Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous.

• Incredible presentation, the little shimmer of the left etcher is an awesome touch, as well as the main menu animation(s). Great sfx, soundtrack, and illustrations all round. Really lovely premise. Meta humour is great, and not too overbearing or excusing itself in being self-referential yet committing mistakes/tired tropes. It’s just fresh, and doesn’t play itself out. Level number could also be diegetic, etched at the start of each level, or on a small digital display. Would be cool to see the coloured boxes better integrated in the levels too! I had a ton of fun seeing all the different dialogue options. Fun routing and wizardly demands to get through the levels. What is meant by my head being so big I don’t need big jumps? The mantle mechanic isn’t really used elsewhere explicitly, or that effectively. Wall jump is a little weird at first, but smooth system once you understand the inputs. The ‘end with a drop’ ones feel a little lacklustre, unclear if the fall I’m doing is enough. Some animation/sfx feedback would be great! Figuring out the lucky number should have repeating hints if a player does get stuck, otherwise I can see it being very punishing and unhelpful. Accidentally skipped whole lucky number 3 dialogue that makes the font all teeny tiny, pain. Seriously clean experience, really fantastic concept and execution. I could see this being a classic browser game. I really would love to see this continued, even if the code is a little sloppy and it wasn’t intended to be a long term project. I feel like playing a game called ‘The Looker’ all of a sudden... --- This is a really unique take on the theme; gradually learning more and more about each puzzle through the wizard's hints is a really creative use of "Feedback Loop". The central premise of being captured in an etch-a-sketch is pretty funny, and the writing at points made me laugh out loud (particularly the huge screed on the number 3. Yes, I have a big monitor and read it all). The visuals are also great; I particularly like the shaking up and down to reset a level animation. The puzzles were all interesting, and it's very impressive that you were able to make it detect loops so consistently - I bet that can't have been easy. I only really have three pieces of actionable feedback beyond "I want more". 1: Some of the writing has typos and/or misspellings, which detracts a little from the otherwise excellent dialogue. 2: Often I jumped twice due to holding the button down when I landed, which meant I failed the puzzle; consider changing it to only jump on a press rather than a hold (and adding input forgiveness). 3: As the text types within the dialogue box, the typewriter effect often makes words jump down to the next line when they get too long, which feels unpolished compared to the rest.