thin. Maybe my fault, but I never quite figured out what "roll" did, except roll your little "@" character in a fun way, and maybe that's enough. Music *was* annoying, as promised in the liner notes. But the commentary, presumably provided by off-camera announcer types, was fun, as were the weird prizes awarded at the end of the game. Ultimately, this is a worthwhile entry and a fun mash-up, with a wild, anarchic spirt --I encourage everyone to give it a go. (Another one falls!)
Completeness: This feels like a fully-functional game, and it kept me enthralled the entire playthrough. Aesthetics: Your typical roguelike symbol sets, but with some interesting graphical twists, such as buzzsaws and etc (though obviously ASCII-based). On top of that, the main chiptune track was a bit repetitive, but at the same time, it had my head nodding! Decent use of shooting sounds on the player's end as well. Fun: There's a lot of fun to be had with Ons@ught! It actually does feel like you're playing some sort of post-apocalyptic insane-asylum game show, complete with funny commentary on the right-hand side of the main screen. The best way to characterize this title? Turned-Based Bullet Hell! Something else to note is the boss fights reminded me of something out of Final Fight or Streets of Rage, in terms of personality. Innovation + Scope: I'd say as the project stands now, it's fairly innovative (especially for seven days!) but with even more time down the line, this could be a real solid and epic package. Roguelikeness: It's truly, truly hard to say if this is a Roguelike, however it feels random and insane enough to be somewhat close to one! Good show!
Project SUBURBION
Completeness
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
4
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
This is a trading game with a procedurally-generated post-apocalyptic subway system. In the game, you have about $3,500 of debt to pay off in the next 10 hours, and time is a resources that has to be carefully managed. Each node on the subway station has its own pricing structure and stock, and a small amount of personality, which all appears to be more or less generated each game. It does have some roguelikeness in the form of the aforementioned resource management and randomness, to say nothing of lacking hard saves. But it's definitely more on the "lite" side of things. However, it's a very fun little economics game that is definitely worth a few plays. Completeness: This is a very complete and polished piece. The author of this game clearly knew their limits and stuck to them well. There are a couple of concerns about balance with the sheer randomness of generation, but overall this is a well-balanced and bug-free game. Aesthetics: The aesthetics here are not so much pretty as they are functional. They get the job done, for the most part. Sometimes the screen is a bit "busy" with information, and a more specific way to mark points of interest might not have gone amiss. But the game does a pretty good job of conveying the wealth of information available with just mouse controls.. Fun: This game is fun. It takes a little getting used to due to the aforementioned wealth of information, but once you're into it, you'll probably find yourself getting steadily better at the trading game. Innovation; Rogue-lite trading games have been done before, but there's a lot of interesting strategic things that happen here. Not a huge twist, but not nothing out of the ordinary, either. Scope: This is about what one expects from a seven-day rogue-like. Roguelikeness: This is definitely a "rogue-lite" at most, but the heavy emphasis on resource management and planning ahead in combination with the heavy procedural generation help that factor.
Wow - Dope Wars meets Mini Metro! I really enjoyed this - it was a very full experience which communicated information well and set me well at ease to enjoy myself. I think the way in which mouse overs etc communicated was really accomplished and smart, and often something missing in games like this I’ve played in the past. I loved the flavour text and the design, simple but effective. I thought the time limit of 600 minutes was well chosen - it took me quite a few goes to achieve this but it felt like time well spent trying to crack through the systems. This game felt very complete to me, and I would definitely play it more in future. Not the rogue-iest game I've ever played, but felt thematically en point to me!
Seven Samurai RL (7SRL) (7DRL)
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
2
4
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
I was a bit excited seeing seven different sprites for samurais and immediately disappointed because all samurais are exactly the same. Even the one with a bow. Just a little difference in stats, or even better some special abilities could make the game much more fun. The game run fine, have couple minor bugs with scrolling and focusing, but is definitely not quite polished. While black and white aesthetics is nice, and I dig the reference, but from gameplay point of view it would be much easier if different units had a bit of a color tint to easier distinguish bandits. It's worth to win the game once or twice, but the replayability dies off very quickly. This is basically classical turn based tactics game. Nothing new or interesting here. Scope is more or less ok for a 7drl, probably on a weaker side. Can't call it true roguelike though. IMO it's a bit too simple with too few choices. I mean technically there are a lot of choices each round, but they are more or less trivial for the most part.
This is fantastic. Spot on aesthetics (even down to the black-and-white colour palette). Really interesting tactical play in terms of where to place your forces and keep the farmers useful. Great scope. My only wish is if Gorobei could actually fire arrows, to add more options whilst accentuating line of sight in a different way.
Super Normal 7 Day Roguelike
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
Super Normal 7 Day Roguelike is a very simple but very neat little roguelike game. With all enemies and player alike dying to a single hit, and the removal of a free wait option, the game at times takes on the feel of a puzzle game. I really liked the addition of the limited-use "wait" ability in this context. The game feels rather polished but there are balanced issues and minor bugs (most disclosed by the developer in the game's description). In particular, it isn't uncommon for an unwinnable floor to generate, due to the placement of the enemies around the player's starting position. The art, style, animations, sound effects, are all great and really come together to create something larger than the sum of its parts. Really great direction there. The game was fun to play but lacks replayability in its current form. Due to the puzzle elements and lack of inventory and character progression, the game falls just shy of a traditional roguelike in my eyes.
This was an awesome game! One of the most beautiful ascii roguelikes I have ever seen, with its wonderful animations. This would be an amazing mobile game! With some replayability, some more levels, some more interesting enemies, and a few more abilities, this could be a must-download!
Two Button Berserker
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
4
Scope
3
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
There was a real missed opportunity here, an auto-explore option when outside of combat would have been perfect.
Thanks for submitting an entry to the 7DRL competition - hopefully you had a lot of fun putting your entry together. I definitely thought it was an interesting take on a traditional RL dungeon crawler. I notice that you're still updating this entry past the competition, which is most excellent. I can't look it until I finish rating your entry version, but I'm going to try out the newer one - very curious to see what you decided to update! Thanks again for participating!
Two Button Berserker is perhaps one of both the dumbest and cleverest games I've ever played. Dumb in its control scheme, which is intentionally dumbed-down to just two buttons, the use of which depends on context but where one generally equates to aggressive action and one equates to defensive. Clever in the sense that this simple system actually works reasonably well, and in so doing provides a great example of mechanics-as-roleplay in the way that it models the single-mindedness (well, double-mindedness?) of a raging berserker. It also works as something of a deconstruction of the entire Roguelike sub-genre given how simplistically it renders a lot of common elements of games which often trade on their complexity. However, the limitations of the control scheme do quite rapidly become apparent, especially where items are concerned. The option to use these is triggered contextually but the conditions for these are a little opaque. The smoke bombs and teleportation scrolls I beat the game without ever being given the option to use. The game also holds together only because it is very very easy - the game gets repetitive and the later levels I beat largely just by holding down the one button and I suspect that had the game provided a bit more of a challenge the limited control options would have been a lot more of a hindrance. Definitely an impressive experiment and worth a look, but I suspect this will not become the dominant control scheme for all Roguelikes going forward!
War of 1812
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
4
4
Scope
4
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
Really captures that imperfect information feeling. Combined with the delay of commands via runners, the battle really has an interesting feel to it. Make this multiplayer and you've got something. Roguishness? Pretty low to my eyes. But bravo for ambition!
War of 1812 is a large-scale army combat simulator. The game is played on a massive battlefield, with UI and controls that sufficiently aid in viewing and maneuvering around the "world map" and battlefield. The player does not have direct control over the entire army, there are messengers that issue commands to other regiments, and information for distant regiments is not updated until you gather that intel by some means. The game feels complete and all of its base features and mechanics are quite refined, but it is short outside of the initial engagement, and probably does not present most players with much replay opportunity. Despite this, the scale of the armies, the independent simulation of each soldier, the climax of the central battle, are all a pleasure to witness, interact with, and watch unfold. The game falls just short of being a traditional roguelike for me, as you "control" thousands of soldiers, and the game is technically realtime (although it seems that the individual actions are carried out in a turnbased fashion, the player is spared from having to individually move 7000+ soldiers each turn). I did not encounter any real bugs, but the game does at times perform poorly during large battles; I noticed an option to remove the gunshot animations, but they were quite well done and nice to be able to see. In general, the use of ASCII for the map and battles was very well done, intuitive, and in particular I really enjoyed the smoke effect from the gunshots.
Rogue's Delight
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
4
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
3
It isn't obvious from the UI itself that using items will raise your stats. I got fast enough that my swings could send me out-of-bounds, and I somehow made it past floor 10.
Seems reasonably complete and bug-free. Fitting Ascii-style graphics. Controls don't take long to learn, but are a bit fiddly and require moving your hand around the keyboard a fair bit. Unfreezing time also deselects your current item - meaning a frequent annoying re-selection of action. Gameplay is interesting and has some pretty fun moments despite these annoyances. There's a good variety of different enemies and items which all have different behaviours and effects. Different enemies have attack patterns to figure out, which makes combat interesting although as beating enemies doesn't seem to get you anything the optimal strategy is usually to just run past most of the tougher ones. The permanent upgrades that items provide when used is also a novel feature that I haven't seen before which provides an extra layer of strategy to item use decisions and is a good way of encouraging you not to hoard consumables.
A really solid jam entry. I found the real-time aspect of it a bit tedious to adapt to, but fully expect that some people will find this game _extremely_ entertaining. Some score summary below: * There is a little bug with beetles' and perhaps other shots getting stuck on the boundary of the screen and the frame when you move, but nothing serious enough not to give 4 for completeness * The real-time is done smoothly, and all of the time-stopping stuff looks great - 4 for aesthetics! * I personally prefer completely turn-based gameplay, so I didn't have as much fun here as someone else might - only 3 for fun * Innovation-wise, there are a lot of great mechanics (identification of potions/rods, them having an after-use effect, cool swings), but I did not think they were novel enough for a 4 * The gameplay was too different from a roguelike for me to award a 4 in that category
BeamLike
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
4
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
Love the super fast responsive gameplay. It's a bit on the easy side to win, but of course you can play for points after that. Only one annoying bug: whenever I switch focus to another window, the game would not refocus, I had to reload the page.
Beamlike is a simple, competently-executed little game. Its ambition is limited, but feels complete and polished for what it is. I enjoyed my time with it, though there were some things I didn't really understand -- are the colors meaningful in anyway? Why don't multiple kills with one beam increase the combo count? What is the significance of the faded tiles in the background? My high score was 58, and after a couple of runs to figure out the mechanics, I was consistently able to "win" the game, completing level 10. While it is tile-based, turn-based, procedurally-generated (sorta), and has permadeath, it doesn't really *feel* like a RL. That said, it's colorful and aesthetically pleasing, and definitely worth a couple of quick rounds.
BeamLike is an arcadey, puzzley, broughlike-like (?) turn-based game where you outmaneuver enemies, collect stars, and increase your combo multiplier in an attempt to maximize your score. The game mechanics are simple and straightforward, but the game feels complete, polished, bug-free, and reasonably balanced. The aesthetics are cohesive and give the game a unique style that stands out; using a limited color palette to great effect. The game was fun to play and I could see some players spending a lot of time playing and replaying to best their high scores. BeamLike is grid-based, turn-based, procedurally generated, and has permadeath; but is missing a style of combat, character progression, and dungeon exploration that is fundamental to the roguelike genre.
Holy Duck! Hunt For the Golden Loaf
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
3
2
2
Innovation
3
3
2
Scope
3
4
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Funny little game. Waterfowl have been on the rise lately. The cute aesthetic with 80's action movie 'tude is a nice contrast. I found it difficult at times to predict which cells I could move through. The initiative stat is interesting, I found it quite annoying that enemies could cut me off from moving, so I'm sure investing into this stat would have really helped my chances. It's very difficult, I'm unsure if its winnable.
This game is just ducky in terms of writing and aesthetics, but the balance had me crying fowl. Completeness - 3/5: On the upside, lovely tile graphics, UI, working item accumulation, stat upgrades, and even a humorously written intro cutscene with fun character names. On the downside, wonky tile collision (the fence on the outside can be moved right through), unbalanced encounters, and the game lacked the ability to properly restart itself. I could not test the victory condition since the difficulty was so high. Aesthetics - 4/5: The overall presentation seems like you have a talent for visual design. The intro screen and UI elements in-game look good, and the Time Fantasy series was a pretty tileset to employ. Many good details were communicated in the on-screen stats. Though I suspect the water isn't intended to animate quite that way, and there were no extra-special features that would be needed to rate a 5/5. Fun - 2/5: While the roguelike fundamentals were solidly represented here, even adding an upgrade system, I found the balance to be quite unforgiving. Even on "I prefer romances" difficulty, enemies will take zero damage from Duck Norris's feeble pre-upgrade pecks. If the player encounters a snake too early in the run then it's pretty much over because they are impossible to circumvent even after stunning them with a quack. Neither can the player plan for the random placement of the all-too-essential bread crumbs and mumma-duck upgrade elements (chicks, eggs, the mumma ducks themselves). These balance issues frustrate the player (at least this one) and make Holy Duck! hard to recommend despite its pleasing aesthetics and writing. Innovation - 3/5: For the most part, this duck tale doesn't reinvent the wheel, but I did like the inclusion of cutscenes, the unique theme, and writing. How many roguelikes do you know star a flock of action hero parodies? Scope - 4/5: Holy Duck! was boldly executed with extra features (such as cutscenes and detailed UI elements) showing additional attention to detail that goes beyond an average scope. Though important missing features like being able to walk past the outer fence boundaries detract from this accomplishment somewhat. Roguelike - 4/5: Turn-based, grid-based, bumping to attack, item use, procedural map, procedurally placed enemies, even a fairly traditional-feeling food clock mechanic. Yup, it's a roguelike alright, albeit a fairly streamlined example. As proof, it runs into typical roguelike design challenges, such as what happens when characters move in lockstep, pathing issues, and the difficulty in balancing a food clock. Though this did not influence the scoring, something important to bear in mind for Unity Player Windows exports is that the end user's resolution options might not be suitable for the default full screen setting. I have an ultrawide monitor, and this non-standard aspect ratio did some weird things to the UI.
Most adorable game I've ever seen! It was a lot of fun running around with this duck. I don't think I was able to get to the actual gameplay though, because I was always blocked by some invincible enemy. I think the duck can't actually hurt anyone in the beginning, and I can never find 10 ducklings to buy an attack upgrade before I get walled off by an enemy.
KALQL8TR
Completeness
3
4
3
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
3
2
2
Innovation
4
3
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
This is a unique take on the genre, and I really appreciate it. I like the LCD screen aesthetic, and making the whole UI feel like a calculator works well. The gameplay is a bit one-trick, though it certainly is challenging. Since attacks involve numbers, and numbers control movement, planning an attack requires an elegant choreography of movement and getting the arithmetic right. I must admit I never quite mastered this, but that's probably more a limitation of my brain than a knock against the game itself. Losing a HP each turn felt a little cruel; there were times when there were no monsters around to defeat in order to raise my HP, and the exit was too far (or nowhere to be seen), so I was simply doomed. Also it would be cool if you could use multiple digits to defeat multiple adjacent enemies. For instance, if you are surrounded by a 2 and a 5, doing a 5*5 would result in 25, eliminating them both. All in all, I definitely recommend giving this a spin. It's a cool, innovative idea, nicely executed in a LCD calculator style, and a good bit of fun. Nice job!
Combining movement and abilities into a single tightly dependent mechanic is an interesting concept. I think it worked out, albeit partially. On one hand, it is more approachable that it initially seems: there are sequences of moves that get you to target positions and numbers simultaneously. On another hand, they felt more like technical challenges that I'd prefer to solve programmatically rather than repeatedly myself. Worse yet, multiplying and dividing by 5 until an opponent approaches you does the trick quite often. I think for 7DRL the scope is just fine, and it feels like it has the features it needs. Aesthetics-wise the board looks pretty cool, and while I had minor inconvenience reading the digits sometimes, it wasn't enough to discount the score. I gave 2 for fun because of the above reasoning; 3 for innovation because while the mechanic is novel, mathlikes themselves aren't uncommon; and 3 for roguelikeness because game plays more as a technical puzzle than a roguelike.
Interesting concept, but it didn't really click for me. The calculator graphics and UI were really well done, and it has good sound effects.
Emerald Woods
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
4
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
A delightful relaxing game. The UX on this is wonderful, the game and the underlying engine on this are really well crafted. I think people who like open games like Minecraft would fall in love with this game. I really liked how the further you went into caves, the darker it felt and the less you could see. I also liked the directional system, that was really well done. Also, the caves were amazing. I found myself getting excited when discovering new cave systems. If I could make a wish, I would ask for more combat or some sort of interesting tactical challenges, which could really dial up the fun and roguelikeness. This game really shows me what a solid engine JSRL is. This game could reach heights unknown!
In the beginning it was fun to play and discover (nice atmosphere strengthened by music and SFX). After some time I got tired of its oversized, monotonous world and lack of challenges. My goal was to find the distant buildings mentioned in the instruction, but when I eventually reached two of them, I felt dissatisfied, because a few new types of seeds didn't bring anything to gameplay in a world where it's so easy to survive eating berries only. Still, with its sensible mechanics, this game has potential to become a complete experience in post-7DRL period.
One Of Us 7drl
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
One Of Us comes with an interesting mechanic. You're sent out into the world to find golden fleas escaped from the royal circus. To find these flease, you head out into the world, making friends with all variety of companions who have unique abilities and don't always play nice together. But you take on the form of one of them if your party gets too big. After several plays, I've been unable to get all the fleas--my most is 3 after some 1-2 hours--and while it's entertaining, I wish it were more explicit in conveying what it is players needed to do to win. The game isn't bug-free either, but it runs stably enough for a weeklong competition. If you want a roguelikey game that plays a bit like an advanced digital board-game, and you like the risk-mitigation and hidden-information problems that roguelikes present, you should play this. Completeness: This game is complete and runs. There's a couple of decent bugs; sometimes, the core mechanic (becoming "one of us") doesn't actually trigger as it's supposed to, and once or twice a new level did not actually come up as it was supposed to. There's a few smaller glitch-points like this, and while they're not much by themselves, they add up. Aesthetics: This game is really pretty and the pretty is functional for the most part, and gets some extra points for the intro sequence. Fun: The game is fun the first few plays; it's fun to have the party management mechanic happening the entire time and to engage in risk-management (if I open this chest, what happens? what happens if X party member or potion combines with X party member?) Having to watch an unskippable intro sequence every play did hurt this some for me, and the overall endgame still feels mysterious to me, but not in a way that feels fun. Just telegraphing slightly more obviously what, exactly, the player is supposed to do to catch the flies would go a long way towards making this a solid "4" on the fun scale. Innovative: The game is definitely not hack and slash. It feels more like a rogue-like-ish board game than anything else. In a good way. Scope: It's about on part with what one generally expects from a 7DRL; the maps make it feel a bit on the high end. Roguelike: This game has procedural generation and plays with the hidden information problem well on an immediate "tactical" level, but only really "lite" on the whole.
Definitely finished product, yet some bugs managed to slip into the release. Unskippable, long-ish intro in unacceptable ;) The game looks definitely pleasant with that low-poly aesthetics. The font could be a bit more readable, though. I never managed to catch all the golden flies. But what I did? I died in a hilarious way many times. For me, One of Us is a game about discovery, and I had great fun learning game mechanics. There are a lot of unlockable (by transforming into specific actor during a run) characters, but they don't have much impact on the gameplay style. I think I will play this game from time to time, and definitely would like to see new versions in the future.
Six Months to Die in Space
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
2
4
Innovation
3
4
Scope
4
4
Roguelikeness
3
4
This has a ton of promise but I couldn't play for 5 minutes without encountering a game-ending crash bug, so it's hard to tell how much is in here, or how fun it might potentially be. The crashes were sprinkled around in different spots, so they were impossible to avoid, occurring on basic actions like trying to land on a planet, or take off from one. I would *love* to see a non-crashy version of this, but I can only rate based on my experience rather than on the potential. Clearly there was a lot of ambition here, and some nice bits of execution -- a promising start. I hope you keep developing this, and we all have a chance to try it again in the future. Will add to my watchlist and hope for the best.
WOW. This game crashed on me a few times in different places. I didn't care at all. This is SUCH an ambitious and fun title for a 7 day challenge! Take a Roguelike and throw elements of Star Control 2 and No Man's Sky into a blender. Mix for fun. Excellent work, and I beg you to keep adding to this entry. Put some work into the stability. Overall, this one was a real treat to play, and I want to thank you for submitting this entry! I'm not sure if earning the necessary amount of money is even possible, given the low amounts of minerals, crystals and junk I was finding in my session.
the strigoi
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
4
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
It was very enjoyable. It exactly the features needed to make stealth tactically meaningful.
"the strigoi" is a rather unusual game. It has unique mechanics, nice bits of thematic narrative, and a flair of a combinatorial puzzle. This puzzle-ness is a double-edged sword: it limits the scope to make for an interesting gameplay, but it's also clear to the player that there is nothing hiding behind what's right in front of their eyes. I think the game achieves what it set out to do. My only complaint is that a lot of levels seem to be impossible to solve. I'm not smart enough to claim that it's definitely so, but if true, it's not a great game experience: there is nothing a player can do to avoid defeat.
Rogue Dealer
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
3
4
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
2
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
Rogue Dealer is a text-based game based on the TI-83 calculator game Drug Wars (popular amongst high schoolers from that era), based in a roguelike world and stuffed with references and jokes from many popular roguelikes. The game is complete, and no bugs were encountered during my playthroughs. The game is text-based and menu-driven, leading to very straightforward controls. The UI is clean and effective, with good choice of colors and images. The game is far from a traditional roguelike but maintains elements such as turn-based and procedurally generated gameplay. Rogue Dealer was a pleasure to play and is highly recommended to all roguelike aficionados to try at least once, but will not have high levels of replayability for most players.
This game was very fun! The mechanics are simple and easy to understand, but can lead to some deeper strategic plays. Most of my winning rounds were on account of the RNG as opposed to strategy, but I felt like I at least had a chance to win without making a ridiculous profit off bargain artifacts :). That being said, the events are what make the game interesting, and I enjoyed the references to the different games.
The theme of the game matches this jam fantastically. The humorous special events are a treat as well. Unfortunately, I found the special events to also be the game's greatest weakness. I was only able to achieve $200,000 a couple times when a fortunate artifact- or wand-related surge occurred and I sold off my inventory. The wandering priest is also very random, and sometimes doesn't show up in the game at all. It feels like just amassing enough money to buy artifacts and wands and then roaming until an event is a viable strategy. That aside, this is a cool and engaging roguelite - great job!
Thine Cometh
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
2
4
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
The RL experience distilled down to its essence. One bit graphics are spare, but functional. The UI is clear and intuitive. The difficulty is balanced and scaled well. Small in scope, but executed with a high level of polish.
Thine Cometh is a roguelike with no combat, instead you strategically avoid enemies, either by stealthily avoiding them or -- more often -- by running away. The game feels complete and refined, but I'd like to see more features to expand on the core mechanic, and to make the game more interesting over time since because there wasn't much challenge if the player is skilled at herding the enemies. The game has a very clean look an simple controls, and the two-color palette looks great and minor details in the wall tiles go a long way to improving the look. Tiles in general are effective, and easy to recognize and distinguish. You don't see a lot of roguelikes which focus on stealth and movement in lieu of combat, so it's always nice to see a game built on a concept like this. However, the lack of character progression combined with any combat complexity pushes it outside the classic definition of a roguelike for me, potentially further into the arcade spectrum.
Small and simple, polished, with some balance-related issues. Most notably, for a game when player can't fight back, there are too many narrow corridors. Another thing is cats (I mean, treasures) distribution, that seems random. To win the game, player needs to gather 5 treasures. Usually, I find the first cat at the second level, but sometimes the treasure is not spawn until the fourth level. With every level bigger, with more monsters, it's major balance issue. Game uses only two colors and use simple tiles, and the result is very elegant. I love that look. The only issue I have is that camera moves every player step, and that player tile changes facing every move - that's just tiring. Thine Cometh is really fun game except of balance issues that I wrote about in the first paragraph, I have only positive things to say. Thine Cometh is variation on 1-HP games, and allows player to be one (and sometimes more, if boosted by potions) step ahead of the enemies. Map generation is also pleasant, even if technically simple. Tightly placed rooms of the same size, filled with - I bet - prefabs. The thing is that it doesn't feel repetitive - and that's great achievement for a roguelike.
Tower of Tension
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Solid hack and slash action, very dynamic with the various kinds of physics forces, with enemies and explosions causing pushback. I think the in browser engine is pretty slick too.
Hews to the traditional approach with a lighthearted tone and a fun twist. The mix of mouse / touch controls with text UI is very successful. Actions and inventory management are obvious. The physics system adds interest to the experience, but opportunities to make tactical use of it is very limited in the early game and ramps up slowly.
The mechanics of the game were rather enjoyable. Batting spikey bois into orbs, throwing enemies through windows, blowing up walls and floors - it was all great fun! As was falling out of the window 9 floors down to my death :D My biggest issues were: * After level ~15, almost all floors started generating with an ascending staircase within sight of the descending staircase (like 5 tiles away), so I could just keep ascending without exploring the floors * At about level 25, the game got into a weird state: keyboard wasn't responding anymore, even though I could wear/drop items. Dropping placed the items diagonally away from me, as opposed to right under me. I think I got into that state by ascending with a jetpack on top of a window, but can't be sure. This essentially prevented me from finishing (if there even is an end), and it felt tedious to redo everything from the start. Some notes: * Player can still use items after death * Can only restart the game by refreshing the browser tab * It's a bit difficulty to distinguish between a floor intact, and a floor that's destroyed, but has another floor right below * Once I somehow blew up the floor on the first several levels, and couldn't get to the stairs - way before Jetpacks show up. Felt unfair.
Chicken Scratch
Completeness
3
4
4
Aesthetics
4
4
3
Fun
3
4
2
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
2
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
4
A nice puzzle game, with limited scope and a somewhat confusing symbology scheme. The art is charming, looks nice, and is extremely readable. However, it has no explanation for what any of the items do, so I had to puzzle it out, and I'm not 100% sure what the pear or bread items do even after half an hour of playing. Also, you can get in a stuck state, but the game doesn't detect that and end automatically, you have to cash out. So the core gameplay works well but there's some polish missing - a tutorial or instruction screen, maybe, with automatic game overs. It's fun initially, but there's no significant changes to the mechanics after a certain point, so it becomes a tightly deliniated score attack game. I struggled to identify what parts of the design language it shares traditional roguelikes, so the closest comparison that comes to mind is a sort of turn-based Item Snake. I don't think that's an entirely new idea, but it's pretty cool. The strongest suggestion I would have is to explain, either in game via a start screen or in the instructions, what exactly each item does.
Great little puzzle/tactics game! I like the theming and the pixel art. While it was neat to figure out things by playing with it, I did miss a little bit of tutorial or description because some of the effects/items were obscure.
Interesting game, but I found it hard to comprehend. I assume that not revealing the rules was intentional, and the players are meant to figure out the mechanics by trial, but I tried for some time and failed. In spite of a very small board, the game still manages to feel like a roguelike - kudos on that! It also felt complete enough, even though I never got to triple digit score and might have missed more features. I will give a 3 for aesthetics under the assumption that perhaps some icons could be clearer to help figure out the mechanics. And giving 2 for fun because at some point it became frustrating when I could not notice new patterns :(
Dark Space
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
The terminals are a really neat mechanic. Scavenging for stun grenades by modifying door batteries is also a nice touch. Being able to restart the game after death would have been nice.
Nice concept. Too bad it is lacking in content department. Technically the game is complete, do not crash, but could be improved in many ways. For example a way too look around. A way to clear pathing hints. It's worth to win the game once or twice, to understand the concept, but it's not really replayable. While some bits of the game are quite interesting as a whole it doesn't provide really new experience. While simplicity keeps it from being true roguelike, it can become one with more content.
Dragonoscopy
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Thanks for participating in the 7DRL and coming out with a great interesting entry. I definitely enjoyed the aspect I love from dungeon games, of equipping and choosing inventory. The comical names were a great touch, along with being able to provide some choice for the player -- extra sight, or extra xp multiplier? Great idea! As I progressed into each level of the dragon, it might have been nice to have more colors available, but I think that's being too picky. I had fun! Great ideas, and hopefully you enjoyed yourself in this competition!
The game starts promising. Fluid movement, different speed of enemies let's player to play a bit tactically... No bugs encountered. The problem is that even if animations are fluid and tiles are nice, the level is huge and just monotonous - with still the same sprites and palette, and minimal sounds. Game is fun for few first minutes, mostly due some nice uncommon mechanics like player body is divided into several hitboxes with separate armor ratings etc., but it doesn't change that you are just strolling around and clicking on enemies. Probably it would be more fun to play with smaller levels and more variety of tiles / designs.
Ember Deep
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
4
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
This game has a very unique style and allows for some very brainy tactics that make this game feel almost more like a puzzle then a roguelike. The custom engine gives the game a step up in terms of looks and especially level design but some of the other mechanics lacked clarity. Would have loved to see the items fleshed out a little more to add more variety to combat.
Ember Deep is a fun and engaging game where you navigate a world with non-standard (many non-hexagonal and non-square) tiles, and use time travel to defeat enemies stronger than you. This is, as one expects, confusing by nature, but the game's board-game-like visuals and solid controls streamline a lot of information delivery and let you focus on learning mechanics. Completeness: The game has a few quirks here and there and doesn't always feel balanced (some starts in particular are very different from others), but in general is complete and free of super-consequential bugs. The only quirk of major consequence is that hitting "esc" to stop movement doesn't seem to work, so don't rely on that. Aesthetics: Ember Deep boasts some charming aesthetics that make it look kind of like playing a big virtual board-game rather than playing a standard roguelike. Controls are pretty good; as well, and going mouse-based on the movement was a better idea than Fun: Especially here I should note that I was not able to finish Ember Deep. I got my butt kicked basically every time. But it was fun, and I think finishing this game would be a done deal if a "slightly easier mode" existed. However, the mechanics are still engaging and fun to play around with, and I can definitely recommend checking out ambush and retreat challenges if you want a smaller experience messing with the time mechanics. Innovation: It builds on a previous year's entry, but this is still fresh enough and is a weird enough twist on what normally happens for roguelikes both aesthetically and mechanically to warrant the rating. Scope: About as expected for a 7DRL. Roguelikeness: This isn't a fully-featured "kitchen-sink" roguelike, but for me that goes to scope, and this is pretty solidly in the tactical-dungeon-crawler genre, so I'm giving it the 3/3 (or 4/5).
Equipmentris
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
4
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
Equipmentris is an incredibly fun take on turn-based party combat, a la Darkest Dungeon or classic JRPGs. The core mechanic of fitting tetris-style equipment pieces into varying grid patterns of equipment slots creates a very interesting system of equipment and stat diversity, while allowing player level and enemy difficulty to scale up in a satisfying and organic manner. In its current state, the game is quite simple but remains engaging due to its strong base mechanics. The game has a few noticeable bugs which do not diminish the game experience but do have a significant impact on balance ("infinite" item slots and other screwy item-to-slot fits). Unfortunately there were somewhat frequent crashes experienced in both the browser and the executable, but at least in browser the game remembered the last game state on restart so no progress was lost. The game's art takes on its own signature style, and the music was welcomed and somehow never got old; and all these elements came together to create an aesthetic experience greater than the sum of its parts, and which was a significant compliment to the player's experience. Unfortunately I could not give a max aesthetics score due to some clunkiness with the controls (particularly during the "Equip" phase), some annoyances with menu display (sometimes it's difficult to hover over one item while the characters bounce, and sometimes it wants to keep switching between the left and right sides of the screen), and to a lesser extent a UI issue where you can select certain items when the enemies are large enough to overlap. Equipmentris is not a true traditional roguelike but incorporates turn-based combat, permadeath, and procedural generation. I really adore this game :-)
This game, at least the version that's imbedded on the page at the moment, is a rollercoaster. First I go, wow, this music is cool. This art is cool. This character building is cool. Then I lose right on Level 1. On my second attempt, the weapons offered deal twice the amount of damage (like, 10 instead of 6 or something), so I breeze through the first two levels, and lose on level 3. For a while I thought I'm doing something wrong, but after seeing a mage with 18 fire damage on level 2, who is also faster than me, I realized the fault is not mine. All is that is to say that visuals, audio, concept are all great, but the balancing is way off and just frustrated the shit out of me. I read in the comments that someone streamed it for a while, but couldn't easily find the recording to see what was different - did I just keep getting unlucky? Is this a updated imbalanced version? Am I dumb, and missed some obvious way to avoid my downfall? I don't know. One feature I could suggest in addition to balancing is to scout the upcoming enemies to decide on optimal equipment. It doesn't have to be full info, but some advance knowledge could improve strategizing. In terms of bugs / improvements, equipment fitting in weird spots has been called out, but I also want to add that when the player tries to equip something into a wrong slot, the item should go back to the inventory, rather than disappear and then reappear when I enter this screen again,
Game of Centuries
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
2
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Thanks a lot for participating in the 7DRL! Glad you were able to submit your entry. This was an incredibly creative idea, but it did take me more then a few tries to get "into" it. It was definitely an interesting take on creating a story / journey for the player to get through. A few of the choice scenarios reminded me of the questions faced by the player in the early Ultima games during character creation. Thanks a lot for entering the challenge, and hopefully you had a great time putting this entry together!
This is a pretty cool game - it can get the right type of person addicted to it for a while. I literally wrote out a page of events, outcomes, and requirements for each of them to try achieving high scores. The lack of events happening after acquiring a profession was a bit sad. I can imagine that even generating this many events and balancing them to be attainable for different builds is a lot of work, but it felt like my character has just started the adult life and all the fun has already passed. (Perhaps it was meant to be philosophical?) Regardless, it left me with a feeling of incompleteness, hence 3 for completeness. There also seems to be a bug with constitution being applied a turn too late? Not sure. I think aesthetically the game achieves exactly what it's supposed to, and fun-wise there are enough stories and balance to play for an hour+.
JoustRL
Completeness
2
4
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
5
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Definitely an interesting entry! Thanks a lot for participating. A unique take on an old arcade favorite. I found the initial control / title screens extremely difficult to read due to a lot of flashing of the entire page. Tried both Chrome and Edge. Apart from that it was a definite challenge - that Dragon mother...IS a mother! Hope you had a great time putting this entry together.
A fascinating game! I've never seen anything like this. Momentum movement is already pretty rare, and this brings it into 3D in a very cool way. This game could really use numpad support. On my keyboard, it seemed like only 'a' and 'd' worked, so with a keyboard I could only go left and right, so I had to use my mouse which was very cumbersome. It took me quite a long time to figure out how to play the game. Luckily there was a comment on the game page from someone who explained part of it, and after that I was able to fly around successfully. I never really got to any meaningful combat though. Very interesting game, and glad I tried it! With some good introductions and user interface, this game could shine even more.
Live Long and Prosper
Completeness
4
2
3
Aesthetics
4
3
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
4
4
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
This is the most brutally realistic roguelike out there. The clock is always ticking :sob:
Live Long And Prosper is a game that attempts to be an arcade experience about financial planning. To start, you're presented with a board with several options for income (windfalls, steady jobs) and several mixed/negative options that impacted your happiness as well as your income (normally negatively). Each turn on the board takes a year of your character's life, and the goal is to be stable before you're 65, because after you hit the age of 65, no new income or savings options present themselves. It feels like a bit of a luck-based mission (art imitates life, I suppose) but it was fun to see how the different mechanics interacted, though. Completeness: This game is pretty stable and bug-free. I don't know that I can really call it balanced. For example, sometimes in the pre-65 time, an area spawns with no job opportunities, and a number of 'no-win' situations are possible, which can wreck you early on. It just feels a bit too luck-based; whether or not that's true to life, it may not have been the best for game balance. Aesthetics: Things are nice to look at in this game, and the controls are fine. The amount of mouse-over descriptions available are nice but the amount of things you can mouse over, and the amount of messages you see when doing so or just that you see automatically with different actions, can be a bit overwhelming. Fun: This game is fun for at least a few plays. This reviewer wasn't as in love with the whole experience, but it was an interesting twist to try and tactically avoid spending $2,000 on Amazon. There are some small annoyances within the framework that added up. As aforementioned, the "happiness items" didn't seem to lead to as good of a result as : E.g., the game presents as though pets, spouses and children are items of happiness, but it seems like you get better results by avoiding them for the most part. And there's a certain random element that can't be easily strategized around. (Pets do retrieve windfalls, though, which I thought was kind of a neat touch and added to the fun for me.) Innovation: The game's theming and accompanying math takes sometimes-maligned ideas about experience-gain boosting in RPGs, and makes them the central mechanic. This is interesting, if nothing else. Scope: This is about what one would expect from a seven-day game. Roguelikeness: This isn't really a traditional dungeon-crawler, and the turn-based tactics and overall strategy and procgen are fairly rudimentary, but they're there.
Pointy End
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
The game is tactical puzzle where the hero is 2x1 block where one 'cube' is the hero himself and the other is 'pointy end' aka weapon. The player need to solve gemetrical puzzle of placing weapon on top of enemies while trying to keep a hero away from harm. The game runs fine, no bugs found, but quite simplistic. There are some annoyances in controls. Last move sometimes carries over as first move in next level, which might become fatal on later levels. Animations (probably as an option) could be faster. When playing for nth time the game feels slow! It is somewhat fun to get used to the ways of dealing with different enemies, but it become stale quite soon, as there is not enough variety of actions. It is an interesting idea of movement, which, I'm afraid only works on smaller scale of puzzlish levels, not in more general case. The game feels like quite solid entry contentwise, but not quite out of scope of one might do in 7 days. I'm afraid this game, at least in this state, cannot be classified as roguelike, or even roguelite. It is pure tactical puzzle. Yes, somewhat randomized, but still puzzle. You are too limited in actions, there is no character progression whatsoever. As a puzzle it is quite cool, with some interesting interations and ways to die.
It took me a moment to figure out how to play but I quickly got the hang of it and had fun. It felt more like a puzzle game than a roguelike but I could see the inspiration and I was encouraged by the variety of enemies. A job well done!
PortalWorlds
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
2
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
4
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
4
4
PortalWorlds is a generic hack n' slash roguelike where you change levels via portals instead of stairs, allowing the player to see diverse environments, settings, and enemy types. I encountered no bugs but felt that the game lacked a certain polish and often did not feel well-balanced. I enjoyed the pixel art and there is a great variety of tiles used (each enemy type even has front, side, and back views which is a step beyond many roguelikes), but the controls and UI were lacking. The FOV was also jarring, it would be nice to be able to see previously revealed tiles without going to the map which at times felt too small to read comfortably. PortalWorlds plays like a typical hack n' slash roguelike, and I did not uncover any mechanics that struck me as unique or game-defining; the portals mechanic was simply a different flavor of stairs to change floors/levels -- I would have loved to see the portal mechanic expanded on.
Portals are sweet. I had a great time with this entry - thanks for putting so much into it. I think this is well on the way to something "more", and I'd definitely encourage you to put a bit more love into it. Maybe add some sound / music, touch up some level design. Definitely an ambitious entry for 7 days. Excellent achievement!
Rogue Emoji
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
2
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
ROGUE EMOJI: A fairly complete game with a pleasing aesthetic, which doesn't really bring much else new to the table. Still, its charm and fairly low threshold for player skill makes it a great way to kill an hour or two if you want to try a "light" roguelike that is still fairly traditional. Completeness: Playable from start to finish, seems pretty balanced. Some trouble with scrolling happening while attacking in FireFox, which didn't seem to happen across all browsers. Aesthetics: This is a really aesthetically complete game and it leans hard into the Emoji theme. Mostly intuitive controls; the different attack/move controls took a bit of getting used to for me, and they bug out a little bit on FireFox, but it was fine aside from that. Fun: I enjoyed this; it was fun and worth my time. Innovation: The lean into theming really helps this category, but there's not a lot of mechanical innovation. Scope: This is about as expected for a 7drl. Roguelikeness: This fits the bill as a classic-ish roguelike; it doesn't have as much of a hidden-info or tactical problem, but most of the other nuts and bolts are there.
Cute little game. It works, doesn't crash, but a bit mroe polish definitely wouldn't hurt. Some uses of emoji are quite nice, some are less so. It is totally not obvious what emojis are obstacles and what can be stepped on. Seems random. 'P' to skip turn? Why? It is quite far both from WASD and cursor keys. Bump to attack doesn't work??? Why??? Ok, there is trident that can be thrown. But what about sword??? It was moderately fun to complete it once, but final battle was very tiresome. You cannot even block freaking dragon with his own snakes. I belive it far from the first rougelike-ish game that uses emoji, so nothing really new here. Mechanically-wise there are no innovations too. It is more or less ok in terms of scope, though there could be more weapons and clever use enojis for different kinds of obstacles and surfaces. IMO it is too simple to be called a true roguelike. Aside from the final battle there is almost only one enemy with very basic bahaviour.
Really cute game. It looks great, and the phone interface is perfect. The final boss is fun to fight. This is a perfectly done example of a traditional (albeit small scale) roguelike with a unique aesthetic.
The Unreliable Cartographer
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
The dungeons are fun, but maybe too easy. All traps can be avoided by jumping over them, and you'll learn how to find traps pretty easily. There's not much unique about the game other than the traps themselves. Traps don't seem to trigger each other, and there's only one way to set them off. Traps triggered by collecting unique gold items might have been a good idea, so that players could set them off by being greedy. I'm not sure the Oh No traps even need to be marked, since they're so easy to dodge right now.
The Unreliable Cartographer is an exploration-based non-combat roguelike where the map information you are given misleads you until you reveal the tiles up close. The game felt complete and largely polished, but needs something new to bring balance to the game once the player figures out the "trick" to it, and also has some rare instances of unwinnable levels (e.g. a boulder trap blocking the only path). The game's aesthetics are fitting to the theme and maintain a cohesive style. There is no combat, and the game is largely about surviving/avoiding traps, collecting treasure for points, and finding the exit; all while dealing with the core mechanic of the unreliable level map you are given. The Unreliable Cartographer has many elements of the traditional roguelike, such as grid-based dungeons, turn-based movement, traps and dungeon diving; but the lack of character progression and (to a lesser extent) combat push it out of the definition of a true traditional roguelike for me. I'd like to see how the game looks if the unreliable map created a larger dilemma for the player, as it can currently be ignored due to the tiles being truths once revealed.
Verminator
Completeness
4
4
4
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
2
3
2
Innovation
2
2
2
Scope
4
4
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
A cute premise executed in a straightforward manner, but at a very high level. Every aspect is polished, from the graphics, which convey a pen, paper and miniatures feel, to the balance. There's a variety of weapons and enemies, but the environments are all very similar.
Straightforward hack and slash dungeon crawl. Impressive amount of foes and decorations for the seven days. I liked the feel of miniatures, although the UI and sound could have done with a tiny bit more polish. Nice work!
Generally a pretty polished game, with good presentation and no bugs that I've found. The gameplay itself is straightforward hack and slash, very beholden to random chance - my best runs have been the ones where I happened to find a wealth of strong armour and lots of oil. My worst have been the ones where I didn't find much oil. Aside from a couple of very small usability niggles (it's annoying to have to go into the inventory and use oil to refill your lamp, when there's no reason you'd ever not want to) but that's to be expected from a jam game. My main criticism would be that the oil restriction feels too tight. There's a sanity mechanism here which is a bit reminiscent of Infra Arcana, whereby you gradually lose sanity while you're in the dark, which is a solid enough way to keep the player moving forward. The oil doesn't last very long though, just 20 turns per flask, which is nothing. The tightness of this limit, along with the unpredictability of whether you'll find plenty of oil or almost none, can make the game frustrating. Doing anything other than sprinting to the stairs feels like a waste of precious light. The game would be a lot more playable if oil lasted a bit longer, or it was more consistent in how often it drops. A solid entry overall. I would have liked to see it try something a bit more novel (I feel like a lot of the effort went into presentation and left the gameplay very vanilla) but it's a good try for a single week.
Wizard Chess 7DRL
Completeness
4
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
2
4
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
4
4
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
A lot of mechanics are offered, but all are fairly well supported by the efficient UI. There's a lot of information necessary to the player, but it's all communicated with an excellent balance of density and open space. A diversity of units keeps replay early games fresh. The battles feature may tactical options to use, but the overall strategy of the game seems tilted towards grinding.
Wizard's Chess is a fun "rogue-lite" tactical game with lots of good ol' permadeath and procedural generation. There are a couple of glitches or asethetic oversights, but this is a solid experience. Completeness: The game is pretty darn complete. A couple of UI items are overlooked that result in not being able to check exactly where you're supposed to go if you have a large army (unless you've memorized it from the intro text). But for the most part it's complete. Aesthetics: The author chose a pre-existing sprite set that really blends well with the game style and substance. Not every element works equally well, perhaps just because the game has so much information to communicate, but things are generally intuitive once you learn what they are. Fun: I did not actually enjoy this game at first, but it grew on me to the point of rating a "3/3" to use 7DRL terms or "4/5" for itch.io purposes. The mechanics were a little overwhelming. But at some point after discovering one could literally farm resources, it got a lot more sustainable and easier to survive more fun, some of the most fun I've had with a 7DRL this year so far, in fact. One thing that I might have liked would have been a better notion of how to use ranged units; it's not clear if or why they can't move and attack in one turn, and it might be even more fun to play if players had slightly more control over that positioning element in general. I wanted to give hardcore mode a quick run after beating the main, but something keeps it from running on my computer in the 0.3 update. (The main game is complete enough that I'm not particularly counting that against completeness.) Innovation: It's Might and Magic + procedural generation and permadeath, a solid middle-of-the-road on this front. Scope: This is beyond what I normally expect to see in a 7DRL. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the sheer amount of units, but lots of detail was clearly put into giving them stats and trying to get things vaguely balanced. Roguelikeness: Tactics? Check? Permadeath? Check. Procedural generation? Check. But something keeps this back from being a classic roguelike; I suspect it's the lack of feeling of being in a dungeon crawl, but more something between the classic style and a wargame.
Wizard Chess 7DRL is a turn-based game focusing on army management and combat. The game feels complete but through my playthroughs I felt that there were some minor balance improvements that could be made with the terrain combat bonuses and treasure distribution/generation. The army management and detailed combat system feel very original to the roguelike genere, but I'm not familiar with the games which inspired it so I can't comment on how much Wizard Chess 7DRL builds on that half of its influence. The completed scope felt about what I'd expect from a game made in seven days, but looks like a great groundwork to build a much more expansive and ambitious project. Wizard Chess 7DRL shares many facets of a traditional roguelike but plays as more of a hybrid of genres due to the style of overworld exploration and loot acquisition, army resource and time management, and tactical instanced combat. There's a relatively large learning curve for a 7DRL (which I do not penalize the game for), but this is a unique game and is worth at least learning the basics and giving it a shot. This seems like a game where the target player could really become obsessed with and sink a lot of time into.
FallingCarefully
Completeness
4
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
3
Fun
4
2
3
Innovation
3
3
4
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
3
FallingCarefully is an elegant, arcadey game of space travel that appears to be largely built on accurate Newtonian laws of gravitation. The game felt complete, well-polished, and had no noticeable bugs. There may be some mild balance concerns but it's more likely that I lack skill at the game. The game looks beautiful. There's a minimalistic simplicity to the color palette and visual portrayal of the levels, coupled with the feeling of just floating through space, allowing the forces of nature and the universe to guide you, that creates a certain tranquility and calmness for the player... until half the system explodes and you are forced to watch as you are pulled uncontrollably into a vast explosion, unheard in the silence of space. The movement is natural and organic; the player is only along for the ride, making minor adjustments to the trajectory but never truly in control.
Besides a randomly-generated asteroid field, there isn't too much very Roguelike about the gameplay of Falling Carefully, which if anything traces its lineage even further back to Spacewar and Asteroids. Graphics are a visually appealing mix of ASCII and simple polygons, although the use of ASCII is actually not particularly appropriate here since the characters do not seem to directly correspond to hit-box sizes, making it difficult to judge when you're going to hit something. Controls are easy to pick up, despite not being fully explained. The main problem with the game is that it is very, very difficult, often to the point of being unfair or even impossible. Your momentum very rapidly builds up to Ridiculous Speed, and while you can arrest this a little by turning this will rapidly deplete your fuel and leave you going in the wrong direction. Your ship could use some reverse thrusters to enable breaking. However, the main issue is not so much the speed but the fact that - while you *can* zoom - you can't zoom out far enough to see what's coming with sufficient time to react to it. Enemies, however, can see you from well off-screen and send a hail of missiles your way (which is a tactic you yourself shouldn't use, because chain-explosions of missiles are a thing). Very frequently, the game started me off either headed directly into an asteroid or with an enemy turret already firing at me, leading to a fiery death with nothing I could do about it. Taking a little more inspiration from Roguelikes and allowing you to pause or even slow down time to give you a chance to plan your next steps would be a big improvement.
That game is hard. By design, probably, but it could use more balance. It's easy to fly off the cluster and avoid risky maneuvers next to the rocks. Except that, I didn't encounter bugs or unfinished features. I like the aesthetics. There is elegance in simplicity. Game is fun, but in the same way that proofs of concepts are fun - due to learning new, interesting mechanics. Physics is nice, maneuvering around the rocks is satisfying, but FallingCarefully is just too hard. It punished player's mistakes, shooting things down is problematic from the distance, but in the close range there is high risk of being consumed by an explosion, and the explosions itself remain active too long. That said, I had fun, definitely. It definitely brings something new to the table, even if that's more roguelite than roguelike...
Autorogue
Completeness
4
3
2
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
3
3
4
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
3
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
2
Fun game with fun audio.
Autorogue is a game about upgrading and leveling your character between rounds of automated battle arena-style combat. The game is simple overall but feels complete and polished. Skills probably need some balancing; the Wait & Heal ability in particular felt essential, especially with no guarantee of a healing option between rounds. The game looks good and has simple controls, but getting the ability descriptions to appear and reading the descriptions was difficult. The game could also potentially use some UI to help the player understand what it going on during the round. Autorogue is clearly inspired by roguelikes but does not play like a classic one. My main gripe is that it felt like the player did not have a lot of control over what occurred during the rounds (I realize this is the point, but it felt more random than I would have liked; i.e. I would have preferred that the "between-rounds" actions had a more noticeable impact on the rounds themselves), and it was difficult to determine the net effects of ability ordering.
On an aesthetic level, this game feels really unique and wonderful. The dynamic soundtrack really works for it - those earthy synth tones and glitches and clicks are extraordinarily tactile, and watching the battles is a hypnotic pleasure. I thought the visual design was also something I’d never quite seen before, at once warm and weird, and the icons, characters and pops and flashes of the battles themselves sync perfectly with the music itself. I particularly enjoyed the ‘double down’ mechanic and how the music switched up a notch with it. It’s a rare treat when a game makes clicking a mouse feel quite so satisfying. The gameplay itself felt a little less rich - I found the game too easy to break and become OP with just about every character. That said, I don’t think it’d take too much tuning to amp up the difficulty a bit to ensure the decisions you make matter a little more. A little more depth on that front would go a long way to distinguishing this from the mainstream autobattlers out there right now.
CARRIER
Completeness
2
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
2
3
3
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
You can die entering the exit of a level and your death will take effect on the next floor which seems kind of weird. Some levels generate unreachable areas that you might start in requiring a restart. It's pretty disappointing that you can't use the explosive enemies to defeat other enemies. The gear you can use is nice, but since the energy for them is so limited they'll only be used as a crutch until you learn how to properly kite enemies. Navigating around the enemies in these levels eventually becomes repetitive.
CARRIER is a roguelike set in a futuristic, glitchy, monochrome world influenced by traditional cellular devices. The game felt complete but at least one bug was encountered during my playtime. The overall aesthetic and style is very strong, but the glitch effects on the later levels are overdone and were a very large negative for me. I reached level 10 or so, the later levels seemed to progress linearly, with only larger maps and more of the two enemy types to account for an increase in difficulty. The game features procedural generation, grid-based maps, turn-based movement and actions, permadeath (with a twist), and traditional roguelike-inspired asesthetics fused with futuristic glitchy theme.
A small but interesting game. Some crashes encountered, but only on game over - gameplay itself seems stable. Visuals clean, clear and evocative with some fun 'glitch' effects. Controls straightforward and easy to learn. Some intriguing mechanics, but not a lot of variety and the short visual range makes it difficult to play tactically or really take advantage of enemy attack patterns; progressing is more a matter of stumbling upon the exit before getting boxed in. Only two enemy types and a few items - enough to explore the idea but not enough to fully develop it.
Mall Crawl
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
2
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
Thanks a lot for submitting an entry and participating! Neat job and an interesting concept. I definitely urge you to keep adding to this work if you can. I found the policemen quite Terminator-like. Once they spawn, it's game over. Hope you had a great time.
Simple game. Fun for a while, but too flawed to be enjoyable for a longer time. The mission success is very much RNG-dependant - often, the best strategy is to wander close to the car and wait for low-level enemies. The nice touch is that currently hold loot boosts player level, ergo helps to deal with high-level enemies. The problem is when you encounter a higher-level enemy close to the home - it's hard to lose the tail. It's hard to tell something more about this game. That's shallow hit-and-run game with decent tiles. It's worth checking due to that small twist with temporary strength boost, but I won't come back.
Mechrl
Completeness
3
2
3
Aesthetics
3
4
2
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
4
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
3
Thanks a lot for participating in the 7DRL, and hope you had a lot of fun putting this entry together. I was a HUGE fan of Battletech & Mechwarrior growing up. Kudos for trying such an ambitious entry. I think the maps were interesting and definitely gave you the feel of being in a giant, lumbering armoured machine, unable to make any rapid directional changes. I urge you to keep chipping away at this if you can.
The game has potential and some things are done right, but there is a lot of unfinished mechanics and bugs. It's easy to crash the game on the loadout screen. Aesthetically, this game rocks. Maps are just pleasant to look at, UI is clear, font is nice. Menuses could be better, but they are readable enough. It's hard to tell something about "fun factor" of Mechrl. Looks like the game has a lot of additional mechanics I haven't chance to test (like mech upgrades), but I never managed to finish even the first mission. Every 1-1 fight I lose. I was close to winning once, I think, but still - didn't manage that. AI is stupid, but maybe I'm even more stupid if I'm so easy prey?... Well, I thought that maybe I'm supposed to tinker with initial loadout. Unfortunately, I don't even know how could I do that - when I am in the loadout menu, one thing I can do is exit. Maybe it changes after first mission, but... Well, I would need to kill some dudes in mechas first, and I can't do that. I don't know, maybe I'm playing the game in wrong way? On the other hand, it's in the best interest of the dev to make sure that player will know how to play... Maps are hard to navigate often, but walking over walls helps with that :) Crushing over walls takes double time and needs player confirmation. Rotating destroys the wall as well and doesn't need confirmation - I wonder if it takes double time... I am aware that this review is a bit harsh, but I really hope that dev will put more work into this project after the game jam. I see the potential here, and this game could fit niche - I never played roguelike with multi-tiled player. But it definitely needs more balance and testing.
Nice idea. Also a good choice in focusing on doing mech-to-mech combat rather than spreading too thin. I like the look of the game, and the visual representation of a mech was cool once I realise what it was, but the 'Aesthetic' rating is about functionality rather than prettiness. The terrain is unclear (lots of clutter but it's not always clear what effect it has, if any) and the rotational tank controls are unpleasant. I understand why they're in the game but there's a reason that tank controls aren't widely used in any genre. I lost count of how many times I took hits I didn't need to take because I was facing down the screen and that meant the controls were effectively flipped. My biggest criticism is that the game is either far too hard, or very opaque. In all the time I played it for review, I didn't manage to defeat a single opponent. I know it's possible to customise your mech but at the beginning of the game you don't seem to have access to any alternative weapons or parts to try out different approaches. Maybe I'm missing something about how to play well, but if so then it's very well hidden if I didn't find it after so many attempts. There doesn't really seem to be anything you can try differently, either. You move too slowly to escape or evade, you never catch your opponent by surprise, there are no ways to try a different approach. You just slug it out until you're destroyed (or, theoretically, your opponent is - though I never saw that). If it was more doable then I think this could be a fun little diversion. I like the idea, and even the tank controls would be excusable because there's a certain logic to why they're included, but the fact that (based on my own experience, at least) it's impossible to actually achieve anything makes it into quite a sour play experience very quickly. It would benefit a lot from rebalancing/tweaking play/being clearer.
Svendarogalik's Dungeon
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
2
3
3
Innovation
2
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
4
The node based map seems like an interesting idea, however in practice functions essentially like a standard grid. There didn't seem to be a significant trade off for resting, so the challenge is easily overcome by basic lvl 1 attacks + retreat and rest tactics. Earlier levels tend to be more challenging as you have a smaller pool of stats, persist and you quickly snowball in power. The game is probably best enjoyed by newcomers to the roguelike genre. Overall a fine entry.
Svendarogalik's Dungeon is a dungeon crawler that emphasizes the resource costs of actions and replaces the typical grid-based map with a system of interconnected nodes. Overall a liked this game quite a bit; the visuals, mechanics, and tone of the messages results in a very pleasant theme and style. The game balance feels very much tilted towards the easy end of the scale, some fine-tuning is needed. The UI needs a better way to handle the map (maybe a zoom option?), and also a better way to keep track of all the abilities you end up with. In fact it may be an improvement to have to discard abilities after a certain point (for both balance and the UI). Also the money "stat" doesn't show a modifier based on the selected ability like the Mana and Energy stats do. There are also tedious actions encouraged, like constantly healing and resting before leaving the map. This game has a lot of potential and I'd love to see where continued could take it!
A pleasant game, with very clear rules and UI and without unnecessary longeurs. It's really nice to play a 7DRL that is free of bugs, has clear goal and doesn't kill me just because RNG decided so. There is definitely potential to improve the gameplay by adding more features related to the core mechanics — random abilities and net-like levels.
Bitesize Tactics
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
The most serious problem with team tactics games is the pace. It is SLOW. So everything should be made to speed things up. This game is not very good at it. There were no bugs in original 7drl version, but interface was lacking. Updated version have better information presentation, but there are some weird visual bugs. There definitely could be helpers for automatic target selection, especially if there is only one target in range. It is moderately fun, but quite time consuming, to win the game once or twice, but the same level layout and nearly the same enemies make it not very different. Yes, the team members are randomized, but... somehow it's not REALLY different. Aproach is very straightforward every time. Probably team without ranged units and with some bad luck in random skills/items selection can be ramp up difficulty, but in all my cases the game was very easy. There are quite a few tactical games around with roguelike elements and many more complicated tactical elements, so this game have nothing new in it. Dispite game maps being static there are quite some character classes and upgrades in the game to be a solid 7drl entry. I don't think the game can qualify as a true roguelike, but as a roguelite - for sure.
I enjoyed this game quite a bit. There are enough skills to adjust to over multiple playthroughs, even though the maps start repeating. The controls take a bit to get used to, but it's understandable given that player controls a team with multiple abilities. I gave a score of 4 for completeness, because even the 7DRL version seems bug-free and rather polished. The team screen on the side and extra abilities are nice additions, but not essential. I do wish it was longer though :) I also gave a score of 4 for aesthetics - really like what you did there. In terms of roguelikeness, the repeating levels do make replay value decline over time - balanced procedurally generated map might be a challenge, but would make the game feel unique on every try. Giving it a score of 3 as it is right now.
Bombfinder RL
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
4
3
Innovation
4
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
I really like this. At first I was absolutely baffled by the mechanics, it wasn't like the minesweeper i knew. I had to take up pen and paper and build some truth tables by trial and error until I realized the math behind it. Some might hate that process but I enjoyed the challenge of figuring it out.
- Clever concept, well executed. - Seamless integration of the early Windows aesthetic with the emoji era. - A modest incremental feature addition on top of Minesweeper. - A narrow, but complete vertical slice of a game. It even has items!
DataHaven
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
4
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Nice lofi hackery aesthetic. This game is pretty darn challenging too!
I have mixed feelings on DataHaven. Positives: - I liked the mapping of hacking to commands to roguelike moves, and tracert showing my coordinates - The mechanics feel very innovative; you don't see many hex-based maps around, and the whole "use programs, retrieve all but one from recycle bin" concept is pretty novel - The look is beautiful - very hackery feel, and gateways look glorious Negatives: - I couldn't find a way to conveniently move around without using the mouse (due to hexagonal grid, arrow keys aren't intuitive) - The visibility was a bit weird on hexagonal grid. I often thought that there is an empty space ahead, but going around the corner, found a new hexagon. Probably should have paid more attention to colors. - I couldn't enjoy playing the game for a long time - the challenge of positioning next to DataHavens and the parity of moving with opponents just wasn't exciting enough. It was especially frustrating to try to lure out Daemons, which due to simple pathfinding just wouldn't move :D - I didn't find a way to cancel restoring from Recycling Bin - not sure if I'm dumb or clicking on it was irreversible
Flume
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
Thanks for participating and submitting an entry into the 7DRL jam! I found this entry to be a really unique idea. As an aside, I find it incredible that no matter how "old" the genre gets, there's never a lack of new ideas for it. This is a good concept, and I urge you to keep adding some polish to it if you can. Some sound effects might add some punch. I appreciated the challenges involved with the constraint around using either the axe or the hose. Also found myself humming the soundtrack to Backdraft while playing this.
I was keen to try this game. I liked the strategic/tactical aspect of this game, but it was lacking just a tiny bit of polish with the controls and levels to consider it a thoroughly realized idea. For example, I had levels where the fire would start immediately next to the civilian. Or the civilian would be spawned on top of boxes and I couldn't grab the civilian to lead them out. Really great idea and execution, though. Title art was great.
Hooked
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Complete, finished broughlike, without bugs (good) or depth (bad). Game looks quite nice with that retro entities, but the screen shake caused a headache after few levels. Hook tricks are cool but rarely useful - usually it's best to head straight to the stairs if there is a clear path (game doesn't reward kills and enemies are hardly a danger) or just wait in the bottleneck to hit monsters on the trot. Nice game, but only for few minutes.
Nice atmosphere - I have an impression that I'm this big ominous monster out of Silent Hill or Hellboy remake, dragging a giant hook behind me. In terms of aesthetics, I found it tedious to constantly wait for animations before making another turn. It really weighs the game down when you play 20+ levels. (hence 3 for aesthetics) Figuring out the hook mechanics was fun, and it allows for some interesting plays, but ultimately most of the levels did not require much thinking. Perhaps smarter level generation could improve this, but in its current state the game becomes mundane too quickly. (hence 2 for fun) I gave 3 for roguelikeness because the overall feel of the game is more of a puzzle than an interactive game.
HospiceRL
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Well done! This was a very interesting game! I particularly liked the procedural generation leading to lots of twists and turns and dead-ends as you explore your own mind. The different memories are really interesting, but seem pretty overpowered since it's relatively easy to outrun death(s) in an open space (fear and sorrow worked best for me). I would have liked some more details to make me feel more like I'm exploring my psyche, instead of a basic roguelike tileset in white and black. Some descriptions or flashbacks for the different memories would add to the atmosphere as well. Overall, very good job!
I like this game, really. Or maybe, I want to like it... But, unfortunately, only few first levels are playable. Every run I take ends with an endless loop around the 5th level of the dungeon. Probably it's triggered by certain memory stored in the inventory - I tried to "sorrow" from stairs to stairs to find if the bug is related to a certain floor, but with only sorrow in inv the bug never triggered. Also, I found out that every next level has a chance to spawn more _things_ - memories, rest places, and enemies, and at some point it's just unmanageable. HospiceRL looks clean. That's probably the best word... It's very traditional and modest - while walls, white player, red enemies, green memories, blue resting places - and nothing more. Simplistic, but it fits the game really well. The font is nice, clean and readable. The game relies on the atmosphere. I really like the dungeon generation here: several rooms put on the maze with many dead ends. It feels claustrophobic when you can't fight with enemies... On the other hand, it leads to one very specific problem: very often player is blocked by enemies without own fault - I need to explore the level at least a bit, and there is no way to tell if the corridor has a dead end or not. It's balanced by guaranteed "Sorrow" ability, though. Unfortunately, I don't know if the game has winning conditions due to the "endless loop bug" I mentioned in the first paragraph. HospiceRL has some nice twists on the usual roguelike mechanics. Relying only on consumables mix well with a horror atmosphere... There are elements I really like about that game - pity that's HospiceRL is just not polished enough.
Just Deserts
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
4
Funny premise. I like the thirst mechanic and that the fountain is a different emoji every few levels. Reinterpreting the levels with different sets of emojis is great, as some of the levels are really surreal.
Basically, "Just Deserts" is a game about pressing "5" and backtracking. And that's all due bad balance. But, first things first. Player starts in the middle of the desert. No directions, no pointers. There are enemies to fight with and thirst to quench. The main problem of this game are hard-hitting enemies. Bee can kill player in two hits. So, after killing a killer bee, player needs to rest to restore his 380HP. The best place to rest is next to the water source. So, player is constantly running from fight to oasis and mashing "rest" key. To become more sturdy, player needs to explore the whole map segment fully - but that's just boring because enemies and water sources are only interactive elements of the map. I have no idea if the game has a goal other than "survive as long possible". It doesn't look like that, but I never reached the fifth region. Aesthetically game is pleasant. Tiles (emojis? Unicode symbols?) are carefully chosen and their style is consistent. Color palette is nice, too.
Legend
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
There's a surprising amount of depth packed into the little pico-8 cart. It's also pleasantly challenging.
Stylish and fun cross between Zelda and a traditional RL. There's a good variety of weapons, enemies, and loot, although the rooms themselves are very similar. A number of tactical and combat options are provided, but rng will play a big part in the success or failure of a run. The controls are simple, keeping all actions to bumps and two buttons, but using items is not intuitive. A good idea executed well, wrapped up in a colorful lo-res package.
Monster Garden
Completeness
4
2
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
4
2
Innovation
4
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
This is a neat challenge, having your own pack of monsters play for you! Kept coming back for one more go, though I did get blocked a couple of times just before winning! Looks polished, impressive submission overall!
Monster catching game could be fun, but this implementation, unfortunately isn't. The game works, doesn'r crash, but is surely not really complete. Animations and controls are worst part of this prototype. With several monster moving turns take annoying amount of time. You cannot cancel automove. Single missclick might lead to game over. You cannot view stats of captured monsters. Depending on your luck you either loose after couple battles or the game become really easy after couple captured monsters. You don't really need to care much about elements. You can just overpower any opponent by sheer numbers. There were variatios on monster capturing in 7drl games at least in current state the game doesn't offer anything new. I would expect more from a solid 7drl entry, there is too little of actualy game here. The game is too simple to be called true roguelike.
Runner Gunner
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
4
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
The game runs fine, doesn't crash, but unfortunately there is major glitch related to rockets which ruins the experience. Visually the graphics does the job, but nothing too fancy. It's probably worth to win it once, but replayability is non-existent. There is no score, no different builds. There were attempt to make turn based side scrolling shooter as roguelike before, and some were more successful, so nothing new here. From a 7drl with mechanics this simple I would expect a bit more content, so it's on a lower side of ok. It could be called true roguelike it there were more meaningful decisions and more options. As it is it's more of a tactical puzzle.
This is a fun, simple game. The 4 sequential levels don't seem to get much harder after the second one. I really like the display of each enemies HP and whether or not they will fire next turn. I could never exactly predict when the explosive enemies would detonate themselves if not destroyed. I like the tactics of making enemies shoot each other. Good job!
Sow
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
4
4
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
Gorgeous cartoon-like graphics that reference the traditional RL characters in an inventive way. While some aspects of the UI, like the pig "sense", are effective, overall very little is communicated to the player. On the balance, the gameplay verges on being impenetrable.
Whoah, looks nice. What am I supposed to do? Brown ground starts to be green, yay! Now I have irregular green area and I have no idea what to do later. Plant a tree, of course! Is this tree interactive? It is, hell yeah! But the starting screen mentioned transformation into the pig... It works! But how? Is that some kind of radar. Try to follow it. And now I'm lost. Let's try again...
TankRL
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
4
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
Thought this was going to be easy until I realised the fuel mechanic and got stranded! Plays really nicely - planning three shots on the move feels good when you pull it off. A bit more arcade than traditional rl, but the proc gen is there and fun to keep retrying upon death, the pickups alter your play well like fuel efficiency, and there’s side strategies like get the enemies to take each other out if you run out of missiles. Enjoyed my playthrough!
The game run fine, doesn't crash, but suffers some strange performance problems and definitely not polished. There is no score, no level indicator, no UI for upgrades. I would definitely like alternative control scheme with directional movement, instead of rotation and forward/backward. With enough speed upgrades current scheme becomes really hard to use. It's somewhat fun to overcome initial fuel struggle and start melting these enemies with beam, but this becomes boring quite fast as there is no enemies difficulty progression. The games feels like generic arcade top down shooter, nothing new or interesting is going on. It is more or less fine for a 7drl. But, to be fair, it cannot be called a roguelike. At all. Random levels are not enough. You do not make any choices! You just move forward, kill enemies and pick everything that can be picked. You do not experience any interesting tactical situations. The gameplay relies purely on arcade reflexes and precision.
The Infiltration of Citrus Fortress
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Overall: The Infiltration of Citrus Fortress is an overall average entry for this year's 7-Day roguelike challenge. It scores high in roguelikeness because it plays very, very close to the classic roguelike formula. Despite some overly random elements messing with balance, it's a fun game with a bit of charm and at least a play or two is recommended. Good work overall; week well-spent. Completeness: The game runs pretty seamlessly overall, but there is a bug that affects the ability to pick up items if they happen to drop on a corpse. Also, the probabilities/maths/balancing of the game were not planned. I want to call out in particular, back to positives, a feature of being able to swap weapons/items easily and leave one on the floor and come back to get it later; not having to merely destroy unusable items is nice. Aesthetics: Standard roguelike aesthetics. The walls are more icon/tile-like and the entities are text-mode, and this reviewer would have rather seen more commitment one way or the other. One controls piece jumps out which is the inability to hold a direction to go in that direction. The monster descriptions are fun and on theme, though, and there's a bit of flavor text here and there that goes a long way. Fun: The game is fun for a few plays, but this reviewer found it a little too random to be engaging on a sustained level; at a certain point, between the randomness of item drops, player hits, and monster hits, the results of a given mission start to feel much more random than skill-based, and the most efficient method of healing is resting, normally. There's a lot of potential here; a bit more work on balance generally in the player's favor and specifically further away from randomness and luck-based elements would go a long way. Innovation: There's a little randomly chosen/generated menu of items to choose from for special level-up bonuses. That's about the most innovative thing. Scope: This is about what's expected for a 7DRL. Roguelikeness: This fits the bill! 3/3.
When the first encountered “S” kills me, I know I'm playing a roguelike:) While I don't have anything against a game that doesn't forgive the player his errors, this one seemed simply too difficult to me. Even though in my second run I found the possibly strongest weapon (great sword) at first level and my life was a chain of successes, I couldn't do almost anything against a few strongest types of opponents (including the Lemon King). Still it was pleasant to play such a classical game (rare for a 7DRL) containing many proven ideas.
MushLike
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
It's a bit simplistic but I found the presentation to be pretty cute.
Nice little game. Aesthetics are cute, the concept is pretty novel as well. I never did quite figure out what some of the mushrooms did. I also ran into an issue - when I entered floor three, the screen went totally black except for my character. I thought maybe this was my cue to use a glowshroom but I couldn't trigger it.
MushLike is a mushroom-themed graphical 7DRL that is feature complete in many ways but, in its current state, it is likely to gather mold. Completeness (3/5): The graphics, music, inventory system, and combat were all well-implemented, and there was even a bit of above-and-beyond work with that nifty hot bar, procedural talent tree, and graphical effects. But there was not a whole lot of variety or balancing and (most problematic of all) I could not get past level 2 or 3 of the dungeon because it would refuse to generate in repeated tries! But we don't expect perfection in a 7DRL, so it's at least an average in terms of completion. Aesthetics (3/5): The graphical tiles, UI, chiptune music, and animations were all strong features, though roguelikes tend to focus more on function than form. Along those lines, there were a number of issues that brought MushLike down. The way that the movement keys switched between movement and rotation on action activation was jarring. I could not tell if I had already taken a talent on the tree or not because the icon is identical, nor was there any indication that you needed to invest in prerequisite talents. The bigger mushroom pickups were so large that my first impression was they were movement-blocking mold. I had no way of checking my progress towards the next talent point and little feedback on how much damage I was doing, though either feature was not completely necessary. Taken altogether, the aesthetics probably should have been MushLike's strongest point, but these little UI detractions accumulated to the point where I felt it fairer to rate it as average. Fun (2/5): The main thing dragging down the fun of Mushlike is that the players' input does not take priority over the movement animation, so getting your character across a room takes a lot longer than it should. The movement interruption is a little thing that becomes a big thing because of how frequently the player has to do it. However, given the lack of balancing, the combat was more of a speed bump, and that's not so good considering this is the main activity in the game. It looks like there may have been plans for elemental-themed mushroom attacks, but I did not feel it necessary to bother when I played it, the whole magic system seems incomplete. Since there was a minimal need for a player to think tactically, all the digging through dirt didn't really add much to the game, it just slowed it down further (though it did add some much-needed variety to the level composition). The gameplay was better than a poke in the eye but difficult to recommend. Innovation (3/5): I feel that the inclusion of the procedural talent tree, unique inventory handling, and frequent digging demonstrated at least a token effort to innovate. However, they did little to enliven relatively standard core gameplay mechanics. Scope (3/5): Though the work put into the UI was above average, the core mechanic and depth of the content was not. My experiences might have been better if I were able to descend further into the dungeon without the level generation failing, but I estimate that what I found down there would likely have been a fair average for 7DRL entries. Roguelikeness (4/5): Featuring turn-based combat, procedural dungeons, bump combat resolution, and random distribution of enemies and items, I feel that Mushlike was strongly roguelike. It's not literally as deep as Rogue, as there was no hunger clock, unidentified items, or a number of other hallmarks reminiscent of stronger examples of the genre, but it still managed to pull off an above-average semblance for this jam.
Robot Racers RL
Completeness
4
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
3
2
3
Innovation
4
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
2
Pretty interesting challenge, especially the maze level!
Robot Racers RL is a game about programming a robot with preloaded instruction and trying to get to the goal before the competing AI bots can, all while dealing with a few interactive obstructions on the playfield. But it is, in my estimation, not a roguelike. The game is played on single pre-made playfields, which is ASCII and grid-based. I believe the instructions you are allotted may be randomized. The game feels complete, but it does run into situations where it freezes up if too much is going on, and I encountered what appeared to be an infinite loop with one racer on a conveyor system that kept bumping into itself. The game looks clean, with a fitting color palette, distinguishable symbols, and intuitive controls. I did get a mild rush as I got closer to the level goals, vying to beat out my opponents. Often the intermediate steps were skipped visually, so it wasn't always clear how all of the racers ended up in their final positions at the end of a sequence. Overall a neat game with some potential for fun user-generated maps, but does not play like a roguelike.
The game looks polished and feels like a completed project. When the enemies move, the game becomes unresponsive for a few seconds and resumes after the enemies have moved. This hinders the experience a bit, but the game is enjoyable non the less. The concept is neat and something that I haven't really seen before in this context. That said however, the game doesn't really feel like a roguelike.
Yendor March
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
3
Fun
3
3
2
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
3
Original premise, but small in scope. The graphic and map tiles are used well and the island setting is fresh. Some noticeable FOV bugs and randomized levels are frequently unplayable. Very few tactical options, but there is strategy to consider. Needs expansion and polish, but could be developed into something interesting.
That's one of these games: you like the game, you want to give it a good score, you _would_ give it a good score; but somehow, you can't justify it... First of all, the game feels complete in terms of features and mechanics. Yet, there is a couple of bugs, some game elements could be more polished... Still, game makes a good impression. Yendor March is aesthetically pleasing. Nice tiles, simple and clear UI. One confusing thing is the mute/unmute button while the game seems to have no sounds at all. Basic game loop kept me interested for a few runs. Basically, it feels like a roguelike with a focus on simple resource management, inspired by memory games :) It's always worth remembering when plains and villages are. Combat is also simple yet satisfying, so it fits the "fun" bill for me. It's not clear for me, however, how the resource loses is calculated - sometimes, for several turns after the fight, I kept losing recruits. At first, I thought it's about low morale, but after a few next combats I'm not sure about that anymore. Enemy knights and bandits could be more interactive - now it's like living labyrinth that forces you to think about alternative paths. And that's OK, but the enemies itself are not dangerous. Yendor March has one really tedious element. To win the game, the player needs to take the castle. But first, player needs to _find_ the castle. And that's the problem - maps are big, FOV irregular due to abundance of trees, and sometimes I had to run into circles several times just to find that one tile on the whole map. Roguelikes rarely focus on resources management in that way. It plays almost like (ultra simplified) Mount & Blade variant. PS. I gave good marks. I just wish I could give even better ratings...
There were some things I enjoyed about the game, and some things I did not. Positives: * The morale/supplies/fighters as resources is an interesting idea, and seems to balance pretty well * Viewing the world generation is pretty cool * With more features, this can be an exciting game to play. This includes both features directed at clarity (like seeing information about the opponents beyond the HP bar), and new mechanics - escape mechanisms, fog of war, perhaps something else that increases complexity and possible strategies. * The music fits the atmosphere well - I think you should unmute it by default! Negatives: * Without some additional features, the game feels a bit empty, at least to me. I imagine that either more complex mechanics, or more involved narrative could help. * There are some bugs, both mechanics-wise (seeds 1 and 12 outright place the player in the sea), and display-wise (somebody called out picking up a peasant - I experienced that as well). I gave 3 for completeness, because my real impression is somewhere around 2.5, but the game doesn't deserve a 2. Rounded the score for fun down to 2 instead, but want to explicitly state that I think this concept can be developed into an exciting game - it just does not prove very replayable in its current state. Gave 3 for roguelikeness for roughly same reasons - it is a roguelike mechanics-wise, but the interactions and replayability aren't quite the same.
7 Day Rogue
Completeness
3
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
2
Fun
3
4
2
Innovation
2
3
2
Scope
3
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
4
7 Day Rogue is a fun, if minimally-featured, textbook roguelike. Descend 10 floors and kill the Balrog haunting a dungeon. The leveling curve of the game is pretty standardized, so in addition to managing a few basic tactics, along the way you have to figure out which equpiment is best to equip on a given floor, staying ahead of the general power-curve. When you equip an item lying on the ground (sight unseen), the equipment you had is discarded, with no chance to get it back. Since equipment's so important, and the bonuses vary widely, that makes this game a bit more luck-based than I'd like. Still, if the author decided to go in a direction embracing the sort of "gambling" sub-game that results from the equipment system, allow potion drops to be stored and used later, and work a bit to tone down the endgame "luck" elements, I think they would have a really solid minimalist roguelike on their hands. If you intend on finishing this game, multiple runs to level 10 and a somewhat high luck factor in completing the game may hurt your good time a bit, but this one is worth at least a few plays to see how a very basic roguelike can still be fun. Completeness: The game is complete and completable. I was unable to complete it after getting to the last boss 3-4 times, at least 2 of which were with (what seemed to be) decent gear. It is possible in the live vesion (as of the time of this writing) to go past the last floor and ruin your ability to complete the endgame, and I know this because that is how one of my attempts ended. Aesthetics: The game features pretty basic menus that 'stay out of the way' for the most part. It's not good to have the "descend?" question pop up every time you pass the ladders to the next floor, but nothing else sticks out as problematic. Bonus here for: 1. having the level grow in size each floor. That was a really neat way to show progression and keeps the early game from being too monotonous. 2. The themed weapon/armor/amulet names. Fun: The game features very basic hallway tactics and an emergent equipment-choice minigame. It's not clear why the player isn't allowed to move all 8 directions, since almost all of the monsters can, and the game (particularly the last boss) feels like a bit of a luck-based mission. Equipment makes or breaks as much if not more than tactics if you don't get the right equipment, you're pretty much doomed to fail. And when you equip an item lying on the ground (sight unseen), the equipment you had is discarded, with no chance to get it back. Since equipments usually come in groups of 2-5 per type (excepting amulets, which are much rare and also feel much more variable in their bonus levels), it becomes a bit of a gambling subgame to figure out if new equipment is worth it. It's fun, and (until the very end) pretty fair. Innovative: This is a basic hack'n'slash roguelike. Scope: The game has a win condition and is completable, and boasts a nice amount of content, but not an overwhelming amount for seven days. Roguelikeness: This is pretty much exactly a rogue-like.
Thanks a lot for this entry! I had a lot of fun with it. I really enjoyed the random items names, along with knowing the name of the Goblin that killed me. It's an interesting set of spawn calculations for the mobs. Level 1-3 are a good set of "intro" levels to teach you the game - then Level 4 just hits you with a Mac Truck of mobs. A few sound effects would be a good addition...maybe even a quiet background music track. Thanks for submitting, and hopefully you had a great time putting this together!
Great start to a game! Some work on the UI and more complex monsters and items would make this game really shine.
Ambition of the Jelly Lord
Completeness
4
3
4
Aesthetics
4
2
4
Fun
3
2
3
Innovation
3
2
4
Scope
3
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
3
Ambition of the Jelly Lord is a charming game that could be compared to a turn-based Katamari Damacy. The game is very simple in design and mechanics, but feels complete and polished. The aesthetics are a highlight of the game, with nice music containing hilarious lyrics, an overall look and design that creates a cohesive theme and feel, and simple controls that are easy to use. The game was fun to try but in its current state feels repetitive and slow after several replays. Although turn-based, the game lacks many features that I would consider essential to a traditional roguelike, and in practice the game felt like it wanted to be played in real-time. Overall I really enjoyed this one for its style.
The game runs, doesn't crash, but very barebone. Controls are awful. While the game is technically turn based, it is way too annoying and slow to play it in turn based fashion. Movement is not aligned with the dungeon. This is very inconvenient. The game is too basic and annoying to be fun. At least as it is. Be a small fish, eat even smaller fish to become bigger to be able to east even bigger fish. Not that this theme is explored very well in roguelikes, but this game, unfortunately, doesn't add anything interesting. Way to simple for a 7drl. I'm afraid it have nothing to do with roguelikes, at least in its current state.
I first tried this without sound, and replaying it with headphones for the review was one of the most pleasant surprises I've had this 7DRL. The cheeky music is great, and it adds so much to the game's aesthetic, turning it from what could've, at worst, been yet another, pretty bland "eat things to grow larger, which lets you eat more things" game, into one of the most charming submissions this year. The unusual, format-twisty part in Ambition of the Jelly Lord is that the player's movement isn't constrained to a grid; instead, the titular slime moves farther the larger it grows. Unfortunately, I don't think the idea works - it removes from the gameplay much of the tactical interest inherent in roguelikes, and makes for a very slow early game on some of the maps. I felt like the turns artificially slowed down what would've worked better as just a real-time "eat things to grow larger" game, which is ultimately what made me lower my "roguelikeness" score - it feels like a non-roguelike with a roguelike mechanic tacked on, and one that doesn't feel like it meshes with the rest of the game at all. Having said that, it still remains a great, incredibly endearing and lovable entry, in no small part due to the music. It gave me a new perspective on how much music can add to a game - great job!
D.rogue #7DRL 2020
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Thanks for participating in the 7DRL and getting an entry submitted. Hopefully you had a lot of fun / learned a lot from putting this together. I thought it was a cute little dungeon romp game with some neat little touches like FOV and an inventory to manage. I'm not sure how many levels there are (infinite?), but I had a decent time going through them. Demons got hard yo.
The game is reasonably complete for a 7DRL. It's shallow and therefore feels much more like skeleton of the game than like a true game, but all major systems are present and I didn't spot any major bugs (except that first downstairs seem to always regenerate first level). Ah - [ESC] key that quits the game without prompt is evil. D.rogue #7DRL 2020 uses really nice tiles, has simple and fast animations, and has even sounds (...well, *sound*)... Everything is clear and readable. One major problem is animation - like a screen zoom - on attack; after some time I got headache, and there is no way to disable it. Playing this game is pleasant experience - it's just nice to stroll through the dungeon, bash red guys and check on inventory sometimes. But I have to say, game is shallow (and too easy, but I guess for 7DRL that's better than too hard). Some mechanics are unpolished. There is no "wait" command but it's easy to skip turns by bumping the wall, AI has problems with corners often, and player progress feels totally insignificant. Looks like there is no winning condition. There isn't real procgen here - levels are chosen from premade set of floors, but somehow the game feels roguelike-ish enough to warrant high score... I think that game could be much better with just a little more polish and content...
Dreams of Collapse
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
4
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
The core, innovative mechanic here -- the ability to re-generate a portion of the environment -- is intriguing, but it's not used to its potential here. Where this could be a radically game-changing abilty, enabling whole new ways to deal with challenges, in practice this is primarily used for redrawing walls when you are (quite literally) completely boxed in, simply to allow you to move forward. Occasionally you might use it to get rid of a bunch of baddies if you're overwhelmed, but that's not particularly reliable. Other than that, the thematic overlay is a cool idea, but a bit under utilized -- there's not much dream-like about the environment, though it is aestheticly pleasing. Music is good. Basically plays like a very simple standard RL. Ultimately, this is a promising concept, but the submission doesn't quite function as a proof of that concept. Would be interested to see it developed further.
The game is promising and reasonably complete entry, but could be more polished. The mechanics, while interesting, are not explained in any way, game works slow, and animations take too much time, control scheme could be better.
Dungeons of Makius
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
4
4
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
4
3
Super pretty game! Between the color, presentation, and diverse landscapes it was easy to get pretty immersed. It was cool to have the characters in the game at the forefront visually. I would have loved to see the mechanics fleshed out a little more.
This game have very nice presentation, nice storyline, but very boring gameplay. Once you realize that the only thing that really matters is your attack being higher than an enemy's HP, you fall into a tedious cycle where only visuals change.
Four Gates
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Neat Pico-8 roguelike. The mechanics are all there - bump combat, exploration, inventory and a hunger clock in the form of medicine. Nothing revolutionary but decently made.
Four Gates is a compact little adventure, at 7 levels long. That's not a criticism - many 7DRLs are either literally endless (a 'see how far you get' sort of thing) or don't make it clear what their end point is. Having a short game with a defined end point actually makes it a lot more playable. Being a Pico-8 game, it has a pleasantly retro look if you like that kind of thing (I do). The game is fundamentally very simple, and its control scheme is correspondingly straightforward. I found the lack of a way to wait a bit grating, and it caused me to take damage a fair few times. You can wait by bumping into something, but that's not always an option. It's a minor niggle though. I have to point out that that the game crashes quite a lot on death. That's not a big deal - if you've just died anyway then nothing is lost by having to refresh the page - but it bears mentioning. It took me a while to realise what was going on with the wobbling blobs which sometimes become people (or which people sometimes become, if you drink a potion). Once I got it, it was quite clever. You health gradually deteriorates, and as it does so it also causes more enemies to appear - in the form of animating these blobs. That means you can actually have some idea of how much more dangerous a room might become based on how many potential enemies are sitting in there. It's an interesting idea. My main criticism is that success or failure hangs too much on whether the direction you arbitrarily choose to walk in takes you to the stairs. Time is very tight with your fading health, and if you happen to walk in the wrong direction then that alone is a death sentence. I've heard it said on Roguelike Radio that in many roguelikes your death results from something that happened much earlier. That's the case here - if you spend too long getting to the stairs because you happened to walk the wrong way, you might survive another couple of levels, but you won't have time to make it to the end. While failure can quite rightly come at the hands of sloppy play or failure to make use of items, success really only comes with lucky choice of directions, which makes winning more arbitrary than it ideally should be. Still, the game is pretty pleasant for the short time it takes to luck into a win, and the mechanic with linking enemy spawns to health (and signposting their possible locations) is intriguing enough to make Four Gates worth a quick visit.
IronTowerRL
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
The idea of a permanent communal dungeon is interesting, and to make it more meaningful the player should get a sense of another player's story. NetHack's bones files do this because their inventory is complex enough that it can tell a story on its own. Another way would be to show the monster's corpses and player's blood splatters from a particular journey so you can reconstruct what they did.
The core idea of a shared dungeon with every new climber changing the dungeon for everyone else is awesome. One of the things that roguelikes normally lack is interaction with others, and this concept puts a really nice twist to it. I imagine setting up a server took some serious effort as well. Unfortunately, there are many problems with the game's current release. It can outright crash when ascending to the next level, and some of the core mechanics don't work as expected - like gaining hp from enemies' attacks. It also doesn't seem to have features beyond the simple 4 slots and bump attack. Unfortunately 2 for completeness. Aesthetics-wise, the game in its current shape is very basic. The color scheme and font could be nicer. It seems like items can overlay on top of the stairs and hide them, and % overlays on top of enemies. Unfortunately 2 for aesthetics. Fun-wise, the interactive concept of IronTowerRL makes up for some other deficiencies. I gave a 3. In terms of innovation, we have a very minimal set of roguelike mechanics coupled with an unusual interactive idea - averages to 3 in my mind. I am divided on scope here. On one hand, setting up client-server interaction is impressive in its own regard. On another, the functionality currently supported in the client is rather minimal. Again, went with 3 due to these considerations. Honestly, with less bugs and more features this concept could be amazing - please don't get discouraged by the relatively low score!
Nayr Odyssey
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
2
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
4
Scope
3
4
Roguelikeness
3
3
This game has a lot of flaws which compound into a rather poor experience. This is a game where turn order is important but the turn order UI element on the left doesn't have enough slots so you can't look far enough ahead to predict anything. It's not clear when an enemy will be moving or attacking. This makes it too hard to pull off any tactic more complex than a turtle strategy. The turn order also doesn't remove defeated enemies, so it stays cluttered for the entire sector. Sectors don't seem to be randomly generated, and you have to memorize which sectors will have what in order to make progress. Entering some sectors without shields up will kill you before you can react to what's in them. That itself is fine, but I feel like I'm playing chicken with every sector border I approach as I prepare to raise shields. Combat seems to be the only way to gain skill points, which means you'd need to engage with combat if you wanted to make a non-combat build. Combat is also slow and tedious, there's a lot of menuing unless you want to just park or coast into combat and attack whatever ends up in range. Even then there's a lot of waiting for enemy turns, even after enemies have been defeated they still take time on their turn. The game plays slowly, even when you know what orders you want to give at all times. I wanted an option to disable all animations. Sleeping crew members is possible, but using that system too much will get you killed, especially since entering another sector won't unsleep your crew. Eventually I decided that it would take too much time to make the same progress I had when I last died. So I stopped playing there. The actual crew system isn't as good as I'd hoped. It's kind of disappointing that you give them exact orders rather than giving them more general ones like: "move to effective range", or "fire on nearest/weakest/strongest". When you have two crew members which need to coordinate movement you will easily make the ship fly off in the wrong direction briefly before turning it in the right direction. I'm not sure I would describe this as a positive feature. I can't help but compare this game unfavorably to Star Trek (1971).
I appreciate the wide scope of the game you achieved during these 7 days. Also the graphical style is great — everything gives an impression that you're in early 90s. There is something about the gameplay which makes me think that I don't have control over what happens. Maybe it's because there are many options and game elements, but eventually I end up running away from horde of enemies towards the border. Trying to finish them off one by one is hard and takes lots of time.
Nemesis on the High Seas
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
The roguelike game about pirates, treasure and cannon fight? Hell, Yeah! Well. It would be Hell, Yeah, if the game had more :) While the game wors fine and doesn't crash, there is a bug where final fight might not start and the game become unwinnable. Controls are more or less fine, but repair and purchase could have repar all and purchase max buttons. With 50+ hp it's somewhat tedious to repair. The game is way too simple and unbalanced to be fun. Pirates and ships is far from being unexplored theme in roguelike genre. Can't say that it is solid 7drl entry content-wise, but there is definitely more than 'nothing'. The game has a potential to be a true roguelike, but in it's current state it is not.
"Nemesis on the High Seas" is a good relatively quick and easy game. I enjoyed finishing it with both factions, even if the difference is marginal. That said, I felt like it has some unrealized potential, and also it's a bit too easy right now. The tutorial and stats do a good job of explaining most of the stuff. The only unanswered question for me was the distance of ship cannons. Regarding unrealized potential: in the beginning, I had this impression that there is a lot of depth in the game - pirate stories, factions, legendary ghost ship, what not. But after several minutes, after accidentally triggering Nemesis, I realized that I had seen everything the game had to offer already. It would be lovely to have more stuff in it. Also I'd suggest that getting to fight Nemesis should be a bit harder. Which brings me to ... Difficulty! I don't know whether there was any penalty to digging on the same spot repeatedly, but once I found a digging spot I'd just keep digging there until I got my fill of coins, and then went for upgrades at the traders' outpost. I ended up never burying coins either. I think there needs to be a mechanic that discourages such play, otherwise the game is essentially a bit of repetitive grinding followed by the final showdown.
Of Mist And Shadows
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
There seems to be a bug that locks the game and prevents you from moving or aiming, even version 1.2. It seems to trigger when ancient chaos is nearby. 1.2 also hung indefinitely on a level transition. Stacking meta-word combos was interesting, but the game was too unstable for me to play with it very much.
A good entry! Thanks for entering the jam and submitting something. Had a minor issue figuring out the navigation, but it's all good. I really liked the atmosphere building creature growls. Nice work. The spell casting was a good mechanic - one slight observation is in the grimoire listing, since the spell is "school element target", list them the same way in the spell book. eg. The school section first, then the element section followed by target. Hope your team had a good time putting this together!
Reignited Lands
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
The game is interesting at first, but it lacks a clear goal. Also, it is very unbalanced, with you being swarmed continuously by various enemies and spending 4-6 attacks to kill each enemy. The equipment system is interesting, but the new equipment you get isn't very helpful, giving only a small increase in stats that are effective only in very specific cases. Once I managed to become immune to attacks of one kind of enemy, but only if I was standing on a tile of water, not much of help when there are like eight enemies of different types all around you. The base mechanics and the equipment stats thing look like they could be very fun to play with, but with this unbalanced state, they aren't. Actually, I never even managed to get two different pieces of the same equipment (say, armor or helmet) to be in a position to need to analyze the tradeoffs and decide which one to keep. Simply because the equipment is too far spread and the enemies always swarmed in a way that made survival impossible.
The game has a neat look to it! Sometimes the equipment spawns on unwalkable tiles such as water or skyward, which is a bit frustrating. The enemy spawn rate is a bit brutal and the longshot feels a tad too powerful when a myriad of other enemies is present. As a player I felt a lack of a clear objective. Should I try to survive as long as possible or try to reach the end of the ever expanding landscape? Is the game winnable? Defeating the enemies didn't feel that rewarding. Thank you for participating!
feederRL
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
4
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
Well... Yet another incomplete game. It could be potentially fun, but it is hard to even grasp the idea from what was actually implemented. The ballance is totally off. IMO it's better to make a bit easy game than impossible to progress game for a challenge. Probably could become somewhat innovative, but it's hard to tell. I would expect from a normal 7drl game to be playable and winnable. There could be bugs and not too much content. Graphics and music is not what 7drl challenge is about.
There are some really interesting ideas here, but it needs some work to tie it all together. The game is stable, and runs fine, but has some game-ending bugs; it doesn't crash, but the player can't progress past them. I really like your choice of tileset and color. The levels look interesting and the creatures are easily identifieable (and really cute!). The UI clearly indicates what's going on. The CONSUME control was a little confusing at first, since I thought I would use it to consume an enemy from the battleground as opposed to consume an enemy already in my belly for the ability changes. I found this game to be fun, yet difficult and not very fulfilling it its current state. Enemies like the penguin or fish are easy prey, but squirrels were tough, requiring hit and run tactics. It was not obvious that breeding two different animals (like a penquin and squirrel) would combine their abilites based on the order they were bred. Consuming didn't seem to provide any real benefits since penguins remove the healing ability and fish destroy your max health and vision. I was unable to defeat the interesting enemies due to either being unable to take their first hit (big birds and reapers) or unable to deal enough damage to defeat them (the blue owls). There might have been an early game strategy of consuming or breeding certain enemies that I missed in order to progress further. Due to the way the enemy ai was configured, it was very difficult to be in a situation where you can strike an enemy without taking the first hit, making survival very difficult. I like the consuming and breeding mechanics. Since defeating enemies adds them to a queue, it leads to interesting decision making about which enemies to eat first, depending if you want to consume them or save them for breeding. It is interesting that the player swaps between dungeon and belly when progressing to the next level, though it would have been nice if the belly level spawned the player and stairs in the same place each time. The effects of consuming were fun to discover, especially since they had effects at the end of turn and end of level. It was also fun to decide how to breed enemies to get the optimal effects. Unfortunately, I didn't see effects that benefitted me greatly outside of the healing given at the beginning of the game. Thank you very much for developing this game!
Bad Dreams & Sad Memories
Completeness
3
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
2
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
4
Warning: Writing really lives up to it's title. Explores an interesting idea here on how to theme consumable items.
Bad Dreams & Sad Memories I don't want to spoil this too much for the reader, but this is a game worth playing. It takes a roguelike mechanic and applies it to a protagonist's bad dreams and mixed memories in trying to deal with depression/anxiety. As you wander your dreamscape, your goal is to discover the mixed or good memories that bring you calm rather than dread, so as to wake up peacefully rather than in a cold sweat. I'm not a doctor and can't speak to the exact "soundness" of everything therein, but as a game, this is interesting, strange, sad and wonderful all in its own way. It feels a bit "rogue-lite puzzle" overall, but I'm not certain this game needs to go full roguelike; I personally kind of like the weird hybrid that it is. Completeness: This is a pretty stable game, with the one minor bug now quashed in a post-7DRL release. It's not super-polished or balanced, unfortunately, leaving it at middle-of-the-road marks here. Aesthetics: The game is aesthetically fitted for what it is; everything seems muted by a fairly consistent grey background, and is mostly functional. Controls for examining the things in your dreamspace at things (a huge mechanic of the game), and might not ever be my thing, but they're not *bad*. The writing is pretty good. Fun: This game is really compelling to play. You wander your dreams, going from room to room, usually in a disjointed way that seems (at least in my experience) to somewhat approximate the mismatched way things interact in dreams. And when you read, you want to learn and discover more about the life of this little @ symbol. But it's made less engaging and a little more frustrating that there's a good chance of spawning into a series of death-rooms at the start, with little hope of waking up well after. Mechanically, it's a simple and somewhat luck-based game, once you know where the good and bad memories are found, but compelling in concept and for the most part in execution. Innovation: This is a neat twist on a combat-less formula that seems to serve well. Perhaps some procedural generation to the items/people you encounter and the memories associated would have done it better in this regard. Scope: This is about what one expects from seven days of work; there's a lot of quality writing here! Roguelikeness: I think this one feels a bit more "lite", though certain elements are definitely there; in tone the game's more of an artsy puzzle than a tactical or strategic situation, and while there are definite randomized elements, winning the game is likely to be a matter of meta-progression for most players. More procedural generation of areas and area types, or ability to avoid or subdue the eponymous bad dreams, tactically or strategically, would probably increase the roguelikeness factor. That said, I think those things could maybe be done for balance or challenge reasons (especially tactical avoidance of bad dreams) but I'm not certain this game needs to go full roguelike; I kind of like the weird hybrid that it is.
The game itself feels rather like a skeleton than a real game. There is clear idea, but some mechanics just doesn't work as I would expect, and most of them is not explained. Given the topic and atmosphere I may belive that it's by design... But it doesn't work well. For example I wasn't able to target anything manually, I had to rely on autotarget. "Remembering" mechanics also isn't explained. It's hard to judge aesthetics. On the one hand it's just... not good (except for not readable enough font, it looks just generic), but I really like the colors (maybe black could be a bit more... eerie) and it somehow manages to create disturbing atmosphere. Lack of completeness affects the fun - it's hard to play even simple game when the mechanics are not explained. On the other hand, game is simple enough to allow player figuring out the rules. Other than that, game is rather hard - it's rather easy to flee from the monsters, but "t"argeting system doesn't help with learning about surroundings (and again, it may be by design, but it doesn't work well) and the game punished the mistakes. While I wasn't really enjoying playing BDSM (...just found out that abbreviation - I wonder if that's intentional?), the atmosphere is suggestive and I was running around in panick like in bad dream often. Bad Dreams & Sad Memories hardly brings something new to the roguelike table, but there is definitely not enough horror roguelikes here.
Bomblike
Completeness
2
4
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
It's an okay turn-based Bomberman clone, but it doesn't do much to expand on the idea, and is even missing some mechanics that you'd expect from a clone (such as remote controlled bombs or pushable objects.)
Bomblike is a puzzle-y blend of coffee-break roguelikes and bomberman-likes, played on small maps with simple mechanics. The game feels polished and no bugs were encountered during the gameplay. The games aesthetics are very effective, with distinguished use of colors and symbols, and simple controls; resulting in a game that's very easy to pick up, understand, and play. You can find several types of bombs, many of which are lateral upgrades rather than direct improvements. As the levels progress, you are introduced to new enemy types with new movement patterns and mechanics. There's even a hunger clock personified as the fun police. Bomblike is a high quality coffee-break roguelike, well done!
Break 2020 7DRL
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
While technically the game is complete and doesn't crash, it is too barebone and simple to be called really complete, not menthion polished. There is some weirdness with things disappearance. You press an enter on a scroll, but the scroll disappears with some delay, which is quite confusing. When a projectile hits an enemy and the enemy moves at the same time, it looks like it missed, but actually it hit. Most of the time narrator text appears when I was focused on combat, so I missed most of it. At the very least it should appear in message log. The game is way too simple and straightforward to be any fun. Idea with good and bad narrators is interesting. Can't say that this very implementation explores it good enough. There is borderline enough content for an average 7drl entry. I wish there was more in terms of variety. Also I cannot call this game true roguelike. Yes, it is turn based, there are weapons with different stats. But since stats are numeric only, some weapons are strictly better that other. So it's no brainer to pick or not to pick. Combat is very simple. There are no meaningful choices. You just roll thru the game almost without thinking.
Cool story of the competing voices, and one of them swallowing the other. I didn't quite understand story-wise what we did to annoy the bad voice to materialize in the end though. My biggest issue was the final boss: the levels starts rather zoomed in, so I had to make a couple of steps to actually see what I was fighting, which cost me tactical advantage and, eventually, my life. On a second playthrough, I purposefully did not approach the boss, waited until it shot at me (still from beyond my range of vision), and then cast fireballs at it until it died. For whatever reason, it did not shoot me at all after that first shot. Considering that other enemies' AI is doing an okay job, the boss seemed undercooked. In terms of aesthetics, the abrupt screen movement took some time to get used to, and was a bit painful to play with. The sprites are beautiful though; final demon looks like Shadow Fiend, hehe.
Ponto Sneak
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
2
2
Fun
3
3
Innovation
4
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
4
This game obviously has a great deal of tactical depth, but I was only able to access half of it due to the complete lack of instructions or manual.
This game was extremely difficult for me to figure out. A one-paragraph explanation of the mechanics and what the different icons do (I only managed to figure out like three of them, and I still don't know what the little pips in the UI indicate) would go a long way; as it stands, Ponto Sneak isn't really the highly tactical, interesting Broughlike it could've been, but more of a "I'm going to move this way and hope the orange guy icon does something useful". The game is pretty short, especially since you can just run through the levels with little regard for the enemies or pickups. The art is okay. It certainly has an aesthetic to it. The map generation was the most enjoyable part of Ponto Sneak, for me - even though the levels are very small, they are usually pretty interesting, and have a very nice progression of difficulty. Overall, I feel like this would've been a much more enjoyable game if it was slightly longer, and offered at least a short explanation of what the player avatar can do - to actually make it play more strategically.
PulseEXE
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
4
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
3
Fun spaceship roguelike that’s a little light on content. Combat felt a little unbalanced at times and the visuals were a bit chaotic. It was tough to figure out what was happening at first. I appreciated the non-dungeon theme
PulseEXE is a visually delightful spaceship shooter with complex multiple-turn attacks from enemies that the player must navigate to survive. The game is reasonably complete but lacks a certain refinement and could use some more variety to keep it interesting across multiple playthroughs. The game looks very pretty, with light pulse and nebulae inspired art and animations, but the UI felt a little lacking, with it not being immediately clear what all "power ups" did, and no definitive indication of the player's health (I did eventually notice that the ship appears more damaged as you get closer to death). The game has a unique focus on complex ranged attacks that are resolved with strategic movement to dodge the effects, but otherwise follows an arcade-like turn-based two-dimensional space exploration format. The game falls just short of being considered a true roguelike for me, perhaps some sort of player progression with experience, upgrades, inventory, or similar would solidify that distinction.
Scrap World RL
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
A fairly well executed, by-the-numbers RL. The game crashes periodically, but it's still possible to play for long stretches. There are different enemy types and some items, but gameplay would benefit from some balancing. The different map and FOV types help establish a sense of place and add a welcome variety to the traditional formula.
This is a fun game! I like that the ranged attack follows the direction you last moved; it leads to some interesting strategy, though that method is a bit overpowered. I'm not sure I found all the different items, but the ones I did find were interesting to equip. The UI is clear and understandable and the controls are straightforward (though it took me a while to find the (i)nventory command). ASCII is used well, and the colors are appropriate. The lack of sounds is noticeable. All the little descriptions give the game some additional depth and character. Unfortunately, I'm unsure if I beat the game or not; I fully explored the factory and dispatched all enemies a couple times, but was unable to find anywhere to go after that. This is a solid 7DRL. Thanks you for your entry!
Station Salvage
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
Not a bad effort. I enjoy the idea of charging your weapon and then firing it in the direction you've charged - it adds a bit of a positioning aspect to an otherwise very simple game. I also appreciate that there's more than one way to win. The game does what it does perfectly adequately and is largely free of bugs (though I did encounter one where if you bump into an enemy when you've already charged your weapon, it can displace the shot to an adjacent space). My main criticism would be that there isn't much content. Creating a game in 7 days is a tall order, and producing something that works and is playable is no mean feat. Still, I can't rate it higher because there just isn't enough here. I'd won the game both ways in under ten minutes, and nothing aside from layout changes from one play to the next. Again, I respect getting a game finished in a week. It just needs more game to it in order to score better. A decent start though.
Lash
Completeness
4
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
3
3
4
Scope
3
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
3
Definitely best to use gamepad for this. Having slowdown when selecting gravity direction is an excellent accessibility feature. The gravity mechanics also work well and leave room for more exploration.
There are only very limited roguelike elements (there appears to be some very minor randomisation of the route through the level) - this game is more of a puzzle platformer. The central gimmick is the ability to change the direction of gravity for both yourself and enemies, which is an interesting idea though it isn't really utilised much in the 7DRL version besides giving the ability to drop your enemies onto spikes. Controls feel a bit fiddly even with a gamepad and collision detection is a little wonky - your sword attacks will sometimes connect and sometimes not. The game culminates in a 'boss' which is actually just a room similar to all the others encountered so far but with the word 'boss' on the back wall - the dungeon minions seem to be keen on collective responsibility. The menu at the end of the game also does not seem to be fully implemented. The sprites used are quite nicely drawn and animated, but the overall look is a bit brown and dull. While deviation from Roguelike norms is not intrinsically a bad thing, a few more roguelike elements (such as being grid- and turn-based) could help in this case to mitigate the control issues and bring out the tactical possibilities of the gravity-changing.
This game is very short, could have more content to it. The gravity mechanic is interesting, but feel a bit clumsy, could receive more polish on usability. There were lots of bugs, like being stranded inside a wall when I accidentally changed gravity on the direction into the wall on which I was standing. Also lots of times the block of stone didn't kill the enemy, it just started floating right above it without touching or hurting it. Overall, an interesting take, but too short and buggy to be really captivating to play.
Archipelago: A 7DRL
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
3
Innovation
2
Scope
3
Roguelikeness
3
I enjoyed it. I loved seeing the banana people sending each other boats as well as the different ways to find where the demon was, even if the boss died in one hit. Reminded me a little of Sid Meier's Pirates. Different buttons for the direction of attack could be cool so you don't have to turn to hit enemies. I thought that overall it was pretty cool and there are things to build on.
Chronotherium
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
Very nice, clean looking presentation. Controls are good. Unfortunately, the game crashes whenever I started to make progress.
Nice ideas here, but needs a bit more polish. I had a few outright crashes due to map generation or plotting. Map generation was okay, but the corridors were quite confusing - there was maybe something going on there with regards to light levels that made it tricky to move around. If you didn't want border characters for the corridors, that's okay, but sometimes the corridors would plow through the walls of a room making the room kinda fade out in places. I think with some post 7DRL polish it could be a solid little roguelike.
ElementalRL
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
4
4
I was really intrigued by the addition of a resistances/damage types system to what appears to be another straightforward TCOD tutorial game, but as it turns out there's no way to interact with that system in a tactically meaningful way. (Unless I'm missing something.) You don't get to choose which type of damage you want to inflict, so it's all just sort of working in the background and doesn't add any meaningful decision-making to the game play. I suppose if there were some sort of threat or difficulty here, you might let your set of elemental strengths/resistances guide which monsters you will tackle first and which you will avoid, but as it turns out, that's completely unnecessary, since most monsters will actually heal you instead of harming you. At first I thought that was an interesting feature ("look, I've got a water buddy!), but it would appear it's just a bug of the damage formula, whereby if your defense is higher than their attack, it gives you health back. Or maybe it was intentional? Either way, it made the game trivially easy, and I was able to win on my first try just mowing through everyone and not even using a healing "tea" after the first level. While that all sounds rather negative, these are issues that can be solved by game balancing; underneath it all the design might be perfectly sound. Would be happy to try this again in the future after some tuning of the combat system and underlying numbers.
I had a few technical issues with playing this one - the window opens halfway off the screen on my machine and none of my usual tricks for unsticking errent windows worked - the only way I actually found to make the game playable in the end was by moving my taskbar. Since there doesn't seem to be any in-game way of restarting on game-over this quickly got annoying since I needed to do this every single time I started the game. The game has tiles, but they're so small that it's pretty much impossible to tell what anything is meant to be, other than the colours indicating element. There's an interesting (if not entirely original) elemental system at the heart of this game, but its let down by being totally unbalanced. As you absorb elementals you become stronger against that element in future, but this means that at the start of the game a lot of enemies can kill you in only a few hits but at the end of the game everything heals you. The trouble is that since you can't very easily control what kind of enemies show up there's not much player agency involved in this; the winning 'tactic' on the early levels is simply to be lucky enough to find an enemy that heals you and keep it alive while you deal with the others. Making it through the first two or three levels is therefore very luck-based, but after that you're strong enough not to have to think about anything ever again. There's a 'hidden' boss at the end (the game tells you you've already won before you meet him, so I suspect most players will miss him), which is a nice touch but I beat him without even realising it since by that point I could just wade through all other enemies with impunity. The difficulty curve could do with some major tuning, and really the game needs some items/spells that do elemental damage so that there's some player choice involved in how to deal with the different enemies, rather than it just being character stats which gradually trivialise more and more of the game.
Galen's Enchanted Emporium
Completeness
2
3
2
Aesthetics
4
3
4
Fun
2
4
2
Innovation
3
4
3
Scope
3
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
3
2
- Difficult to tell what's going on in the potion selling phase. Enemies sometimes freeze during action phase. - Cute models and a great color palette. - Very interesting concept, but execution is unbalanced. It's difficult to tell what enemies are using what potions, but they seem to die easily regardless. - Very little procgen.
This is a brilliant concept. The game takes place over two phases. First, you are preparing potions for the unwitting adventurers, giving them a bit of what they want (e.g. increased poison resistance) and as much "corruption" (negative effects) as you can squeeze in. In the next phase, you are in the dungeon facing off with them; they are trying to kill you, and you are just trying to evade them and lead them into environmental hazards and traps , with the hopes that the corruptions you gave them will speed their demise. It is truly a great concept, and executed with some style, though it is quite rough around the edges. I enjoy the low poly 3D-ness of it all, but the enemy adventures are basically impossible to distinguish once the battle mode begins. It would be nice if there were some sort of indicator as to what each enemy's bonuses/corruptions were, so you could lead them into the appropriate hazards. The potion phase itself is pretty rough too; there are hints of a puzzle game aspect here but it's not developed at all. I often found myself will all positive effects, and didn't know what to do. Also, it wasn't clear whether that would keep going on forever; eventually I would just hit "enter dungeon" because I got bored. I'd recommend doing that level by level, so if on the next level there would be 5 enemies, you would just present them with the potions and the level would begin. Would be also cool if you knew which hazards would be present on the next level to corrupt accordingly. I certainly recommend Galen's Enchanted Emporium. It was fun, original, and visually a nice change of pace from grids and pixel art. Really hope to see it developed further. Nice work!
I'm really hoping this feedback isn't taken as "discouragement". I do acknowledge and appreciate the level of effort that likely went into this entry, and so I do suggest you keep going with this to build on it. - I was left very confused with potion creation. The "request" of the avatar was never available in my list of possible enchantments. aka. "I want health", and then there's only poison, fire and lightning. That type of thing would consistently happen to me. - Couldn't ever make it out of the first room. I'd dodge the dudes and flame turrets, but get up to the door and that would be it. It would never open for me. I ran around to see if I was missing a key or anything, but I didn't spot anything obvious - No matter which avatar I was making potions for, I'd have the same looking one to control when running around. Am I supposed to pick one of the avatars somehow? Are they NPC's and I'm not controlling them at all? - I'm really hoping these are all "easy" issues to fix. A few lines of text on each screen, for example. I definitely want to encourage rather then discourage!
Hostile Skies
Completeness
3
2
3
Aesthetics
3
4
3
Fun
3
3
3
Innovation
2
2
2
Scope
3
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
3
I like the mashup of genres here - there is enough of roguelike and enough of real-time. It's a fun game overall, although with some issues / lack of polish. Score explanations below: Completess (3) - this was due to several noticeable bugs. Most importantly, whenever I bought a rocket launcher, the game would freeze sometime in the next battle. Also, money and weapons carried over to the next game, making it a game of patience rather than skill. The man upgrading your weapons doesn't actually charge the expected $3. Aesthetics (3) - I think the look of the game could be more polished, for instance player's path on the world map could be displayed clearer. Also, since I play on a touchpad, the real-time mouse controls are a bit difficult. Innovation (2) - all of the roguelike pieces in this game look familiar: the world map with branching trees, the events with random outcomes, the upgrades. I would call out mashup of roguelike and real-time action as unusual, but also not unheard of.
Enjoyed this one while it worked (more on that in a minute). The map part of the game is very FTL - series of connected location which give you an idea of the type of encounter you'll find there, and often with a binary decision involved (gamble or don't gamble, etc). Worked well in FTL and works just as well here. Personally I'm not a big of fan of the 50/50 gamble, but that's personal preference. The combat encounters are more of an action shooter sort of thing, fending off waves of enemies. This works pretty well, with mouse control actually being a really good choice. The enemy types aren't hugely varied but they're varied enough for a game of this scale. I didn't run into any significant hit detection issues or anything like that. For the most part, it's a fun little game, and well executed for being put together in just a week. I only have one major complaint, which I alluded above - I don't think I had a single play of this game where it didn't freeze up and force me to refresh the page, including on the final boss. Very frustrating. It's particularly aggravating since your upgrades and cash carry over from one run to the next, but that's all lost when you refresh, so a freeze actually costs you several runs' worth of progress. A decent little game overall, and one I enjoyed while I was playing. Shame about that freeze/crash issue, especially happening every time (or nearly every time).
There are SLIMES in this DUNGEON
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
Fast paced arcade feel, with a pretty brutal difficulty. Fun to play and with just the right amount of luck you can win this thing.
Nice color scheme and efficient use of limited graphics. The sounds are appropriately chunky and add to the mood. The variety of enemy attacks was refreshing. However, it is very, very difficult to understand what's going on. There is very little feedback to communicate the risk of attacking an enemy. The difficulty curve is also erratic. It seems almost as likely for rooms to start hard and get easier than the reverse.
Serpent RL
Completeness
4
2
4
Aesthetics
3
3
4
Fun
2
3
3
Innovation
3
3
3
Scope
2
2
3
Roguelikeness
2
2
3
A game with a pretty solid core concept of snake + dungeon. It doesn't have a huge feature set and the aesthetics are not flashy, but it does execute on the core concept well. The rainbow snake was a very nice touch which did a lot to liven up the visual aspect. I did find that on later levels with multiple snakes, sometimes you'd get a room with long corridors that you could get into, but would be kind of difficult to get out of when enemys snake were prowling at the opposite exits. I suppose that's why you conserve bombs! When playing, it feels much more like a turn-based classic arcade-style game than a roguelike. If I had to describe it, it would be a combination of snake and pac-man, with a bomb mechanic to help you reset.
"Serpent RL" says it all: it's a roguelike with a Snake twist, scoped down to a 7-day roguelike project. Completeness (2/5): Serpent RL is stable and runs well, but the feature set is minimal and there was not a lot of polish. If there were a few more game elements and the game would detect a losing circumstance and reset, it might be more representative of an average entry to the jam. Aesthetics (3/5): Simple ASCII graphics, colorized. There was no ambiguity to what was what, and the UI told me everything I needed to know. A solid base aesthetic. Fun (3/5): Serpent RL gave me just enough to think about that I did not lose my time. I enjoyed the difficulty of decision about whether or not to maneuver my snake down which passage, and how. The enemy AI, while rudimentary and probably random, nevertheless introduced sufficient challenge. (Were they even enemies if they were not deliberately trying to block you?) I did find myself wishing that they could be defeated in standard snake game fashion (by blocking them in) but you're stuck with them unless you spend a bomb on them. Innovation (3/5): Though the inclusion of Snake mechanics on top of a roguelike game is not particularly complicated, I will say that I have no recollection of playing a game that did that before (and I have played a lot). If I look at this from the perspective of being a roguelike, then sure, it was a neat twist on the usual mechanics. Scope (2/5): As the author said, they "kept it very simple." It could have been simpler, I appreciated that it had a proper procedural generation to the maps, the turn loop worked well, and the aesthetics were very functional. But games don't get much simpler than Snake. Roguelikeness (2/5): It's ASCII, grid-based, and the pickups and enemies were placed at random, but so also were the Snake games of yore. It's turn-based, and the maps are procedurally generated, so there are some resemblances to Rogue. However, if I'm going to be a stickler about it (and being a judge requires I do) then this is Snake, not Rogue.
I had fun with this title as a twist on the standard Snake game. I didn't find any bugs and the bombs meant I didn't worry too much about getting stuck, especially with the other snakes around. The graphic are simple and readable, with some color flair on the player. I would have liked to have seen some more innovation as the scope was quite restrained. In my opinion it just scrapes in as roguelike-like
7 Days in Purgatory
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
The concept here is interesting, as the character you play is basically a summoner of sorts. However, the biggest issue here is the difficulty level ramps up far too quickly for any sort of "progression" to take place. I think because of that, I missed out on a lot of the more complex elements of the gameplay that comes down the line, such as the utilization of the loot system. One of the other major issues noticed was the fixed resolution, which may not be conducive for some players' monitors. All that being said, though, I think there's a definite spark of a game here that could be fast-paced, enjoyable and different in the Roguelike sense, it just needs more development time.
That's hard to tell anything about that game because I didn't really managed to get into. I tried to spawn a lot of minions at the same time, spawning them in waves. Nothing works, because player dies on first hit and it's hard to avoid mistakes due to dark color palette; FOV, while looks good, doesn't help either. I have ambivalent feelings about that game. It looks good, but isn't clear and readable enough. Basic mechanics is interesting and promising, but the game is unbalanced and therefore it's hard to explore all possibilities. I can't recommend playing 7 Days In Purgatory right now, but I would really like to see upgraded version... Promising project.
City-Ship: Mercury
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
4
City-Ship:Mercury is a highly competent, classic roguelike. There's not much in the way of innovation, as this feels as if a sci-fi theme was applied to the standard TCOD tutorial, but it is well-executed and feels fairly complete. I enjoyed the narrative framing, and the use of "data caches" to reveal bits of the story as you progress. Would've loved to see a few more of them -- in my winning playthrough I only saw two, I believe. My biggest complaint is that the combat is quite boring. The formula is a straightforward attack rating minus defense rating = damage, without any randomness, and you have so many hitpoints that you are never really in any danger. Especially if you follow the progression strategy of prioritizing defense so you are always one step ahead of the enemies' attacks. In this way, it's easy to maintain complete invulnerability to attacks. The gear progression is also very linear, with no surprise factor. I did enjoy the narrative choice at the end, though was a bit disappointed not to have one last boss battle. (Though understand quite well that there's only so much you can do in a week!) All told, this is a fine example of a classic roguelike, with a cool, well-written story layer. If the combat and loot systems are developed further, this could be a winner.
Basically, City-Ship: Mercury is a reskin of a well-known python roguelike tutorial. It comes with some perks (reliability - it isn't the _best_ architecture, but it's proven to work well for small-to-medium projects). Unfortunately, it inherits all of tutorial's flaws... Main menu looks pretty nice with that cosmic-themed image, but the game itself is dull. Almost everything is blue-grey. The font used itself looks quite nice, but isn't very readable on the grid due to large blank areas between characters. Mechanically, it's python roguelike tutorial. It's really easy to become invincible (focus on agility) - if you are going to use deterministic combat mechanics, you need to revolve the whole gameplay about that idea. Otherwise, it doesn't work well. Other flaws are inherited from tutorial as well - like, targetting enemies is mouse-only, looking at items too, AI is exploitable, levels are big and lack interactive elements. There is one novelty, though. Story. As a player, you will find some datapads with lore scraps, and at the end of the game, you will need to make one, significant in terms of story, decision. The effect is a bit neglected because longer text are not easy to read - the space between letters is too big to allow smooth reading.
ESC_APE
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
2
2
Enjoyable little game with nice resource management. Randomization of some sort would help bring some longevity.
ESC_APE is an entertaining game with lots of charm about an ape escaping from a lab when something goes wrong. Although it doesn't yet feature generated levels, it's clearly playing at roguelike aesethetics (e.g. the FOV is very roguelikey/tactics-y) and tactics in some regard. I didn't notice many bugs, though the aesthetics (and fun, to a degree) are kept from a higher score by having to use inefficient mouse controls for throwing the two items the ape has to use. The game doesn't offer too much in the way of innovation, and it's not really even a roguelike (yet, at least) but what's there is worth your time. Completeness: The game is polished and pretty much bug-free. Aesthetics: Overwrought mouse controls keep it from a 3, but the visuals keep it as a solid 2. Fun: The game's charm and tactics made an enjoyable experience. While doing replays I found myself trying to get more "efficient" runs of each level. Innovative: This isn't really super-innovative; it's pretty standard stuff. Slightly above by having to rely on wits over brawn, giving a puzzle element to the game. Scope: About as expected for this jam. Roguelikeness: Right now, there's not a lot unique to roguelikes here. There is permadeath, and tactics, but there's no procedural generation involved at any level, hence the "lite" rating.
Hostile
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
3
This is a cool start to what could become a fun, light battle sim. I wish I had more of a sense of how I could influence the battle, though. To start, we don't know where the enemy is when the game begins...you just have to wander around the map until you happen upon some green nasties. Perhaps a minimap would be helpful to give the player a better sense of the big picture? Since you don't (directly) control any of your units, it's hard to tell how you are supposed to direct things, making it all feel kind of random. Perhaps the text that pops up each turn might be useful, but it comes and goes too quickly to tell. I do really like the progression mechanic, in which you choose an upgrade and then buy additional units or squadrons between battles, using gold earned by the hero's own individual victories. It just all feels a little raw still, but there very well might be something good here. Hope to see it continue development, and look forward to playing a next version.
Hostile is a turn-based large-scale army tactical combat game. The game felt feature-complete but lacks polish. The controls are simple and the overall aesthetics neither help nor harm the game. A battlefield UI could improve the playing experience. The game felt repetitive and and the player does not seem to have adequate control over their army, leaving the feeling that they don't have a lot of influence over the game and its outcomes. These factors left me with little desire to continue replaying the game. The game is turn-based and has roguelike elements but does not play like a traditional roguelike.
Mainframe: Hacker Adventures
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
This game is a short stealth dungeon crawler with the main mechanical innovation being a real-time fixed interval in between turns. It's very tightly done, with simple controls, simple goals, and an easy to understand interface. This is helped by the small scope - there's not a lot to figure out, in the three small levels, with only movement and one interaction key. The mechanic is interesting, like a fixed-beat necrodancer, but it does feel kind of slow to play when the only thing you want to do is walk across the platform. The turns still play out fully when there are no enemies on screen, which makes simple navigation feel slower than it needs to be. It does make it quite tense when you've alerted an enemy and must quickly think of how to escape, and I did die a couple of times to basically being too slow to respond. It definitely gives the game a different feel! The enemies and map appear to be static between the 3 levels - I couldn't really tell any difference between the first and last levels. Likewise there's not a ton of different enemies available. I think that there's a good idea in there. It would feel better if there the real-time elements were modal - for example, they only applied once an enemy was on screen - or if there were some other way to make "I want to walk from A to B while under zero thread" less slow. It would also definitely benefit from more content, but 7 days is pretty harsh on that aspect.
Mainframe: Hacker Adventures is a turn-based rhythm game set in a Shadowrun-style matrix world. The game is turn-based but if you don't act fast enough you will lose your turn, and conversely you can only act once per "turn", timewise. The game felt a little rough on the edges as far as mechanics and features go, but I did not encounter any noticeable bugs. The art style was very clean, but some of the mechanics -- such as combat, or even the 3-shape terminal puzzles -- were not very intuitive at first. The rhythm aspect of the game made moving through corridors and empty rooms a tedious endeavor, but it did require fast thinking to navigate rooms that are busy with enemy activity. Despite that, I do think I'd have preferred a true turn-based format to solve these rooms. The game's levels, enemies, and interactions lacked the variety to keep me interested through multiple levels and playthroughs. The rhythm-based nature firmly pushes this game out of the traditional roguelike category, but it still maintains the spirit of the roguelike genre.
Raccoon Delver
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
I liked the way you allow simultaneous turns, and, conceptually, the idea of the game being both turn-based and real-time at the same time. The increasing music tempo also fits well with this idea. Unfortunately, this was also a source of major dissatisfaction for me. It quickly became tedious to make turns in the necessary time increments, and I could never get past the first 4-5 levels. The game also sometimes slightly froze, and then did two of my turns in quick succession - not sure if it was due to load, or a bug. I feel bad giving this 2 for fun, because I imagine it has to actually be fun in two players, but I can't properly test it, and have to assess it as a normal roguelike.
Completeness: Online version of the game didn't run well for me at all, but the Windows download worked well. Occasionally, I'd move two tiles in a beat (not sure if this is a mechanic or a bug). Also, not sure if there is an ending or not. Furthest I got was 5 levels deep. Aesthetics: Looks nice, controls are intuitive, though I would've like to be able to use [wsad] in single player mode. The music going faster every level was a nice touch, as well as the enemy facing the direction they are about to move. Fun: I only played it in single player mode and the gameplay more or less boils down to run to the key and then run to the stairs. I'm not sure if filling the experience bar does anything, as the combat was not worth it. I also died several times in later levels because I got hit a couple times before I located my character, which feels kinda unfair. Innovation: Rhythm roguelites aren't new, but they are also rather uncommon. Scope: There's really not much in the game, especially as combat is rather unrewarding. Roguelikeness: Real-time gameplay makes this a roguelite.
Roguecraft
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
Let's start with a disclaimer: I've never played Minecraft, and I generally don't enjoy games without a goal, including sandboxes. That said, I had a fun time trying to mine and craft, and enjoyed a lot of things about this product. I want to call out the graphics: I think the font and color palette choices are great, and make the game visually pleasing. 4 for Aesthetics. Completeness-wise, I think the game is pretty well polished, but without a purpose it feels a bit pointless. One development direction I could suggest that would entice me to play this game is to combine it with quest/puzzle elements: for example, given a level and a goal ("craft golden sword"), try to achieve it. Something like "The Incredible Machine" games. Just a suggestion :) That aside, I also felt like my level was a bit low on coal mines - perhaps there was a different way to obtain coal I missed? Anyway, Completeness 3 I gave 2 for Fun due to abovementioned aversion towards goalless games. Innovation and Scope hopefully speak for themselves; in terms of Roguelikeness, the mechanics play out as a roguelike, but without opposition, it doesn't feel quite like one.
I like this one, as far as it goes - and that's its big drawback. There isn't much content. The exploring and crafting thing is pleasant, and executed reasonably smoothly. I like the aesthetic of the island, and the logic of crafting is familiar enough for anyone who's played something like Minecraft or Terraria (the game also doesn't fall into the trap of some crafting-based games of having the recipes be obscure). I was enjoying it for a while... But it doesn't take long to realise that there isn't much to do. You can craft swords from various materials, but there doesn't seem to be anything to use them on. You can craft a hoe to till the soil, but that's just an aesthetic change. There's nothing you can do with tilled soil, at least as far as I've been able to discover. You can build a house out of stone and/or wood, and I enjoyed that, but there's no option to create windows or doors, so it's really just a box with a hole for you to enter and leave. Once I'd made myself some gold tools, built all of the three possible crafting stations (unless I'm missing something), and excavated every scrap of stone on the island (risking RSI in the process, thanks to having to press the key every single time you swing your pick), there's nothing left to do. Overall, then, I think Roguecraft has potential - it looks nice, mostly feels pleasant to play, and executes the mining and crafting thing fairly smoothly. But potential is all it has right now - it feels like there are at least two or three major features missing (e.g. the presence of danger is implied by being able to craft swords, but there's no danger in the game). There isn't really an endgame either - I thought at first that it might be possible to build a boat and leave, but no (or if it's there then it's sufficiently well hidden that I can't find it). I can't find any way to tunnel down or get to any sort of other area. Tellingly, you can't save your game either, so the time you spend excavating the island and building a house will be lost as soon as you exit. All of this leads to the game feeling unfinished, even for a jam game. I respect how difficult it is to put something functional together in just a week, and I'd like to rate this higher, but it's missing too much. Good effort as far as it goes, but it needs more to be recommendable.
Rogues Among the Stars
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
4
The game looks intriguing, but unfortunately is in the state of very incomplete prototype. Teleporter to the next level can be missing. The game is impossible to play in windowed mode, elements of UI are overlaping, text is unreadable. But item drop switchews you from fullscreen to windowed. Looks like there are a lot of ideads, but none were actually implemented. Technically, when complete, it could be, probably, called a true roguelike. But in the current state it's hard to say what it could become.
This one is very much a roguelike, and while it doesn't do anything hugely groundbreaking, it does have one or two little touches which make it worth a visit. The first thing to say is that I like the idea. While it's functionally a short dungeon with the player descending through the floors, the premise that you're teleporting between spacecraft in search of a key component is a nice touch of flavour which works pretty well. The aesthetic does a good job of capturing the spacecraft theme, though most of the features do nothing - trying to interact with anything usually gives a 'nothing happens' type of message, though it's nice that they're geared towards the specific feature in question - you get a different message with a table than you do with a bookcase, for example. The fact that most of the features don't do anything almost conceals one of the game's best features - the fact that to heal, you have to put gold into an alchemical alembic. If you've checked out some of the other non-useful bits of furniture, you could be forgiven for ignoring the alembics, but they're important to survival. Making this a bit clearer might have been nice, but it's not a huge issue, and I do enjoy having something a bit more interesting for healing than just chugging a potion. Mechanically, this was the highlight for me. The game is very short and very easy, but I think that's forgivable. Many 7DRLs try to do too much and suffer for it. Rogues Among the Stars makes the right call, in focusing on doing something small pretty well. Between the novel themeing and the fact that it mostly plays fairly smoothly, RATS is one which, while it won't sustain more than a couple of plays, is worth a visit. Good aesthetic and pleasant enough gameplay with a couple of neat elements. Nice work, and a solid entry.
The Cycle of Rent
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
It is very strange game, with some interesting elements, but unfortunately perioducally crashes, and since there is no save, this means progress loss. To be fair the interface is GOD AWFUL. It is very frustrating and inconvenient. It takes quite some time to get used to it. But when you do, the game is actually somewhat fun. The theme where you have to collect some amount of money to some date to pay debt, rent, whatever is not exactly new, as well as basic crafting. Couldn't progress to far due to crashes, but there seems to be a enough content for a solid 7drl. It definitely cannot be called true roguelike, but I think character progression, equipment management, choices are enough to be related to roguelikes.
At best, the game is confusing. The Cycle of Rent is a menu-based survival/crafting game. It features some interesting mechanics (cards-based exploration is something I never thought of). The game managed to remain simple, despite having a lot of mechanics put into. The main problem is lack of information. At the start, player chooses contracts to do. Unfortunately, later in the game, there is no way to check current objectives - you need to remember what exactly you need to do, or write in on a scrap of paper. The Cycle of Rent is full of similar problems. Character upgrade is not intuitive as well. If player chooses to put a point into Gathering, game opens new menu with specialized skills. And you have to choose one of them, there is no way to go back to the previous menu. The Cycle of Rent is quite interesting game, but I won't play it again due to terrible UI.
X001 Infiltrator
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
The LIDAR view is unique. The distortion and wrapping effect conveys a sense of machine-like perspective on the world that sets the mood. The controls work intuitively, but the small scope of gameplay is limiting.
X001 Infiltrator is a very interesting game with an even more interesting concept. Initially, when you first load the game you're enveloped by this digital screen which appears to be from an 90's tech manage of either a "hacking" scene, or a "surfing the web" scene. The visuals are impressive. Sure they don't look particularly engaging and there isn't much change throughout the game but the visual of simulating Lidar looks cool. I really liked the top down view. Seeing the vision of the robot open the map up was great. Obviously it would have been nice to get upgrades and such. The auto fire was a good idea also. Between firing shots there was quite a lot of down time which at times felt boring. With more actions to do in game, this would be removed. Overall, the idea comes fresh. Finding more ways to expand this concept could prove as interesting as it is difficult.
mallRL
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
This is a funny little game. Sort of competitive shopping, I guess? If you add in combat, and change the apples and bananas to big screen TVs and major appliances, you could rebrand this "Black Friday" here in the U.S. But there's something charming about the simplicity of this, with a slight hint of satirical edge, from the parking lot full of nondescript cars to the way the horde of your fellow shoppers rushes the doors of the supermarket as if a starter's gun has fired. The game can be completely unfair, though, as an item you need (the pizza, it's nearly always the pizza) will be sold out before you even have a chance at it. Bonus points for building this without an engine. I'm guessing each NPC shopper has their own list they are executing? That would be kind of cool. All in all, not much to see here, but I'm glad I checked it out.
I had a bit of trouble giving a rating to this game. On one hand, the mall and the cars are beautifully done, and the game is very easy to comprehend and play. On another, one playthrough takes literally under 2 minutes (I checked), and it feels like the game's scope is too limited. Some feedback: > It's rather annoying that I can't hold down a direction key, and have to keep pressing to move my character > The placement of items in the mall seems rather arbitrary; it might make sense to group them by aisle > The items sell out rather arbitrarily: sometimes I barely make it into the mall by the time someone swipes the coveted Nachos. For a game this short it's not really a problem though.
Cat Colony
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
3
Roguelikeness
3
A twin-stick shooter (or, I suppose, WASD + arrows shooter, which is less catchy) very loosely in the mould of something like The Binding of Isaac. It doesn't do anything new - each level is a linear series of rooms, with wandering enemies to shoot and junk to collect for money - but it does it solidly enough. I find that 7DRLs can often be buggy but this one mostly avoids that. There are some opportunities for bugs (e.g. enemies colliding) which resolve smoothly, which was nice to see. On the other hand, there is one major bug - you can exit the play area at any of the bridges between rooms, and just wander around the black space surrounding the level. This is relatively excusable though, because it doesn't really impact gameplay. There's no benefit to exiting the play area like that, since everything you need to do is inside the rooms. I have three main suggestions for improving this game. One is control: a game which has you shooting almost continuously shouldn't make you press the key for every single shot. Holding to keep shooting is a very basic and elementary feature for a 2D shooter. Secondly , the game would really benefit from more variety. There's one enemy type and one trap type, and they both appear multiple times in every single room. Aside from getting more health and moving faster, they never change - their behaviour is always the same, and there are no other types to be found. That makes the game become very repetitive very quickly. Finally, I think the game would benefit a lot from a defined end point. As far as I can tell, there's no actual end. I suspect it's a score challenge where you just see how well you can do in an infinite dungeon. The fact that you can spend gold between runs to make yourself move faster, shoot harder, etc is a nice touch and adds a bit more interest to this, but there's a limit to how interesting an infinite grind can be, especially when you've seen all of the content after the first room. I think having an end point would improve the incentive to actually keep playing the game, and there's no reason that couldn't be combined with the score challenge aspect as well. All in all, it's not a bad effort. It does what it seems to be aiming for, and mostly plays fine. I can't really recommend playing it though, thanks to the lack of variety in the content. There's something to be said for focusing on doing one thing adequately (I've played many 7DRLs which tried to spread themselves too thin) but the fact is that after 30 seconds you've already seen everything the game has to offer. I don't think there's enough there to make a point of checking it out, but it's a decent effort for 7 days. Keep it up.
Dungeon Crasher
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
DUNGEON CRASHER: Basic actiony rogue-lite somewhat in the spirit of 00's flash games. Ambitious in scope and fairly complete as-is, though there's no ending at present. A solid base of gameplay that could have benefited from some control and quality of life tweaks. Completeness: The game is playable, but there's no endgame at present. There's some definite balance issues (often, one spawns into a room with enemies which are virtually impossible to dodge by their proximity.) There are a couple of other non-fatal issues surrounding endgame and new game. Aesthetics: The visuals in the game are serviceable but basic. Having to click a mouse which does not at the same time point one's attack runs against the intuition built up by years of Flash and web games, however, and creates a mini-skill challenge when trying to "kite" enemies that, while somewhat engaging, doesn't feel intentional. Fun: This wasn't really my thing, but the effort is clearly there for a 7DRL and it's engaging in places. Backtracking through the dungeon is the only part that's definitely not fun, though. Some way to move faster through previously explored areas would have been nice, or even a generator and room design more focused on the encounters with a smaller overall space of floor. Innovation: This is a basic hack and slash action game with some procedural generation and a couple of weapon abilities. It's not terribly innovative, though. Scope: This is about as expected for a 7DRL. Roguelikeness: This is a two out of three (or 3 / 5 to use the new itch.io scheme.) Clearly procedurally generated, but doesn't really have a lot of other roguelike stuff going. There's some tactical engagement.
Uh. Oh. While the game technically works, the core mechanics is so bugged, that I cannot call it even somewhat complete. Controls are horrible. Collision detection is horrible. While there are technically several weapons, the bow is so superior that there is no sense to use anything else. There is no indication that the character took some damage. Dungeon generator can generate door that lead nowhere. There is no map, the character moves very slowly. I'm not against action-roguelites, but this game is not fun to me in any way. There is nothing new or interesting. As for scope... There are some enemies, some weapons... Probably more or less ok for a 7drl, but I wish the core combat mechanics was better instead of having more monsters and weapons. It is definitely not true roguelike, being all arcadey and simple, but probably barely, but fits roguelite category.
Infector
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
4
Fun
2
Innovation
3
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
2
A tabletop game, down to the Carcassonne inspired "meeple" sprites. The implementation is a full vertical slice, but a thin one. Very few tactical options outside of laying in wait are available and outcomes are dominated by rng. Gameplay is smooth though, with an elegant UI/UX and handsome tiles and sprites. The game has a lot of potential to build towards, but today it's only a very nice scaffold.
Key Cave
Completeness
4
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
4
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
KeyCave is nice example of the game that relies on simple yet innovative mechanics. Important part is that mechanics is intuitive to use. Game is simple, finished, bug-free and rules are trivial to understand. Graphics is quite plain but cute. Fun... That's the hard part. Fun comes from innovative mechanics. From the novelty itself. Playing through 10 levels was nice experience, but I don't think I'll ever come back to this game. ...and I think that's quite OK for the game jam entry. The problem is lack of variation. There are only two types of enemies. By de design, "level" is always the same. It starts to be boring quite fast - the only difference between floors is initial actors placement..
The game is confusing in the first moments, as we don't have a clear notion of what to do, so I just proceeded to kill all enemies. Then a key dropped and a door opened, so the mechanics got clear. From then on it was a breeze, the game became very easy to play. Too easy, and too monotone. I died on the 46th level only because I had spawned in a way that made me surrounded by three enemies at once. If it wasn't that, I would just continue on without dying... forever? It doesn't look like there is an end to this game, there is not a win state, but the game is too tedious to play for more than 5 levels. There is no change in content, no sense of progression, no difficulty curve, nothing, only the same keyboard layout with the same enemies over and over again. Also, using the entire keyboard for controls is quite clumsy as we need to keep attention to which key we were on and which key to go, and that would change every turn. That quickly became very distressful. At least the layout and aesthetics are clean and vivid.
Raccoon Librarian
Completeness
4
3
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
3
Raccoon Librarian is essentially a spatial/movement puzzle game, which reminds me of old arcade games like Pac-Man (except for being turn-based). Grab the key, get to the door. Grab a book as well if you can. Avoid being touched by enemies (no combat here). For what it is, it's fine. Raccoon Librarian avoids the common 7DRL pitfall of overreaching and ending up with something incomplete and buggy. This game doesn't feel incomplete and I haven't run into any bugs, so for what it does, it's fairly well made. The thing I like about Raccoon Librarian is the 'fog of war' situation. Unrevealed parts of the level show question marks for things which could be either items (key, door, health potion, etc) or enemies. What's nice about that is that although you don't know which thing a given question mark is, you can watch for a couple of turns and see whether it moves. If it doesn't, it's probably something you want to check out. It's a small feature but a nice touch and I appreciated it. It provides just enough information to help inform a decision. The main thing I think needs work is how often it's impossible to avoid taking a hit. It's not at all unusual to be in a 2-space wide corridor, or similar confined space, and have no choice but to walk right past a rat which will bite you. This happens quite a lot and it's just a bit too frustrating. Otherwise, this is decent for what it's trying to do. It doesn't really feel like a roguelike, and it's too simple a game to really be able to recommend someone goes out of their way to check it out, but it does what it does solidly enough.
Slumber
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
4
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
Once I passed the first test of actually hitting space on the intro screen, I encountered a lovely little artifact in Slumber. It took me about four attempts to put down the Arch-Gloop, although my minions apparently found it before I did. The minion's pathing was clever, probably a dijkstra map extended out from the placement of the rallying beacon that extended out a surprisingly long range, though I had to shove them through some crevices they refused to transverse themselves. Completeness - 3/5: For the most part, a very stable game with good graphics and even a musical score! It contains a working game loop with a complete procedurally-generated cave to explore and a victory and defeat condition that resets that loop. However, one of the major functions of the game, the ability for the players' avatar to attack, was either not working for me or working very unreliably or in an unclear manner (I managed to get a dagger animation to work once) so the whole hitpoints/attack/defense thing that was the whole point of collecting the chests was not working. Aesthetics - 4/5: It's hard to complain about such nice pixel graphics on a novel theme. The walls, characters, and avatar were nice pixel sprites, and I liked how the enemy blobs were made up of individual animated parts as well. The UI was minimalist but effective, complete with working text boxes and floating damage numbers, and the music added a lot to the sense of place. Fun - 3/5: There was not much to do other than lead my minions around, shove them into enemies, avoid the enemies myself, and collect chests that did not actually much for me. However, it was still a reasonably satisfying spelunk thanks in part to the reasonable variety of its parts. Innovation - 3/5: Trying to make a roguelike that incorporates predominantly minion-based fighting is a mildly unusual mechanic for the genre. The theme struck me as fairly uncommon, as did the related enemies, minions, and hero. Scope - 3/5: This fell far short of the original planned scope of, "a base-building survival roguelike about distinct parts archaeology and seeing the past in your dreams," and mostly ended up being, "a roguelite about exploring a cave system, recruiting minions, and slaying procedurally generated bug-eyes horror." However, for a 7.5DRL it was not a bad showing at all. Roguelikeness - 2/5: Though we could attempt to qualify this as a "roguelite" on the basis that it integrates procedural cave generation, enemy placement, chest placement, and treasure chest content, I am inclined to feel that the gameplay itself is more reminiscent of Pikmin than Rogue. It's a pausable real-time game of leading around minions, not particularly grid-based, no inventory management, no usable items, and most of the tactics revolve around manipulating hitboxes. Though you did not accomplish creating your base-building survival game inside of seven days, I have little doubt that your team would be capable of creating one if they wanted to continue.
The game looks nice, but that's all it can be praised for. Your minions is basically your only fighting force, but pathfinding is very wonky. That's killing the last little bit of fun. Combat could have more visual feedback. Now it looks strange. In it's current state there is nothing new or exciting in this game. I'm expecting more from a solid 7drl. In it's current state the game doesn't even qualify as roguelite. Random terrain doesn't magically turn the game into roguelike/lite.
StationCrawl
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
3
Roguelikeness
4
A cool idea and a great foundation for a game! I like the feel of the game, it really succeeded in conveying the space-station feel. The cleaning bots were a great touch. Also, they're terrifying, after being killed by them several times. Theres some nice polish in here. When I encounter a dagger, it automatically asks whether I want to equip it, which is really nice. I think with a few more enemy types, weapon types, and maybe some way to heal, this could score higher on completeness and fun. Congrats on the attempt, looking forward to seeing more!
The Dragon's Dungeon
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
3
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
4
Very simple prototype with a few items, a few enemies. Technically winnable, but way too trivial. Too short and easy to be fun. Nothing new or innovative. Not enough content even for a solid 7DRL. There are not enough meaningful choices to call it (prototype of) true roguelike.
Very roguelikey. There's not much here in terms of gameplay, but this is interesting for a few innovations in how it displays things and mixes sprites with ASCII.
TheSpicyRL
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
2
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
4
4
A cute premise paired with a very traditional approach. A good foundation for additional work, but the experience as it is is quite limited. The pixel art is good though!
The SpicyRL is a 7DRL about descending into mines to unlock spice. Right now, it's more or less just a promising prototype: You can descend and get a key, which then provides you with a way to victory on the top floor. So the classic roguelike structure is there. This doesn't leave it being the most complete or fun game, but it is pretty to look at. The controls are slightly odd, but presumably that can be remedied with time. This reviewer will be curious to see what meat comes onto the bones of this one if radman develops it further. Completeness: There's not much game here yet; there's a win condition, but no lose condition. Aesthetics: The tiles are pretty to look at, but the controls are a bit clunky. It would be nice to be able to hold a direction and go multiple spaces in that direction. Fun: There's not much to judge this one on yet, which unfortunately means there's not as much in the way of mechanics to sink one's teeth into. Scope: This is, unfortunately, a little below what one generally expects a 7DRL to contain in terms of gameplay content. Roguelikeness: This is, as prototypes go, about as roguelike as they come. One can pretty easily see the trajectory the author was taking, even though the game itself is still far from complete.
Guns-Like
Completeness
3
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
3
Fun
3
2
3
Innovation
2
2
2
Scope
2
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
2
3
A fun platform shooter with permadeath and persistent upgrades. A little short on content but a solid foundation with a fun soundtrack and cute art.
Guns-Like is an arcade platformer about shooting crocodiles and crippled bunnies. The game looks nice, had no noticeable bugs, a UI which was simple but existed, and you could spend points in between games to increase your health or speed for subsequent games. Guns-Like is decidedly not a roguelike or roguelike-like, and even the levels appear to be from a select pool of options which would repeat.
Nice game to play. Everything works properly, seems be balanced enough, controls are rather tight. Didn't encounter bugs. Tiles are nice, and there are even sounds - sound of shooting is a bit annoying after some time, but Guns-Like seems to work best at short session, so not big issue. In terms of gameplay, Guns-Like feels rather plain. It's fast paced 2d platform shooter, with goal of getting three stars. Levels are small, gameplay is fast, and the procgen indeed keeps the experience fresh.
Baby Worlds Eater
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
Funny theme for the game. Play devolves usually into chasing the humans around and hoping they randomly trap themselves in a dead end. I like that there is a level sharing feature.
I loved the cute visuals here and found this to be a good coffee break game. There was a nice challenge to avoiding followers and eating humans which was more compulsive than you might think on first appearance. Not the deepest gameplay you might imagine (especially from the Great Deep Ones), but made me smile each and every time i played.
ClueRL - 2020 7DRL
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
3
Roguelikeness
2
3
Thanks for making an entry! I did like and appreciate the interesting idea of a ClueRL. Who didn't love playing Clue as a kid? I think I could see where you're trying to go with this, and I encourage you to update it. I definitely appreciated your recommendation to download the windows version. I could see how it might be quite slow in a browser. Given the size of the map, I'd maybe suggest trying out the portals that existed in the Clue game in the corners of the board. Maybe make the map slightly smaller as well...it did take a while to trek around. While I appreciated the notes interface, I'd suggest cutting it from the game. It's just as easy to use a nearby piece of paper (just my humble opinion). Thanks again for participating!
ClueRL is definitely hard to judge. It's an interesting take on classic "Clue" game, yet it's unpolished. Looks like the game started with much bigger scope in mind and the dev didn't have enough time to really finish the game. The models are puppets, transition between tiles may cause headache, map is way to big in comparison of interactive elements... That's probably just the skeleton, foundation for real game. I definitely had some fun with that entry, but I think it would work much better with simpler yet cleaner graphics and more tight maps.
Damage Control
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
3
Innovation
3
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
There isn't much to do. There was clearly intended to be a trade-off between cleaning up messes and avoiding danger, but the lack of tools to deal with fire means that the best strategy in both 'blockade' and 'die fast' is fatalistically hiding the crew at the ends of the ship where the fire will reach them last.
Nice concept, but needs a bit more work. The roguelite-ness is debatable. The selection of teams could use a bit of tweaking. It was a bit annoying that the previous team had to be deselected to select a new one.
Dungeon Knights
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
2
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
Doesn't push any boundaries, but is a rather competent, beginner friendly action rpg. Not bad for 7 days! Congrats.
Really nice work on the sound and graphics, nice UI. Character selection is a cool feature. The game seems pretty easy, there is not much reason to attack monsters or open chests. You can run down to the bottom and avoid everything with most characters. The controls are also a little funky, you have to click to reposition your weapon every time you turn around, but not every time you want to attack something. I do like how enemies move towards you yet also try to avoid the hitbox of your weapon. I would make some rooms impassible until enemies are defeated, right now there is no reason for the player to fight anything.
Last Login Failed (7DRL)
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
3
This is an interesting idea, though sadly incomplete. I would be interested to see this taken further, with procedural aspects used in the story.
Last Login Failed is a roguelike about hacking hidden in command-line emulation. The game felt reasonably complete feature-wise, although it is still missing some variety to give it the feel of a finished product. The aesthetics mimic a traditional command line terminal interface and work great for the game, but an improved UI could help players who are not familiar with using command line commands, could assist in typing/playing (an autocomplete or even mouse interface could go a long way), and it could also use some kind of way to easily access passwords, emails, and documents that you've uncovered. The game is a lot of fun but does not have much content in its current form, mostly being just the tutorial (which is worth trying on its own). Last Login Failed incorporates roguelike features such as procedural generation, and even maps the "dungeon diving" experience onto a terminal/command line playfield quite well, but does not fully fit the mold of a traditional roguelike.
Parasomniac Dreams
Completeness
3
4
Aesthetics
2
4
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
2
2
Thanks for participating in the 7DRL! Hope you had a great time putting your entry together. While perhaps not a "traditional" roguelike, your entry was intriguing. I liked the spell school idea, along with mixing schools together. I'm going to check out your 1.3 version after this, to see what you were able to update. I encourage you to keep building on this idea if you can. Thanks again for participating!
Beautiful and polished game! Not sure I would call it a roguelike, but it was definitely interesting to play. The mixing mechanic was interesting. Great graphics, reminds me of the N64 days!
Rogue Wizard Quest
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
3
Innovation
2
3
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
3
3
Completeness I wasn't able to reach the ending of this game, if it had one, because after ~35 minutes of killing identical enemies was a little bit too much. My health/mana bar frequently jumped all over the place from room to room, though it appeared the game was tracking it’s actual state correctly. Enemies respawning after leaving a room AND having no mini-map made it basically impossible to successfully navigate the dungeon and find the intended ending. Aesthetics Definitely high marks in this area. The sprites and palettes were on point and clearly depicted what they needed to and movement made sense. There was quite a bit of clipping going on, which brought the score down a bit. It was frequently hard to tell when to hit and why a hit missed. The transition when killing a “boss slime” was also somewhat confusing. Fun Same exact enemies in the same exact room. At the very least cleared rooms should stay cleared to give a player a sense of progress and where to explore next. Innovation Nothing crazy new added here. I liked the choice of a “hide” spell as one of the two that got included in the game! Scope I definitely wish I could’ve seen a larger variety of enemies or that the slimes behaved even differently by color. As best i could tell, blue/red slimes kinda ran away sometimes and that was about it. Roguelikeness Definitely in the vein of a roguelite and has a really solid artistic foundation to continue development if you so choose!
I enjoyed this entry, thanks for the submission! I had a pretty fun time moving through the rooms and smacking slimes. Nobody likes slimes. The music was a great touch along with some good sound effects. I realize there's very little time, but one attack spell would have been nice. Ran into a bug where every time I'd enter a room, my health / mana would drop to almost zero - bug or "extra challenge"? I hope you keep working on this piece and that you had fun!
A programmer's dream
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
Not bad but could have done with some more polish. AI can easily get stuck on scenery and the level-to-level changes aren't intuitive at first. I couldn't tell if it was a level mod or just normal gameplay tips. I was hoping for more of the theme to come through.
Death Robot Island (7DRL 2020)
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
3
Fun
3
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
Completeness 2 Aspects of the game felt very complete. The music, the progress on the graphics and even the control scheme all worked well together. However, I could never get the "light attack" to work on either controller or keyboard, and the fact that there was only a single enemy type gave a certain sense of hollowness to the experience Aesthetics 3 I was definitely surprised by the amount of art and sound assets that were present in the game. Even further surprised that none of them were overbearing or overtuned. I felt the music and voice clips of the other robots really worked well. The control scheme felt a little awkward at first since it appeared that once you started moving you would never stop and could only change direction. However, once that became obvious the controls behaved as advertised for the whole play-through on keyboard and controller Fun 3 Definitely worth my time to play and I very much appreciate the length the game ended up being. Often times games with a similar amount of content (in terms of unique enemies, items, etc.) overstay their welcome for the content they offer. In Death Robot's case, I found getting the 3 orbs to be a reasonable goal and I certainly didn't feel like I wasted any of my time before I started writing my review (so thank you!). Innovative 2 A very beautiful game for what I would expect to see in a period of 7 days, but I didn't notice anything in the way of innovation that it brought to the table. It's a great foundation that certainly holds some promise should its' development be continued Scope 2 I had a hard time judging this category. While I am very impressed by the polish behind the 3D visuals and all the sound effects, the game itself was very bare bones. Having only a single enemy type and (in my case, at least) a single attack are the primary reasons for the score in this case. Roguelike 3 There certainly was permadeath and I had to load the game a few times to confirm that the map/enemy/orb positions were randomized, so very well done in that regard! Get some interesting items and augments going with this game and it would have some real potential!
Dungeon Crawl
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
4
Up front I should note that we're instructed to review the most recent version, including post challenge, and that the game would have scored lower if I was reviewing the version I originally played just after the challenge. It's changed quite a lot since the end of the jam. Dungeon Crawl is, like its title, a pretty straighforward affair. It looks decent enough - a bit repetitive but nothing to seriously complain about from a 7-day game. I recognise some of the stock graphical assets from elsewhere, but one or two might be original creations and look pretty good. I enjoyed the fact that traps are right there for you to see, so spotting them relies on the player paying attention rather than an arbitrary trap-spotting role. Monsters are functionally the same as far as I can tell, but I appreciate that a few different sprites were used to give them a different feel. The interface is generally clear, with a simple and comprehensible log of XP, character level, and potions found. I'm not a fan of the control scheme. I generally don't like mouse-based control, but setting aside my personal preference, it's still executed a bit awkwardly here. It works just fine for picking up potions, performing attacks, etc but it's a unwieldy when it comes to doors. Clicking on a door opens or closes it, so I found that I was constantly having to shimmy the pointer back and forth to walk along a corridor instead of re-closing the door I'd just opened. It sounds like a small niggle but the game has a lot of doors, so it's actually a small niggle which is constantly in effect. Not a major problem but a notable one. My biggest criticism/suggestion relates to the combat. In some ways it works well enough - at first enemies seem to just sprint straight at you, but with a bit of experimentation I found that they don't always follow if you run away, so there is actually a bit of choice involved in how you handle them. However, when you do fight, hitting your target seems to be a percentage-based thing and misses happen quite frequently. Every single time I died in this game, it was because I had a string of arbitrary misses. This is sort of the opposite of the compliment I paid the traps. I like the trap system because the more agency the player has in their success or failure, the more satisfying the gameplay is. Spotting traps is satisfying because it's on me, not on a secret roll behind the scenes. Combat is the other way round - it's frustrating because it's based on random chance rather than player actions. Although the game was mostly bug-free, which is no small achievement in 7 days, I have to remark on one game-breaking bug I did stumble across. It's possible for a trap to spawn on the stairs, and because you can't enter a trap space, you then can't leave the level. I only saw this once in my (fairly numerous) runs but it still bears mentioning. I ran into this in my longest/most successful run, which obviously wasn't ideal. It probably sounds like there's a lot of criticism here, and I suppose that's true, but I still feel Dungeon Crawl was a fair effort for a single week. Its main shortcoming is that it's pretty rough across the board, with a significant bug, slightly awkward control, and somewhat frustrating combat. All of this seems like an issue of polish, and given more time it could probably all be smoothed out. And this newest version does suffer far less from those issues than the previous version I played before. It's harder than people think to make a game in 7 days, and I respect that this is a reasonably functional game . I just can't particularly recommend playing it with its current rough edges and lack of variety in the content. Fair effort though.
Escape Plan B
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
Escape Plan B is a very arcade-like game where the player must move their dot to the exit before the enemy dots (who appear to have perfect tracking) reach the player. It appears that the maps are generated such that they are all winnable, and the enemy dot's path will not intersect with the optimal path between the player and the exit. There is an a short "pause" timer, which allows the player to stop and think without the enemies moving. This means you essentially need to determine the optimal path before the timer runs out, then execute the dash to the exit. The maps get bigger as the levels progress, making it more difficult to find the best route to the exit; and the map foreground/background colors and grid-generation are done in such a way that makes determining the correct path a non-trivial task. The game is very simple, and seems to lack much progression beyond the maps getting larger, so the replayability is not going to be high for most players. I did not encounter any bugs, and the game feels complete for what it is, and the color choice is effective for what it does. Roguelike-like is still a bit of a stretch but I do think this is a valid entry into this challenge, as it incorporates procedural generation and permadeath; but it plays more like an arcade game than a roguelike or roguelike-like.
NecromanZer 7DRL
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
NecromanZer 7DRL has a fun enough premise, and the aesthetic is quite nice. There's an elaborate-looking timeline generation at the beginning, which I didn't get the significance of on my first play, but I think it's just the population of the cemetery. The idea seems to be to mass a horde of zombies from the graveyard and then murder everyone in town. The thing is, it's a bit of a chore. To start with you, have to locate a shovel and go over to pick it up. This is eased by the ability to list nearby items, but I don't see any need to make you hunt for a shovel when you can't do anything else until you get one. The walking speed is very slow, which makes moving anywhere a bit of a slog - especially the long, long trek to the village. Even just making zombies is a hassle, as you have to wait several seconds to dig up the grave and then another several to animate the corpse. I do like the fact that you need to read the headstones to get an idea of which corpses are worth using and which aren't. The game's ideas are generally neat enough - the whole thing just plays very very slowly, which makes it more of an ordeal to play than it should be. Take the same idea but make everything faster and you'd have a much more playable game. Still, although I've mostly talked about that one big issue, everything else is pretty solid. The aesthetic suits the tone of the game, the interface is pretty easy once you check the help screen, and it's satisfying when you manage to corner helpless townsfolk with a mob of zombies. Some cool ideas, it just needs smoother execution to make it more playable.
Necromancer Necropolis
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
3
Fun
3
Innovation
2
Scope
3
Roguelikeness
2
A realtime game where you play a necromancer with the ability to bring enemies back from the dead. While it's fun to lead around a mass of slimes, your minions are pretty dumb even by the standards of undead and mostly just get stuck in corners or in the way of your attacks, so in effect you have a choice of either having minions or using your own magic. There are quite a few bugs and unfinished aspects of the game - there is nothing to stop you from leaving the map, enemies/minions with healing auras sometimes 'drop' them and enemies/minions also sometimes move through or get stuck in walls. The game has sprites which are appealing individually, but don't combine too well; for example the walls and the floor tiles do not align. Controls are straightforward and easy to pick up. Roguelike elements are extremely limited; the levels are simply a repeating grid of exactly the same room over and over again so there is not much meaningful procedural generation and the game doesn't even have permadeath - dying simply returns you to the start of the level.
Rogue
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
3
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
The game works fine, no critical bugs encountered, but it is definitely not polished enough to be called a complete game. There is no high score, or at the very least some indication of depth or remaining levels. There is no way to mute the music. Surrounding and enemies look too generic and nondescript. Bullets of enemies are blending with my own bullets. "Walls" tha block your movement, but not bullets, is not very good idea. On later levels it is impossible to dodge bullets in narrow corridors. It is somewhat fun to play this game several times, but special bullets bonus runs out way too fast and difficulty ramps up way too quickly. There is nothing new in the game. The scope is more or less fine for a 7drl, but I'm afraid it's not even qualified as roguelite. Random level layout is not enough. There are no choices. No development. You just follow arrows and shoot everything around.
Honestly, I'm not sure how to rate this game. It has procedural generation, yes. It has permadeath, yes. But it feels nothing like a roguelike, and arguably does not really fit into this jam. I honestly tried to give it my best shot, but never got past level 3. Perhaps not having a mouse contributed a bit. It was fun enough to try for half an hour, but not fun in the roguelike sense. I gave a score of 3 for completeness and aesthetics, because the game doesn't look bad at all, but the rest of the scoring rubric just doesn't apply to a game so widely different from the expected genre.
Unnamed 7DRL20
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
3
Roguelikeness
3
The Unnamed 7DRL is a fully working game, but extremely awkward to play. As it notes on the game page, there's no win condition - you just play until you die. The core functionality exists, but there's a significant lack of polish. It's a little difficult to control, since the facing and movement share keys and are differentiated only by how long the key is held, so if you change direction there's an infuriating pause in between you pressing the button and the character switching direction. The menus are fully functional, but feel similarly awkward, with slight delays. The combination of the two makes even the very start of picking up items in the starting room a slow and finnicky expierence. The way in which buffs are aplied is likewise functional, but awkward. When damage is taken or a buff is applied, the game locks for a short interval while it displays the status over the target character. At one point I crafted a adze which stacked a bunch of defense buffs on me, and every time I got hit it would display the damage, followed three messages telling me my defense went up, each of which locked the screen for somewhere between a half-second and a second. This made the act of playing the game a very awkward experience. There was also at least one significant bug with regards to map creation, where I spawned into a fully enclosed room, with only one item of fuel for the forge, which meant that I couldn't craft a tool with which to dig out. I think this made it impossible for me to exit. I suppose it's possible that you can punch through the dark-colored walls, but after some ten punches I just restarted the game. I do like the crafting system, though it's not super novel. It's interesting collecting the various ores and seeing what effects they have. Unfortunately, there's really only one mechanic - mine and craft - so there's not much variety. With no endgame or end state, once you play around with the different combinations there's not much more to discover.
Wizz's Bounce Fiasco
Completeness
3
3
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
2
I think the game's scope is a bit too limited. While the levels get bigger and more complicated, they don't present an exciting challenge to keep playing for a long time. One issue is probably that there is essentially no penalty for making suboptimal moves - as long as the player doesn't cross the bombs, they can run around forever. The game is fun for several minutes, trapping bouncers is cool, but I couldn't see it as a fun _challenge_.
This one is a decent enough little game for a jam. Its submission to 7DRL is maybe questionable - it's a puzzle game with procedurally generated levels rather anything remotely roguelike. That aside, it's not bad for what it is. The aesthetic works pretty well for the most part, which the blobs you're trying to catch being very distinct, the mines being very easy to recognise, and overall a pleasant retro chunky look which brought to mind, for some reason, the Atari Jaguar. My main criticisms are usability related. Although the control is simple and works well, the camera is a real pain. You can only see one row behind you (towards the camera) but a long way in the opposite direction, which means that the best way to spot blobs is to keep trekking back towards the camera to try and see as much of the level as possible. Keeping the camera so close to your character also has the effect of making it really, really easy to accidentally walk into a mine that's on the camera side of you. Most of my deaths came from that. Having the camera more zoomed out to show maybe 3 or 4 rows behind would solve a lot of that. There were a couple of blips in the procedural generation - areas being walled off by mines, and the blobs within not leaving that area, forcing me to step on a mine to get access to them. It didn't happen that often though. I also ran into a recurring bug where a blob would decide to just stay in one space, and no amount of dropping the cage on it would catch it. I had to restart a few times because of that. Still, some bugs are to be expected in a jam game and neither of these occurs so often to make the game unplayable. They're noticeable but not completely game-ruining. My other suggestion is more of an aesthetic one. Though I like the overall look, the almost continuous blue flashing gave me a headache after 15-20 minutes, and the endless squawking of the blobs becomes grating really quickly. I understand the functional purpose of both - to indicate when the blobs are moving - but they become an aggravation pretty quickly. Again, though, that's not a big gripe, just a suggestion to tone down those things a bit. As a whole, the game is a pleasant enough diversion for a little while, and it generally well made. Aside from not being remotely a roguelike, it's a decent entry.
Cats are Delicious
Completeness
3
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
4
2
Completeness: The game plays well and has win and lose conditions, although these are bare bones. There are a few bugs where the character can't move through a tile in a certain direction, but nothing game breaking. The combat is totally opaque, but the focus of gameplay, catching the cats, works well. Aesthetics: The game forces the character to the center even when in the map corner, which is disorienting. Resolution is 1:1, resulting in a size far too small to be playable without manual zoom. The icons are well designed and make the most of a restrained color palette. Fun: The game is playable and even polished, but not very deep. It can be experienced in full in just a few minutes. Innovative: The game features sewer system fast travel which is fun to use and fits the theme. I wanted this system to play a larger role, but the enemies don't offer much resistance, and it's never necessary to use the sewers. Scope: There's a full vertical slice here, but it's a very thin slice. Roguelike: "Cats are Delicious" doesn't stray far from the roguelike formula (pardon the pun).
This is a cute game but can be quite buggy at times. At some points, your troll-character can't move to the right (direction) despite nothing being in its way. In regards to aesthetics, you kinda get a real sense of a silly world that the game takes place in. But there are many questions needing to be answered... what are the helmeted characters with spears, for instance? Town guards? Some of the graphics are a bit confusing, ultimately. There doesn't seem to be a solid goal to this game... nothing truly to aim for. However, with that being said, there's obviously very fertile ground here to make something pop, like adding a story element to the world/characters. There's not much going on here to really garner much in terms of innovation. This doesn't mean the developer, however, wouldn't have some more tricks up their sleeve down the line, though!
Havoc Cab
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
3
Fun
3
2
Innovation
3
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
Nice assets, interesting idea - I always wanted to play procedurally generated Crazy Taxi. "Drift" doesn't work. No sense of speed. Generally, it's more proof of concept than a game.
I can see what Havoc Cab was going for - it's essentially procedurally generated Crazy Taxi. As an old Crazy Taxi fan from the days of yore, I'm happy to see more games in that vein. The biggest problem with Havoc Cab is that it's *extremely* buggy. In my first four plays, two of them spawned me falling into the abyss (forcing me to hard-close the game because there was no way to exit) and one had a bugged green destination column which was there throughout and didn't relate to any passenger I picked up (nothing happened if I drove through it, either with or without a passenger). This kind of thing continued to happen for whole time I was playing, but it particularly stuck with me that 3 out of the first 4 were badly bugged. It's to be expected that a 7DRL might have a bug or two, considering the timescale, but Havoc Cab has so many that it barely works, I'm sorry to say. When it does actually work, it's fine. It's easy to accidentally fall off the edge, and I lost many taxis that way, but that's a matter of practice. I never got the hang of drifting with any precision, but I did get better at staying on the road. So technical issues aside, Havoc Cab more or less does what it's meant to. I quite like the aesthetic of the town. I don't think this was intentional, but the steely blue island of buildings surrounded by a vast void gives me a cyberpunk vibe, which is in my wheelhouse. Animation is a bit stuttery at times, but it seems like presentation is where a lot of the effort went, and it shows. It looks good for a game whipped out in 7 days. Having said that, it's a small enough and repetitive enough environment that it gets old pretty quickly. Having a variety of environments would be a big ask for a 7-day jam, especially when the game is going for this kind of 3D game world, but driving up and down the same handful of streets really does get samey very quickly. Maybe a less ambitious look, with more variety, would have worked better. My feeling is that Havoc Cab falls prey to something which is really common in 7DRL entries (and the one I worked on a few years ago made the same mistake!) - it tries to do too much, and ends up putting the week's effort in the wrong places as a result. Giving us a 3D environment is cool, but that's pretty much everything Havoc Cab is. There isn't enough game here to be able to recommend it, and it's so buggy that it ends up feeling very unfinished. I applaud the effort, and I think that putting procedural generation in the Crazy Taxi format is a great idea, but what Havoc Cab is trying to do was probably too much for a week-long jam. Good try, and I'd like to see what comes of it with more work, but it's not there right now.
2035 - Creta's Point of No Return
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
2
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
3
Roguelikeness
3
3
Good start! It was kind of hard to figure out where I could move though; it would sometimes take a few attempts to move onto a square, and I couldn't figure out why.
The game needs better instruction, even if written in the description on Itch. I had hard time trying to understand the blocking tiles which seemed to be not marked in any way, like invisible walls. Also I thought the holes play some role, but I didn't discover any effects, so it was probably just another type of a tile. Also the game seemed too easy for during first twenty levels and after them I didn't have much motivation to play further with carefulness. Pleasant music was a nice addition to the gameplay.
Bloody Crates
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
This game is essentially a twin-stick shooter but with everything hidden in boxes. There's a very limited ammo supply but continuous access to a shop for restocking. It's really a game of judging whether it's worth the risk and cost of shooting boxes open in order to try and get coins/health/etc. The other major aspect of the game is switching between the 6 weapons for different situations. I never found any use for any of them except 1 and 3, though - 1 is a single-shot pistol for busting boxes, and 3 is a rapid-fire rifle for defeating enemies. The others seemed redundant. Dynamite gives the appearance of being a big deal, but doesn't do what you'd expect - it doesn't explode, doesn't have an area of effect, and doesn't even destroy boxes. If you hit an enemy with it, it's not actually that powerful. The dynamite thing is one of several weird choices here. I'm not sure why ammo is represented as blobs/slimes (which look like they'd be enemies) or why HP pickups are something that looks like a rubber band. While I didn't run into any crashes or other game-breaking bugs, I found that your character frequently gets stuck on corners, even corners of empty space. I can't recommend playing the game thanks to its awkwardness, odd design choices, and the repetitive nature of just busting boxes open and moving on. With some more polish and more variety (both in what the player's doing, and in the differences between the weapons) it could be improved a lot.
NeetMeat
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
2
Fun
3
Innovation
3
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
2
Very nice pixel work with a fresh concept, but underdeveloped gameplay. There are a few bugs (including a helpful one, where the player stops taking damage! ;) ), but nothing that prevents completion. The sprites are cute, but awkwardly proportioned with respect to level geometry and bounds. Level locations are randomized, but the procgen is not extensive. Help and credit screens are provided and the game is capped off with a unique, very challenging, boss. The twin-stick-melee concept has promise, but more development will be required to realize it.
Nothing Left to Lose
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
The game runs, doesn't crash, but have extremely basic UI and definitely lacks any polish. While retro-filter looks interesting, the motion and rotation caused almost immediate seasivkkness for me :( Levels are extremely samey, literally nothing changes. There is extremely little game in there, so it's not really fun or innovative. It's barely a prototype.
Rogue GOL
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
3
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
I am really sorry, but I managed to spend only 5 minutes over this game. First of all, it's quite hard to tell what's going on the screen. Playing on stardard-sized modern desktop (ie 1920x1080) game screen is small and font is not readable enough. Game is real-time and fast paced, environment is busy, there is a lot of monsters and it's quite hard to find the player character on the first glance - every element is white. In 5 minutes I managed to die several times before I even found out when '@' is. But even when I spot the player character fast enough, I wasn't really able to play the game. Enemies moves fast, player movement is not responsive and not reliable... I like the idea of creating real-time game that looks like old classic roguelikes. Unfortunately, the execution is mediocre.
Rogue Zombie
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
Appreciate that the engine is written from scratch, but there's not much of a game here. -- it's more of a proof of concept. (The title of the game window is "Hello World".) You wander through a 3D-ish, first-person perspective maze , shooting zombies, that drop like flat cut-outs at an old-fashioned shooting gallery. It's kind of fun to rely on your mental map of the space to navigate it, but there is ultimately no purpose or challenge. Eventually you die, and move on.
Xomb
Completeness
3
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
It was a quest of it's own to make this game running, but luckily I'm a former perl developer, so I managed. The game runs, doesn't crash, no bugs found, but it is definitely not polished. In the year of 2020 to be forced to use hjklyubn for controls is kind of harsh. There is no map memory, you have to remember location of gates to find your way up in nondescript environment. Enemies shooting far from outside of field of view are not fun. The game have very little to do to be fun. There is nothing new here. Just generic barebone prototype of a roguelike. For a game that is based on another game it ofers too little. I'm afraid there is not enough of a game to be called true roguelike.
Crabbington
Completeness
2
2
Aesthetics
3
2
Fun
2
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
3
2
A cute game with buggy-eyed, cartoon critters, pickups, and a unique theme to do with a hermit crab seeking a home. I liked the aesthetics and that it worked on any platform with a web browser, but it was a tad buggy and the gameplay quite random. Completeness - 2/5. We have a nice working grid here with a good variety of enemies and pickups as well as a victory and defeat popup. There are a number of bugs and missing features, but this is not uncommon in 7DRL. I think the crashing and lack of the game resetting properly on its own just barely pushes it down below average. Aesthetics - 3/5. The sprites in this game are adorable! I love these buggy-eyed little critters and being able to wear a soup can or a fedora. The animations for bumping and bombs were nice extras. That said, the UI was very simple and did not communicate its concepts very well. The scaling interface did not scale the sprites with it, making things look very cluttered sometimes. Fun - 2/5. Very simple, random gameplay. You move in four cardinal directions but can bump things diagonally as needed. Given that most things picked up have no noticeable impact, only the bombs present any significant choice for the player. Enemies appear and disappear for unknown reasons sometimes. You can get kidnapped by a devil that may never, ever put you down! Innovation - 2/5. The freely-scalable, minimalist interface is fairly unique but, aside from that, this is a fairly simple roguelike. Scope - 2/5. It was scoped to be a minimalist roguelike, and that was delivered, but I feel it was a little more minimal than average. Roguelikeness - 3/5. Turn-based, grid-based, pickups, bumping hitpoint conflict resolution: that's fairly roguelike. However, the limited scope leaves many popular roguelike features unfulfilled.
Crabbington I liked some of the visual design here and thought that some of the writing was funny. That said, this felt pretty unfinished to me in terms of quite how I was supposed to go about playing through - and the visual clutter and clumsy zoom didn’t help with this. However, I could certainly see the emergence of something interesting here further down the line. It felt like it might be an interesting Broughlike in the making. There are certainly the beginnings of a bunch of great ideas within.
Rogue Soldier (Jam Build)
Completeness
2
3
Aesthetics
2
2
Fun
3
2
Innovation
2
2
Scope
2
2
Roguelikeness
2
2
There are a lot of bugs, although none makes the game unplayable. The game over screen can’t be reset, and there is no victory screen. The game plays (almost exactly) like a bare bones version of Contra with a little Shinobi mixed in. The UI is a mix of basic shapes and hand drawn Contra sprites. Most of the art doesn’t appear to be strictly representational, but the Contra sprites are charming! The proc gen platforms don’t add much, but the game is pretty fun.
This is not a game. The is very early prototype. That looks, to be fair, quite bad and plays bad. There is nothing new here. There is barely anything, definitely not enough to be called a solid 7drl. And it's not related to roguelikes at all. At least in it's current state.
Rook Warp
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
2
It's difficult to rate this as a Roguelike. The UI is small, and it's very hard to see what's going on. On top of that, the controls are flighty at best. I wanted to like this, especially with the spooky dark ambient soundtrack and the game's overall "haunting" direction, it obviously wants to go in. As it stands right now, however, I cannot give this title a recommendation. As with all of these submissions, however, a bit more work on them could be the very key that takes them to the next level, however.
The Minotaur's Lair
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
3
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
2
Walk thru gigantic empty rooms, collect every treasure that you see and finally get cought by big M. Not very exciting, to be fair. I wouldn't qualify this as finished game. Even in so simple game there is a bug where you might end up in a disconnected section of the dungeon and never meet Minotaur. I find it rather boring with no interesting ideas or mechanics. I would expect more of a game from a solid 7drl. It's hard to classify this prototype even as roguelite, random dungeon is not enough for this.
Wuhan CORONA China Virus
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
3
A simple, topical turn-based game. Not much depth nor artistry here. Medical basis is shaky, at best. Skip it.
Bug Stomper
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
2
Some effort was put into the art of the game, but unfortunately gameplay couldn't catch up. The game is extremely simple, but even this simple game have could freeze! Slow screen scrolling is extremely annoying which is multiplied by slow movement animation, making it unbearable to play. On top of that lucky bug can just move out of sight and kill you in one bugs turn. There is no way to scroll field of view, no way to predict it. Aside from theme, which wasn't explored at all, there is nothing new to the game. I would expect much more even from an average complete roguelike. Art is nice, but we are talking about roguelikes, which could do with being pure ASCII. Speaking about roguelikeness. I'm afraid in int's current state it cannot be even called roguelite. Randomness here is minimal and do not affect anything in a meaningful way. There are no choices. Nothing to think about. Everything is very simple.
Dungeon Hackerer 2
Completeness
2
Aesthetics
2
Fun
2
Innovation
2
Scope
2
Roguelikeness
2
Not finished. You can wander around a maze in first-person and attack wandering Unity Capsule prefabs, but they don't attack back and just walk through you. There are a few nice low-poly furniture models to find, but other than that there is no game here to review. Should not have been labelled a success.