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A jam submission

BEYOND TENMEIView game page

Cheat dice with magic
Submitted by Zeusington — 2 days, 12 hours before the deadline
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BEYOND TENMEI's itch.io page

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Comments

Yo, warap. I played this. I'm not about roguelikes and that kind of stuff, but I'm always down to try them to see their mechanics. And this didn't disappoint, I thought the system was pretty nifty. It's very cool.

I stremed it in case you're interested:

One thing I want to mention, is that it's a bit exhausting to be able to pick how long the run will be if you roll high or low in the event selection screen. If possible I would have wanted to go faster and make the run shorter... But of course, the more  enemies you beat, the beefier you get, so I reluctantly kept trying to roll as low as possible to grind. But of course, I may feel like that because games like this aren't my jam.

But uh... I mean, this looks like a really, really solid concept. It's easy to pick-up, and if you can add more content and depth to it I totally see this doing well. I had fun with it!

Developer(+1)

Seeing people play the game helps me a TON, so thanks a million!

One of the priorities for the next demo is finding a way to better suggest things the player should mouse over and inspect. I will likely include a few pop-up arrows and text boxes for a first-timer to explain how to proceed. I also plan to add a shimmer effect to anything that can be inspected / provides info when moused over during the command phase (when you can do stuff like cast spells, click GO, etc.)

I have already made a number of edits to the talent descriptions to make them easier to understand, such as specifying the Wasp's Deadly talent only affecting attacks dealt, not taken. I'm also going to add an animation for parting clouds when you land a cloudy mystery space on the travel board so you don't have to infer what you just landed on from the effect.

Watching you play the game and figure it out despite the fact that you're not super into Roguelikes is very encouraging to me. I'm likely going to include additional content for Story Mode in the next demo, which will be more your bag as it's a persistent party-based RPG mode rather than the Roguelike Classic Mode. Keep an eye out next Demo Day!

ohhh that sounds interesting. godspeed.

Submitted(+1)

Love pretty much everything about this game. The core gameplay is VERY, EXTREMELY fun. Played through the story and skills seem very balanced (around screwing over your enemy). The "hero" mode is interesting, though I haven't gone too far.

Also music and art is fantastic. I honestly can't give you any constructive feedback since I love pretty much anything about this game and have no idea what to tell you - I guess you nailed pretty much everything.

Developer(+1)

*prints out comment and frames it*

I don't intend to deviate much in terms of visuals or sound at this point, so you can expect more of that! Gameplay variety will increase as I add some more content and a couple of mechanics missing from the demo, so hopefully you'll like that stuff too! See you next Demo Day!

Submitted

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2138656046

Got the same error Federx reported, thrice. While playing Story Mode, on different occasions. (You can only see the first time directly in stream, since I'm not capturing it with OBS the other times, but you can see game being restarted.)

The game is very cool in terms of graphics and sound, but gameplay feels bad and confusing. It was not clear to me at all, why sometimes I rolled a nice dice and then only did 1 damage. Tried to mouseover on enemy stuff - did not work. Only later I realised that you can mouseover in *some* stages of combat, but not in others. Also some stuff like the "Def 11" still isn't explained then. I feel the game should start with half a dozen encounters where enemies do not have any bullshit special abilities, and let you stock up on some options for combat. And then ramp it up in terms of complexity. Maybe one just has to git gud, idk.

Oh by the way, at one point I picked a spell, was excited to have more flexibility in next encounter -- but my previous spell was gone?! I was thinking the endgame perspective of the game is to have a ton of options and going crazy acrobatics to get a bunch of dice right, but now I am not so sure. Also will the party members do anything?

Well, I would like this game with better gameplay.

Developer

tl;dr:
DoAdd crashes have been fixed, first space being weird will be fixed
Tutorial shit's coming, seems more necessary due to feedback
and fucking THANK YOU this feedback helped alot (I'm retarded but I'm working on it!)

The bug you encountered with the crashes (specifically the ones with the DoAdd bit) were fixed in the current build. Ironically, I can tell this is the previous build because the newest build has 101 spaces in Classic mode (I'm retarded despite my efforts!) which I've also addressed in my current working build. I should really just have the version number in a corner or something.

Classic mode is meant to be the tutorial for the game, but I'm probably gonna have to do a short, easy Prologue mode to roll out the mechanics slowly and more explicitly. Defense will get a mention (it's not particularly complex to explain) and maybe a mouseover description.

The run where you picked a spell immediately was a bug. I recently made the game do a soft reset instead of a hard one on defeat, but because of that some things got overlooked like clearing out the first space on the Travel board, so by chance you got a spell selection one shuffled into the first space. The spell selection menu in classic mode writes to a specific spell slot, not just the next available, so you got an almost-a-feature-like bug on stream and it was honestly kinda funny as shit. I fixed this issue immediately upon seeing it, so thanks again!

You can click the party members to switch to them during the player command state (when you can cast spells, see descriptions, click GO) and they have different MP talents and spells. Story mode is unbeatable without swapping characters.

I wouldn't say you need to git gud so much as just slow down a little, but you're playing and streaming a ton of games (seriously, what the fuck is with all these games in demo day now???) so I don't blame you for getting a bit impatient. The game isn't very forgiving in the first place but it's very surmountable given some practice. Though one could debate the existence of design failures at all, they certainly wouldn't be failures on your part as a player; either I failed to communicate it, or a failed to make it competently. Finding these flaws is the whole reason for putting out a demo for a mongolian basketweaving static vidcons communications hub in the first place.

Submitted

>I wouldn't say you need to git gud so much as just slow down a little

Yeah, I've been thinking the same seeing some folks play my own game -- the problem with DD is that even if you have goodwill towards a game (which I try to always have, trying out only entries that appeal to me at that moment), it quickly becomes unclear what are game bugs, what is design mistakes and what is just yourself not getting it.

But I come back to games that fundamentally seem cool (like yours) on subsequent DDs, looking forward to see the progress.

Submitted

looks good and sounds great, but in my experience nobody is going to read the itch page. it really needs an in game tutorial.

also, when i tried the story demo for the first time i got this error

___________________________________________

############################################################################################

ERROR in

action number 1

of  Step Event0

for object obj_dicesys:

DoAdd :1: undefined value

at gml_Script_Do@anon@20336@NodeHazardHP1_SceneTravel

############################################################################################

gml_Script_Do@anon@20336@NodeHazardHP1_SceneTravel (line -1)

gml_Script_anon@14884@SceneTravel_SceneTravel

gml_Script_OnModeTrigger@anon@3888@Scene_Scene

gml_Object_obj_dicesys_Step_0


then after i opened it again it worked normally.

Developer(+1)

Not sure how that happened, but I've now changed how it works so that can't happen. It'll be fixed in the next build.

Nice game, very soulful and compact design.

My only complaint is that the overworld nodes (random enemy, +3 hp/mp, etc) felt uninteresting / repetitive. Very large chunks of just: "randomy enemy". Seems like something that might be solved if there's more time to develop more encounters. Maybe a shop. Maybe even just less abstract encounters: "Ghoul encounter, Slime Encounter, etc"

Developer(+1)

I agree, and there's an oversight atm where the normal enemy spaces and strong enemy spaces have the same sprite, which I'm fixing as we speak, but that definitely lends to the repetition. There will be different "bonus" spaces that count towards a stage's objective-completion count which will equate to a better rank. They'll also require / give items towards that same purpose. Stuff like a chest, trapped chest, mimic, altar, trader, bargaining NPC, troll under the bridge encounter, etc. They'll all have something to do with dice, of course.

Submitted

Interesting gameplay, there's a good bit of depth to it. The scanline / CRT vibe adds a lot of charm.

I was lost for a sec with the movement mechanic, I thought I'm supposed to click a target location instead of rolling to move, and it took me a few turns to understand what's happening - an in-game explanation would be nice. Locations you skip over disappear before you encounter the enemy, which makes things even more confusing, maybe add a scrolling animation?

Developer

Noted, I've thought about having a "Travel Speed" toggle in the upcoming Options pane that slows it down and doesn't just boop those spaces immediately. I know that if I force slower transitions it'd piss some people off and I'm a big proponent of "Why not both?"

I like this a lot.

It seems braindead at first but there's actually a good bit of strategy with swapping characters and causing dice to  overflow/underflow.  

Classic mode suffers by only having one character(at least in the bit i played maybe you get more later). Game should be balanced around a party as that's where the fun is. 

There's a lot of potential when it comes to adding new mechanics. (stuff like elemental dice/status effects,)

Some small things to point out tho:

>When there's dialog i should be able to click anywhere to skip it rather than the go button

>Similar thing with disabling spells, i don't want to have to click the bubble again to exit cast mode, maybe make right click disable it.

>no full screen

>+1 on not knowing what the crystals are I'm presuming they will become useful with more content. 

>i think the crt effect is a little bit much. consider adding a slider that changes the intensity. 

I'm looking forward seeing this fleshed out more, this is an excellent base. 

Developer

Glad the core of the game speaks for itself,. I'm trying to nail the correct balance between what info is available vs. what the player needs to figure out.

Classic mode is trying to do two things: Introduce the most barebones version of the game as not to overwhelm a new player, and to mimic the game this is based on, Tenmei Dice Battle. That's why the enemy design is so different (more HP, cares about dealing with the enemy more than lining up your own plays, etc.) There will be a Hero mode which is just a longer Classic mode but you pick spells AND talents more frequently, and the enemies get much harder towards the end to deal with your bullshit. Story mode is entirely my own design and Hero mode will lean much more heavily towards how it does things.

This game doesn't currently have any talents / effects you inflict on enemies, but it will have quite a few talents you can slot onto your own party to setup combos and synergies (this is implemented but not unlocked right now as it relies on beating bosses for progression items). I think sticking to this is a better strength than muddling the mixture with more potential UI clutter.

I originally allowed clicking anywhere to progress dialogue and I see no reason not to go back to it but that's low priority. Same with spell cancels.

Full screen is gonna get fixed.

Item descriptions are there but I'm changing them so they're disabled for now. The short version is that maxing out an item will count towards stage ranking but when a character is KO'd you will consume some to revive them, which effectively lowers your rank for that stage.

CRT effect is gonna get more presets and some sliders in the upcoming options pane.

Submitted

Played classic mode. Very nice aesthetics, good audio too.  Needs audio settings, playing in a maximized window makes the pointer not follow the cursor: 

 Works fine in a small window though, needs a fullscreen/borderless option. 

At first glance there's no strategy at all and you're just hoping you get a good roll, but as you play more you notice you do have quite a bit of impact. I wish you'd get a new skill much, much earlier though as it gets quite dull with just the one you start with for so many battles.

Its really unclear on what things can be clicked, would help a lot for first time players if it was clearer.

These dice need to be much larger, didn't even notice them at first and just clicked around on stuff:


I have no idea what these things are:


Played until the game crashed while trying to use the split die skill:


Developer

Great finds, I hadn't tested the spells or fullscreen on other resolutions on my own. You're also not the only one to mention the size of the dice icons, so I'm making bigger varieties for that element right now as well.

Audio settings are on the feature list when I get around to the Options panel, the variables controlling volume as such are implemented so it'll be pretty soon but probably not the next build here in a bit.

Submitted

I can't run this. Clicking the exe causes Steam to pop up and say there are no licenses. 

Developer

Removed the Steam stuff, should work now... Except shit just loaded the wrong translation. Fixing.

Developer

Alright, should be fine now

Submitted

Nope, still doesn't run. Getting a code error:

_______________________________________

############################################################################################

ERROR in

action number 1

of Create Event

for object obj_dicesys:

buffer_read argument 1 invalid reference to (buffer) - requested -1 max is 0

at gml_Script_TranslationSystem

############################################################################################

gml_Script_TranslationSystem (line -1)

gml_Object_obj_dicesys_Create_0 (line -1)

Developer

I added some file loading redundancy so it'll load the first .trn file in the working directory it finds if it can't find the one defined by the lang argument. Should find the EN.trn file better now.

fucking adore this artstyle.

Developer(+1)

I appreciate that, it was fun learning how to compliment the dark NES / PC-98 stuff