Comments for all Jamcon sets.
Asgore by Arctic Tern
The first move in the set was a little confusing to fully understand. The fireball is supposed to be destroyable with melee attacks, with 35HP, which seems like a lot considering most melee attacks deal somewhere in the sub-15% range, but it also despawns on contact? Wouldn't attacking it once, regardless of damage, be able to destroy it then?
Side Special is very neat. I always really enjoy moves and mechanics that play around with idling as a basis for hitbox interaction.
I do really like how this set integrates the character's penchant for restrained pacifism into the overall playstyle. Having the combo game largely revolve around bring the opponent to him, even through encouragement rather than through actual force in some cases, really ties into the characterization. One almost gets the feeling that Asgore's really trying to delay winning a match as long as possible, just to give the foe any chance they can to come back against him. All the same, the longer the opponent takes to finish him off, the stronger he can buff himself, as if his reticence is wearing off over time. Little details like the hesitation on the startup animation of his Fsmash add to this very well.
If I have any complaints, it's concerning numbers, which make some aspects seem overturned and others just the opposite. Even for as hard as it may be to buff some of his moves, the fire pillars being able to last 10 seconds, for instance, seems like way too much longevity for hazards that can occupy so much space when there's up to three on them on the stage. I'm also not quite sure what you mean when you use "units" as measurement, since you describe Up Smash as having 3 units of vertical range but also state that it rivals that of Palutena's, and I can't really piece together how her move could measure out to something described as such. That being said, this isn't the case for all of the set, or even the majority of it. The number scaling on moves like Dash Attack make perfect sense and are both understandable and clearly reasonable. I also like how much the set takes into consideration the stage being played on when accounting for the effectiveness of certain moves and combos. My favorite move in the set is actually the Back Throw, which while fairly simple, has a lot going for it with its fun buffs and min-maxed opportunity cost to take into account.
Despite my stupidity making it hard for me to understand numbers, I genuinely do like this set. Earlier on, I was a bit concerned about how spammable his fire-based attacks could end up being, but over the course of the set, you do a good job explaining why this wouldn't necessarily be the case. As someone who's never played Undertale, this moveset is commendable in how it's able to communicate the essence of the character even to someone like me.
Venture by Tunz
Starting to see that Overwatch is your "thing". It's amazing to me that you able to not only get a feel for these characters over such a short fragment of time, but then roll out an entire moveset within that same small window. Color me impressed. It usually takes me an entire weekend just to put away my folded laundry. For a character with so little established reference material, linking the trailer was a smart decision, although clearly I have to dock points for making me watch an ad. /s
I'm always skeptical about how people might handle digging mechanics, but the moveset gets off to a pretty good start with the damage reduction mechanic, which makes logical sense and contributes well to the fundamental playstyle as a sort of "rush in and suffocate" character. I gather that it's basically a straight adaptation from the source material, so I guess it makes sense to implement. Regardless, I like it. Unfortunately, the actual application of this mechanic within the rest of the set is understated, and could do with a lot more elaboration to make stronger use of the concept, and really drill into the reader (pun intended) the potential of the character's gimmick.
This is somewhat subjective I suppose, but this set has some of the same problem I had with Mauga, relying on a single weapon to carry almost all of the animations. I get that the drill is the character's whole shtick, but even just throwing in something like a kick or two on a few inputs would break up the sameness of a lot of the animations. The smashes using rock props is a good way to mix things up, and the Ftilt and Fair using bombs is nice, even if they're mirrored inputs (I normally don't really care about that sort of thing as long as it makes sense and is handled well). I'm not a fan of Dair just being the same thing as Up Special. Not sure why that couldn't have just been a downward-angled function of the Up Special instead of its own move. The best use of the drill in the set is probably the Up and Down Throws and the DI mixups they provide for. I'm a fan of that.
I've noticed you getting a little more in-depth with your sets, which is great. Venture dives deeper (pun intended) into aspects like their combo game and various uses for attacks than most of your previous submissions. However, I do think a lot is left to be explored with their potential mechanical depth. Guess it's kinda hard to really expand on a character with so little material to work with at the moment, especially for a set written within such a limited amount of time, but even if you have to make stuff up, you can definitely get more elaborate with most of the inputs here. All the same, keep up the good work.
Hades by WeirdChillFever
Hades is kind of everything I tend to dislike in a moveset. Visual clutter, heavy prop usage, minions, resource micromanaging, and interactions that are so specific that I'd never even remember to deliberately make use of them in an actual match. Basically, I'd never want to play as this character.
This doesn't mean I scorn the effort, though. In fact, I quite enjoyed reading the moveset. Despite embodying most of what I would hate to actually engage with as a Smash player, it also expresses much of what I love about writing and the creative process. The whole thing reads like the story it's based on, and everything is interwoven like a mapped-out plot or a fine symphony. Hades has a finely crafted playstyle that embodies the character with absolute perfection. His arsenal is rife with elaborate setups that boast immense reward but, in a Sisyphean sense, always set him back and work against him in some way as well. Carefully balancing a paradigm with Persephone comes off as a Herculean task that makes the player feel about as paranoid and aggrieved as Hades himself, left to never be fully satisfied even with the best possible outcome of any investment made or action performed.
To simply recap all of the nuances and smartly-designed aspects of the set would require me to write a review as lengthy as the document itself, so I won't even attempt such a thing. A couple of moves feel just a tiny bit phoned in, particularly the Fthrow, but with how setup-crazy the set is as a whole, having a handful of simpler attacks doesn't exactly harm things. A personal standout mechanic of the set for me would be the Shades, which have actually given me an idea or two for a set of my own I've been working on...
Continuing the trend of "movesets I would absolutely never be able to grasp in a real match", we have Antonio. The document really benefits from having a navigable sidebar due to how much it refers back to the sheer number of various equippable items. Having so much variability on every single input is certainly a bold choice. Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure how well this would actually work in practice. The devotion to working out all the various interactions and potential combos, and how every item would affect every move in general, is nonetheless impressive. It's not the longest moveset in the world, but it's one I had to take a break from while reading due to how much there was to download.
What's commendable is that every input here has a ton of thought put into it. There's a solid grasp of mechanics on display here, so every input feels well designed and with a clear intended use. Where the set stumbles a bit, I feel, is in pulling these ideas all together into a truly coherent whole. Each individual attack is great on its own, but together, they make for a somewhat disjointed set that I'm not sure benefits all too profoundly from the core gimmick it's based around. Each separate part is more interesting than the sum of what they add up to.
This anchor-and-helm-wielding ship-sinker is my personal rival this Jamcon, I see. "There's something so satisfying about hitting opponents with an anchor so you can hit them with another anchor." Couldn't have said it better myself.
It's of course fitting that a character heavily associated with anchors would have such a focus on edgeguarding - dropping heavy objects to sink foes off-stage and whatnot. Murasa.EXE gets good mileage out of this propensity, with all of her specials being very fun moves that all play a role in making her opponents feel seasick just trying to recover. I'm particularly a fan of Side Special's lag-canceling mechanic and how it interacts with moves like her laggy Up Special, the gigantic anchor drop being one of my favorite moves in the set for how bombastic it is and how players can get multiple subsequent uses out of by timing it around their Side Special, even if it isn't always practical. Likewise, how Side Special interacts with Forward Smash is also great - I really like how the latter move is designed to accomodate both potential benefit as well as drawback from canceling it early. That's some good old layered depth. Up Smash is another move I'm really a fan of, with a great animation with multiple working parts that all come together beautifully to make for a fun and mechanically cogent series of interworking hitboxes. The rest of the moves earn similar complement, and there really isn't a bad input in the whole thing.
This one was a fun, easy read with a lot of personality behind it. Your writing style continues to be one of my favorites due to its clarity of language and colorful descriptions that manage to keep the read well-paced but without sacrificing detail.
Bravo for the braille fakeout, like everyone else agrees. Brilliant bit of character-specific presentation there.
I'm not sure I get what the connection between Ancient Power and widening pools of water is, but whatever. It's a magical fish. I'll buy it. I do like how you decided to just run with the "fossil master" theme with the set (to the point that all three Smash Attacks are named some variant of "Find Fossil"), and other than actual fossil Pokémon themselves, there probably isn't a better candidate for this from the franchise than Relicanth.
"I stopped here because Gen 8’s fossils confuse me."
Same, man. Same.
The brevity necessitated by the Jamcom window does hurt the set to some degree. Placeholder numbers and short move descriptions aside, the set would definitely benefit from some more detail on its mechanics. For example, it's not mentioned how long Ancient Power's buffs last for. Also probably wouldn't hurt to mention some sort of HUD display for which fossil Relicanth is holding, since I imagine it'd be hard to make out during normal gameplay.
Dash Attack is probably my favorite move here. I really like the sense of a fluidly curvable movemention option, and particularly love the way it can bend opponents along with it. My only complaint with the move is that it doesn't go far enough! My immediate thought when reading it was "Oh, I'll bet you can use the current to flush a foe into a Dive Spot with you for repositioning shenanigans!" I also really like Down Throw and its setups. Putting both players to sleep is hilariously anticlimactic, and killing someone by putting them to sleep and then having them simply drown in a puddle is such a brilliantly dumb idea. Much applause for this input.
"The pivot grab and running grab animations each also have Relicanth open its mouth early to inhale bubbles and microorganisms (not seen since they’re microorganisms) in comparison to the shorter yap opening of Relicanth’s standing grab, if that makes any sense at all."
This part was genuinely funny. And I do think it's a clever animation differential, even if it was probably just mentioned as an off-hand joke.
All in all, I'm not sure how well the set really comes together into something compelling. There are some moves with solid ideas at play, such as Down Tilt and Forward Throw, but there's not enough glue here to keep it all together. At the same time though, it's not exactly easy to make compelling movesets for characters that are literally fish, and since you basically hit all the checkmarks you possibly could for "Relicanth moveset", this is probably the best someone could've done for this particular Pokémon. If nothing else, it was a fun read, if not an especially ambitious project. And hey, I'd play as this moveset. Why not? Sounds fun enough.
Great! I can't wait to review-bomb some Dodongos!
Turtles like short read. Turtles thankful moveset small and easy. What you expect when Turtles slow reader? Get good laugh from silly moveset.
I have no idea what this character even is.
I'mma be real here: this moveset sounds like a fever dream to play as or against. Probably the intention. Regardless, I don't even know where to start or what to make of it. A lot of the RNG feels kinda busted, but the rest of the set doesn't take so much advantage of this that it feels completely overpowered. Just comes off as a minor nuisance to fight against at worst. I guess the randomness is supposed to be in-character? I don't have much else to offer comment-wise, but I'm commenting anyway to simply let you know that I did read it.
Voyager by Katapultar
I saved this reading for last because I heard it was a doozy, and if I'd committed to it earlier then I'd probably have burnt out before finishing the rest. If my comment ends up a little short, hopefully you can forgive me, because that probably means I'm a bit tired by this point.
I think what this set does best is how it achieves a completely unique sense of playstyle right out the gate, purely from the character's movement mechanics. I can't think of another moveset that nails down the feeling of controlling a weightless astronaut quite so elegantly. It's like Sora and Jigglypuff fused together and drank some of Willy Wonka's fizzy lifting drinks. It might also be the single best, even definitive, implementation of gravity mechanics I've seen in a moveset. Arguably the biggest achievement here is belting out a set of such detail and complexity within such a restricted time frame.
As far as the moves themselves, excellent job on all fronts. Every move has an understandable and vividly described purpose, and make ample use of the myriad mechanics at play here. My favorite move is the space buggy for its really fun usage as a way to go deep off-stage without having any application as a recovery move, and for being able to loop it around on a stationary planet to create a passive hitbox. The summonable planet construct, which I at first expected to come up only occasionally as an extraneous interactable hazard, gets a ton of great mileage in general, and I love the way Voyager can interact with it to shift up his air-to-ground/ground-to-air movement quirks and orient his moves in directions they normally wouldn't have access to.
Praises aside, this type of set with a whole shelf of character-specific mechanics and variants for nearly every input to cover any situation imaginable has never been my exact cup of tea, especially from an "would I actually want to play as this character" angle, and while what's achieved here is undeniably laudable on an objective level, it didn't quite spark the same level of enthusiasm from me as some other submissions. Nonetheless, you should absolutely be proud of this moveset. It deserves all the praise that it's gotten, and if I ever actually voted, it'd get a SV from me for sure.
Final thoughts and nomination:
This Jamcon really served to (re-)highlight for me the creative talent that's always present in so many of the members of this community. Honestly, I don't feel like my own contribution holds a candle to most of the other submissions here, but I greatly appreciate all the feedback and the mostly positive response I've gotten for Dhelmise. I know the set has a few typos and some questionable numbers in places, which I'm intending to fix after the Jamcon ends.
I really liked most of the submissions this time, so picking a nomination was pretty tough. After weighing multiple factors, I think it's only fair that I hand my vote to Voyager, which despite not being my personal favorite set of the bunch, has enough objective strengths and raw effort put into it that it outweighs the more subjective preferences I have for other entries. It was a real close one, though, with both Murasa.EXE and Hades being very close runners-up.
