"Your score is not a number in the corner of the screen. It's strapped to your back." That opening line is the single best formulation of this jam's theme I've read, and the mechanic actually delivers on it.

Every drone you take down makes you CARRY more: brighter, heavier, more appetising to everyone else. To turn that into real score you have to walk to a bank and stand still on a gold pad, exposed, for a few seconds. If someone kills you first, they take everything you were carrying. That's textbook risk and reward, and it solves the problem almost every score game has, which is why I should care about anyone else's number. Here their number is walking around wearing what I want.

The crown floating over whoever is carrying most is the right image, you can spot the leader from across the map. And splitting the HUD into BANKED and CARRYING as two separate numbers is excellent, one column is what's yours and the other is what you can lose. You understand the whole tension of the game just by looking at it.

The infrastructure is another level for a jam, too: editable player name, solo vs bots, quick play, private rooms with a join code, and a global leaderboard on the title screen. Two full modes, with Crownfall being practically its own game. And naming a bot SCORELORD is very funny.

Being fair about my problem: I couldn't get out of the PAUSED overlay. The game loads, enters the match, the scoreboard shows all four competitors and the 5:00 timer, but it stays stuck on PAUSED / RESUME with "MOUSE COOLING DOWN, CLICK AGAIN IN A SECOND". I clicked RESUME repeatedly and waited the interval it asks for and it never released. This game needs pointer lock and my browser doesn't grant it, so this is almost certainly my environment rather than your game, and I've rated accordingly rather than punishing you for it.

The suggestion that comes out of it is still worth having though: a game that only works with pointer lock becomes unplayable in any browser or context that blocks it, and in those cases the player just sees a PAUSED screen that never goes away with no explanation of why. An alternative aiming mode, or even just a line of text saying "this game needs pointer lock, click to allow", would rescue those players.

On paper this is the best theme reading and the biggest technical scope in the jam. I really want someone to play it properly and tell me how it feels, because "your score rides on your back and your killer takes all of it" deserves that.

I really liked the atmosphere and the color palette, and I enjoyed the effects as well. I think if you spend a bit more time refining the gameplay and fix the mouse input delay, this could turn into a really interesting game.