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A jam submission

Roll or DieView game page

Magical game about rolling Dice in a war against the Pawns
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Roll or Die's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#11833.5464.000
Overall#22452.9553.333
Creativity#24432.9823.364
Enjoyment#33652.3372.636

Ranked from 11 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?
The player rolls dice. Different dice combinations award the player different abilities that they can use in a tower-defense style game.

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

No

We used pre-existing art

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

No

We used pre-existing audio

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Super fun loop! I think this kept my attention the longest out of any of the games I’ve played so far, just trying to stop those damn pawns lol! Really cool idea, and I loved being able to customize which die were in my cup to try for certain powerups.

Submitted(+1)

Solid gameplay loop that kept me going for a while. The presentation is great, however the performance adversely impacted my experience significantly. The 10 FPS I was running it at was more challenging to deal with than the incoming enemies.

Submitted(+2)

This is an incredibly solid game for the jam! I decided to play a while to see what all of the yacht-inspired attacks did... each game was pretty short owing to the relative difficulty of the game (you're really at the mercy of the rolls you get crossed with the frequency enemies spawn with and the lanes they attack), but dissecting the game made for a pleasant experience. You can tell where some additional iteration beyond the 48-hour time limit could have pulled the difficulty into better alignment, and I think seeing that potential is a big plus for any jam game. Nice work!

Submitted (3 edits) (+2)

Review incoming! :)

  1. You must have incredible artistic flair. Although the assets are not yours (according to the form), you chose them well, set them wisely and animated carefully all those cute little details (especially the jumping meeples and how the jar moves). I have not tested many games yet (because it takes me so long checking details and writing my lengthy reviews XD), but I think this might be the most artistically developed game I have seen so far. Even the music choice is perfectly fitting.
  2. Here comes the downside: I feel the way you approached the theme is not so original, by throwing (! pun… intended ;)) some randomness into the (also classic) tower defence mix. Not to say the concept is bad, I just think it is not as surprising as it could be. I have seen other entries suggest this idea of tower defence spiced up with the randomness element.
  3. The FPS for me are a bit low (but acceptable); I wonder whether this is caused by (underoptimized?) Unreal Engine. I had played another game from another game jam recently (which is called The Last Line), and I experienced very low FPS. I suspect Unreal Engine tends to be heavily resource-consuming (especially if not optimized correctly?). Just a reminder that using heavy 3D graphics may come at the cost of performance, at least for some players!
  4. I agreed with patrickdean that several meeples/pawns seemed invulnerable, and was wondering if this is because they were really jumping above the dice, or if this was a genuine bug. Nevertheless, I finally managed to see that they change colours when they get hit, so that must mean that the meeples have actually to be hit several times before getting defeated.
  5. I may be a complete idiot, but I do not understand how to use the blue/purple bar in the upper-right corner: it looks like the tutorial does not mention it, and clicking only seems to remove a die from it… ._. Since I do not see other people asking, that may just be me, but an answer would help me get a fuller picture of how the system works!
    I also tried removing them all before clicking the tutorial jar, and that prevented me from using it!
    So, is it merely to increase difficulty (by removing the dice you get at each throw)?
    Or it serves to make room for other types of dice to buy, but then, I feel you should get some resources back (= perform a sell) when you remove a die.
  6. The game seems very hard!! Although the meeples are slow, their route is in fact rather short, they tend to be sturdy, and the fact that all generated counter-attacks are only one-shot means we de not get any covering defence system; this is more like ‘attack defence’ or ‘shoot once defence’! X) I am no tower defence expert, but I feel I should be able to stand my ground a bit longer, instead of getting bashed so rapidly!
  7. I also think we should get some respite during the tutorial at least (although there is the pause functionality). That’s a detail, but I was just outraged the first time to get attacked while reading the tutorial! ;)
  8. There may be a lack of variety in dice and enemies? This one may be harsh, as creation time was limited, and I know how this can lead you to cut down your ideas to abide by the deadline, so this point would be more of a suggestion for extending the game.

In conclusion: I view the game as well done technically, fair in concept although not so original, and unbalanced in difficulty partly because of some mechanics (the one-shot — not to say one-off! — defence) and partly because of game parameters (which could be easily tweaked in the future, so that is no big deal).

Developer(+1)

Response incoming :D

  1. Thank you! Even though most assets weren't created by us, we did spend quite some time choosing assets that fit and make the game look consistent.
  2. We had a pretty hard time coming up with an idea for this theme, and definitely could have been more unique, as this is mostly just luck-based Plants Vs. Zombies.
  3. Unreal can be quite heavy if not optimized properly, and unfortunately we had no time for it. :(
  4. Some pawns are stronger than others and you can see their hp is represented by their color, which could have absolutely been better communicated through the tutorial.
  5. The bar at the top shows your current dice. You can buy different dice (d4, d6, or d8). D4 are the most expensive but also the best ones since having more of them gives you a better chance of getting a "yahtzee" or "full house". So let's say at the beginning you want to buy a lot of d8 dice because they are the cheapest, but later on when you get more resources(by buying more candles), you want to get more d4's but your inventory is already full, so you have to choose which dice to take out. Again, this should have been explained better in the tutorial.
  6. Oof, very true. This is what happens when the developers are also the playtesters haha. Having the game be more of an action-defense than a tower-defense is intended, as we tried to get a more fast-paced feeling where you get better by buying better dice (resulting in better dice combinations), rather than getting better by building stronger passive defenses. This is of course an issue when the game's difficulty isn't balanced correctly though.
  7. 100% agree, if only there was more time haha.
  8. Yep, we planned for more variety, but as you also mention, the time constraint limited how much we could do. We had a lot of fun working on the game though, so who knows, maybe we will add some more stuff after the voting period is over.

Thank you for the review! A lot of great feedback here.

Submitted

On point 5 (the upper dice bar): aaaaah, I see some more now, thank you! Actually, I wasn’t even sure how the dice rolling resulted in which defence die; Yahtzee did not cross my mind, although I play the game on a daily basis. XD Silly me.
PROTIP: you are perfectly allowed to add explanations/instructions in the game page and in the comment section here; I would advise you to do so. :)

Submitted

The graphics of this game are amazing. Either you guys are god artists or you just got lucky with the theme for game you were already making 😅. Either way I really enjoyed it.

Submitted

I agree this is particularly beautiful, but if you look carefully at the form, you will notice they answered not having created most of the graphic assets. So, you do not need to be lucky, but I guess they have great artistic flair. :)

Submitted

I’m getting a similar error about my graphics not being able to display it

Submitted (1 edit)

I'm getting a crash on startup. If I'm not mistaken, this is something to do with Unreal Engine? I've gotten this with at least one other game in this jam, so I think it's just some between Unreal and this old laptop not getting along. Of course, if you didn't make this with Unreal, then I'm way off, but oh well.

Submitted

Just to let you know, the game launches correctly on my laptop computer (which is already quite some years old).

I have looked at the files and found UEPrereqSetup_x64.exe (with the Unreal logo), so it does look like the game was made using Unreal Engine.

Submitted

Cool concept. Seems like when clicking some of the dice the meeples aren’t getting hit. Some good potential though!

Submitted

I thought that too at first, but I reconsidered it: if you look closely, the meeples actually gradually change colour (from green to red, passing through yellow and orange). There may not be bugs, although I could not tell for sure.