Overall Gameplay (10 / 13 points)

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

Comments: The strategy behind positioning, breaching, enemy AIs, etc. was surprisingly deep! The skill ceiling to this game was clearly very high, and although the learning curve was quite steep, I could see myself rapidly getting better the more I played. While I had a lot of fun with the core gameplay, the pacing of levels and difficulty was a bit of a disappointment. Rather than having only a couple of levels where new enemy types quickly pile on, I really would've liked to see many more levels that explore a broader variety of enemy combinations. I only got to fight most enemy types once, which was unsatisfying as I was hoping to utilize the tactics I had just developed in new scenarios. Mechanically this game was sound and controlled well - although I thought the shotgun was really bad and not at all worth its terrible cooldown. The randomly generated levels were a great touch.

Theme Inclusion (2 / 6 points)

Comments: I thought the theme connection here was really weak. Take out "Element of Wood", "Element of Fire", etc. from the level introductions and I would've assumed that the game had ignored the theme completely. I also suspect that an attempt to show a theme connection this way was partially behind the level designs that I criticized in the comments above.

Overall Presentation (5.5 / 10 points)

• General Presentation: 1.5/4
• Quality of Graphics: 2/4
• Quality of Audio: 2/2

Comments: "The controls are in the Readme! RTFM!", the main menu said in jest. It gave me a chuckle, but it was also a cop-out from fully fleshing out a proper introduction. A simple help page that briefly describes movement/shooting controls would've provided a much smoother intro than a text file, and showing an "E" prompt above the player character when standing on a weapon would not only visually show the player another control, it would also enhance gameplay by showing them when they are within pickup range. The UI was pretty bare-bones - I didn't even realize it existed until my weapon strangely stopped firing. Sprites looked nice, but the animations could've used a few extra frames, and the level design was missing some detail - especially in the background. Something more interesting than a solid black background for the intro/transition screens would've been nice too. Music and SFX sounded great!