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Die Sorcerer!'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #394 | 4.078 | 4.078 |
| Overall | #655 | 3.609 | 3.609 |
| Enjoyment | #871 | 3.362 | 3.362 |
| Creativity | #1359 | 3.388 | 3.388 |
Ranked from 116 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
You play as a Dice sorcerer that throws dice at enemies or rolls them to get a random effect.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam
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Comments
Wow, really have a great time with this one, love the presentation & the gameplay, the control feels really good, love the quick pace too, make it hard/challenging but not impossible. The only thing's missing is audio, or maybe the audio didnt play in my device.
Overall, really amazing job!
Thanks! Sound effects are unfortunately missing in this version because we didn't have enough time to implement them, there should be music playing tho.
Very polished and nice gameplay. Great job!
Thanks for playing!
Really super polished game. I adore the art and music. The game is beautiful. Would love if you added sound effects. Great job.
Thanks! Yeah we unfortunately ran out of time to add sound effects
I am really digging the concept of throwing dice to hit enemies OR to roll for random effects. I think it adds tons of meaning to accuracy, holding fire, and rolling before entering a room. It's a genius concept in my opinion because it can add a defensive element to the shooter genre that just isn't explored by it's many many games. I feel as if the enemies in this game being really fast/small and how walls will disrupt your trajectory in unexpected ways kinda hinders the idea from really glowing because you'll naturally miss a ton of shots and end up with random buffs no matter what. That combined with limited dice ammo feels annoying when it comes to the early difficulty of the game even though it has great intentions in the overall design. Offering multiple dice is a natural step forward too, but I didn't get any explanation on their effects so naturally, I just aimed them towards enemies and hoped for the best. For all I know the bomb dice could always be debuffing or damaging me and I wouldn't know any better when I die 5 seconds into a room just trying to frantically throw my dice. In that same respect, there isn't much control in terms of choosing what die you want to throw next because you can't cycle or toss out unwanted dice. That addition would bring out strategy already lying dormant in the game unused. Overall I felt like the pace of the game was fast and aggressive but the strategy and design were asking for slower methodical play, curious to know your intentions as the developer. I am absolutely in love with the concept, game feel, and overall art style even if the gameplay can feel conflicting with its ideas. Great job!
Wow, thanks for this detailed feedback! The gameplay definitely needs some rebalancing, we didn't have that much time to adjust it, especially remaking the levels would have been very time consuming if we did it, and our priority was to add as many dice and enemies as we could in order to show the potential of the concept. The dice ammo system was intended to encourage you to go in and collect the dice dropped by enemies, though we will definitely have to make some changes to it. One thing is that respawning should refill your ammo, but we didn't think of adding that in time, it would have been an easy fix. One other commenter also suggested adding a dodgeroll, which makes it easier to escape the fast enemies and reposition and also allows you to collect the dice dropped by enemies without having to kill a whole group first or lead them away from the drops, I think the dodgeroll is a good idea. Your idea of manipulating the dice queue sounds good, we might implement something like that in the future, though I feel like it already kind of works because even if you are forced to use a certain die, you can choose which way to use it.
It's unfortunate that many players told us they didn't get how the bomb dice and heal dice work, because we actually explain it on our game page (https://miniver-games.itch.io/die-sorcerer). Unfortunately, there is no space for a description on the submission page and since it's a downloadable and not a play-in-browser game many players never looked at the game page. Obviously, we would have wanted to explain how the dice work in-game as well, but didn't have enough time. The bomb dice and heal dice are examples of dice that you generally want to avoid hitting enemies (directly) with, differentiating them from the speed and damage dice. The game page also contains a list of some known issues which we couldn't resolve in time. Another obvious issue is that we are missing sound effects, which we actually did make but we couldn't properly implement all of them in time so we decided to have none and just the music.
Great game! The action is fast-paced and satisfying. The de/buffs are intuitive. The sound and visual design is highly polished. I encountered some trouble with aiming, as sometimes the die just didn't want to go where I was clicking, but other than that, I had fun playing!
Thanks! Yes the dice have a random spread so they don't always go exactly where you aim (there's also a bug where they go in a completely different direction when you're next to a wall). We wanted to use different amounts of spread as a way to balance the different dice, but I'm not sure if the dice even use different spread values in this version lol.
Amazing presentation!! Super polished.
Thank you!
Nice presentation, the running and gunning felt pretty good though ran out of dice a bit quicker than expected, though that could also be just experience.
Thanks for playing! Yeah the problem of running out of dice will have to be addressed.
Love the look and style that went ito this:) it wasnt immediatly obvious what each dice did and I was waiting for them to recharge a bit too much for my taste. The run and gunning feels great and is very polished:) so impressive that all this was done in 2 days!
Well Done!
Thanks! We are aware of the problem of having too few dice. We didn't have time to add much ingame explanations, but all the dice are explained on the game page: https://miniver-games.itch.io/die-sorcerer. Unfortunately most people download this from the submission page and don't see the game page.
Beautiful game! I really enjoyed it. To give some feedback, I feel like waiting for more dice was a big problem. Running around waiting for my dice to recharge didn't feel very good. There were interesting types of dice like bomb dice and some kind of green die, but it was so fast paced, I didn't get to enjoy those dice or understand how they worked. Hope the feedback helps!
Yeah we have to adjust the balancing of how many dice you get. A big problem is that currently your dice don't get refilled when you respawn, which players might not even notice, but leads to having few dice. The bomb dice and heal dice (green) are ones that you don't want to hit enemies with, but only roll them to get their effects. The bomb dice can explode if it doesn't directly hit an enemy before, and the heal dice heals you. There is an explanation of how all the dice work on the game page: https://miniver-games.itch.io/die-sorcerer, we didn't have time to add an ingame explanation and sadly many players only see the submission page and not the game page so they don't see this. Thanks for your feedback!
Really fun game! The pixel art is great with maybe some things that can be slightly tweaked (ex the run animation looks like you're running on one leg but I know how hard they can be to make lol). The music compliments the game vibe nicely. When I was first dying I didnt realize they were deaths and just thought the game was sending me back to the previous room for some reason due to maybe an incorrect room teleport. Lingering on the death for a bit + having an animation for that would make the deaths feel a lot cleaner
Yeah the game is missing a lot of visual and especially audio feedback because of time constraints, we even made a lot of sound effects but didn't manage to implement them in time. Thanks for your feedback!
Wow, very graphically polished! I also enjoyed playing something without numbered die haha! My only suggestion would be to make the bonus effects way stronger, as there are a lot of enemies and you don't have that many dice. Usually I felt the need to use them all for damage. Great work!
Thanks for the feedback! The bonus effects do last pretty long if you don't miss and get a debuff, so I felt that the dmg buff is usually worth it, but we will have to fix the problem of having too few dice, of course if you only have one die, it's not that useful to use it for a buff. Thanks for playing!
This game is awesome, the look and the mechanics are really fun, really liked the animation of your enemies, congrats on a great job!
Thanks a lot!
Nice mechanic with great presentation :)
I did find that, once you started messing up to the point of being stuck with once dice, that there was pretty much no way to recover without dying. But there were enough spawn points to make that feel fair still.
Thank you! Yeah we will have to adjust that.
The presentation is amazing! I love the artstyle and the gameplay is also fun. Great work!
Thanks for playing!
Quite fun, dig the art style, too bad there were no sound effects.
Some enemy placements were a bit annoying, sometimes I'd go into a room, and a goblin would immediately take a chunk of my health.
I'm glad you implemented checkpoints, but I wish I'd respawned with more dice rather than just one, it makes it harder to challenge a difficult room.
Also, the powerups could be more obvious and more interesting. It is difficult to look to the side when there is a lot of action going on. If you ever decide to expand upon the concept, more interesting abilities could be added, rather than just stat modifiers.
Overall, great job on your game!
In the jam build, you just keep the dice you had when you respawn, in later versions, your dice will be filled up each time you respawn, we unfortunately didn't think of that in time. We planned to implement way more dice, and also sound effects that we had already made, but we didn't have time for that, thank you for your feedback!
Really liked the double use of dice to attack and for effects! Very nice gameplay and presentation as well. If I had to suggest something, it might just be a greater selection of enemy types, although you already have a great lineup. The volume was also a little low.
Well done!
Thanks for the feedback!
Loved the use of dice for stats and the weapon variability while keeping the core game simple. Great job!
Thanks!
i really like the mechanic of missing a shot to roll for a random effect, super creative! the enemies were well designed, but i think the main character could benefit from some more contrast between him and the background (they are both green). great art, great concept, great game! awesome job!
Thanks for the feedback!
This game looks great and is challenging and fun. Loved the 'choosing between rolling for effects and shooting enemies' mechanic. I think my only (minor) criticism is that the walls sometimes block your shots if you're standing up against them.
Yeah that's a problem we're aware of. Thanks for the feedback!
The mechanic where you have to choose between dealing damage OR gaining the random effect makes this game stand out just a bit more than a lot of similar games made in this jam. The art is phenomenal as well. Great work <3
Glad to hear that, thank you!