Overall Gameplay (10 / 13 points)

• Player Experience: 7/10
• Mechanical Polish: 3/3

Comments: As soon as I saw the intro, I had a feeling that I was in for a treat. I was not wrong! The game's core mechanics work quite well together. Forcing me to move around the map to continue upgrading my weapons was an excellent design choice and gave me another thing for my mind to worry about, along with breaking people free of their cages and keeping myself alive. I was also quite impressed with the variety of enemies and their attack patterns, along with all of the different weapons. I was still discovering new enemies and weapons at the end of my playthrough, which was really satisfying. My number one criticism of the gameplay is that the weapons didn't always feel like upgrades. A lack of an inventory system for carrying multiple weapons was probably for the better overall, but it would've alleviated my frustrations from picking up some crappy pistol to irreversibly replace my rocket launcher. I think spreading out the weapon drops a bit farther from each other, thus effectively reducing their frequency, would've helped avoid any slippery slopes that may have been encountered by more sharply increasing the damage output of subsequent weapons. Personally I also would've liked some sort of movement ability that gives me another option in combat aside from just running away from everything. A dash to dodge enemy attacks with, for example. But that's more personal preference than anything. One more thing - I talk about this in my video recording above, but I still don't understand the mechanics around breaking people free from cages. I can see that the people I break free have health bars and eventually die, but I didn't see any tangible changes to the flow of gameplay as a result of them being alive. Thus I ultimately just ignored them after breaking them free.

Theme Inclusion (5.5 / 6 points)

Comments: I think this is an excellent use of the theme overall, but I would've liked to know exactly who I was "calling for help" from - the intro made clear what the plot was, but the phone/drones/etc. were still a bit ambiguous and didn't seem to have much of a connection to the plot from what I could tell.

Overall Presentation (8.5 / 10 points)

• General Presentation: 3.5/4
• Quality of Graphics: 3/4
• Quality of Audio: 2/2

Comments: Excellent job on the overall presentation. The introduction was a great way to showcase the plot, and the info screen was miles better than just mindlessly plugging the controls into a README. A little in-game info on the effects of breaking people out of cages would've been appreciated though! Generally loved the graphics, but the realistic style of the grassy background didn't seem to fit in real well with the rest of the game. I wish there was more variety to the environment in general rather than just endless grass. Great job on the music/sound effects!