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A jam submission

Dice SoulsView game page

Try to get rid of your cursed dice without dropping it.
Submitted by SpicyFrog (@GamesSpicyFrog), Vylozeny, MetalFoxDioxymore, Klaimen, Caro Panda — 5 minutes, 59 seconds before the deadline
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Dice Souls's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Creativity#5743.7383.738
Enjoyment#6563.4763.476
Overall#8893.4923.492
Presentation#17403.2623.262

Ranked from 42 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 need to keep the dice rolling!

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

Viewing comments 27 to 8 of 27 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

Cool game! I like this idea, haven't seen it in this jam before... The theme was implemented in a 2 birds one stone fashion where you need to keep the die rolling by keeping in the air, but also when it lands, it gives a random curse, which is like rolling a die. The fact that the die bounces when hitting enemies also made it feel really cool. The game was also very polished, a main menu completed with settings to adjust music, sfx and even keybinds. A good tutorial in the beggining, with mechanics that are pretty easy to understand. I like that when a curse is gotten, a little animation and description shows up to tell us what they are, very clean. The game is long enough to keep it enjoyable for a good amount of time, and the upgrade system when you lose really makes it easy for us, non-gamers to beat it too XD. Though there were only 2 enemy types, the design of the levels kept them feel fresh, and the implementation of curses also made runs different enough.

However, some things that I feel are lacking is: The player and dice feel too slow, idk if it's just me, but I feel like a game like this would be better with snappy controls and a faster-pace. Especially since there is a curse with gravity, I think the base gravity should be increased. Next, a down button, just to get off platforms.

Other than that, the game was great, well-made for only 2 days. Good Job!

Submitted(+1)

Game looks awesome and the dice mechanic is pretty nice. I only wish player was a bit faster :) Good job!

Developer

Thank you for that!

We agree, the character controls could definitely use some tweaking but 50h it is :)

Submitted(+1)

I really liked it when I could bounce a dice off a knight's head and catch it midair, that was sick.

Developer

Thank you, glad you liked it!

This is the feeling we were aiming for ;)

Submitted(+1)

I like the mechanics. Character felt a little slow/floaty/unresponsive, and the environment was a bit flat, but the designs were nice! Overall pretty creative entry. :)

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your comment!

The character controls couls definitely use some tweaking if we had enough time!

As for the environment... We had WAY more assets made by our artists but the deadline was so close that we rushed a complete level in the last like 2 hours xD

Submitted(+1)

Is this the dark souls of dice themed game jam games? not quite but the mechanic is cool and has the main skeleton of a cute art style.
That's really cool that you also made the music for the game aswell however it did need to loop a bit better and im not sure if its just my end but there was some crackling on the high parts of the song. Maybe with a dive dodge + longer  faster dice throw + quicker dice grab the game would feel very tight when fighting lots of enemies. Overall though i do like this concept Good job! 

Developer

Thank you for your feedback!

Our composer hit a creative roadblock for this jam so we know it's far from perfect (but you can check our previous games if you want some good music :D). Also the music does seem to be crackling on the web build. It wasn't in our editor nor in the Windows build so we caught this problem at the very last minute and couln't spare the time to fix it, unfortunately.

The global feel of the game (character controller, and dice throw) could use some tweaking, I agree, and it could definitely greatly enhance how the game plays but we were short on time... :)

Anyway, thanks for the detailed comment, appreciate it!

Submitted(+1)

I like the general idea of attacking by throwing dice, while having to catch it afterwards - nice conflict of intentions. Though I think the movement is bit clunky for a game that relies on a physicality of the actions to be fun. 

Developer

Thank you!

We do agree with you, the movement could obviously use some tweaking but you gotta submit after the 50 hours unfortunately... :)

Submitted(+1)

This was a cool twist on the theme. Top marks! I loved how I basically ended up playing volleyball with my enemies, instead of fighting lol - and I really like the penalty system as a concept, though I barely felt punished; rather challenged instead. And my curiosity drove me to drop the dice on purpose, just to switch it up a bit. Which may be a good thing, but I don't think it works an an incentive to actually have to catch it, if that's what you were going for (since the dice is cursed). Maybe if the penalties would accumulate, you'd really be forced to be more careful / strategically? - Eventually I ran into like 4 little dudes and the game crashed tho. Maybe worth looking into your event system.

Developer

Thank you for your feedback!

I hope you won your volleyball matches against the enemies :D

The curses in general could obviously use some more polishing. We had a few more ideas but they were very time consuming and the deadline is the deadline so... We ended up with what you played :D

The curses DO stack together, you can have all of them at once (which then basically renders the dropping mechanic useless because you then cannot be cursed any more). Did you mean like, having multiple times the same curse, to have the effect even worse?

Thanks for the crash report, did you just WALK into them when the game crashed? What build did you play? Web or Windows?

Anyway, thank you very much for your kind words and ideas, we really appreciate it!

Submitted
Deleted 1 year ago
Developer

Thank you for you kind comment, we are glad you enjoyed our take on the theme =D ! Yeah, unfortunally we didn't have time to implement a proper ending to the game, so we added a good ol' "GG" room at the end ^^'.

"Fun" fact : in our internal lore, at the end, you were supposed to meet up with a powerful mage that lifts the curse on the die, which transforms you back into a human and teleports you back to the "real world". You realize that your character was just a Dungeon&Dragons player that got sucked into his fantasy world by the curses die, and the enemies were just other players trying to get some experience and loot =p.

But 50h are waaaaay too short and we couldn't implement these story elements in the final game =(.

Submitted

This was a very creative take on the theme! I liked the upgrade system when you die. Good job!

Developer

Thank you ! We are glad you enjoyed it =)

Submitted

Great game again this year :D

There are many things that I loved about this game. I liked that  you choosed to make luck not the core gimmick. That is very unique for this game jam. The juggling mechanic was also very fun to play with. What also was very cool was that when you died you didn't just respawned but had the chance to skill up.

The art also looked very nice although there is  obviouly some finishing up to do.

This was definetly a highlight for me. Great work ^_ ^

Developer(+1)

Thank you for you heartwarming comment ! We indeed wanted to add a lot of little features, but, as you noticed, it costs us a bit of polishing ^^' (50h is really a short amount of time xD !)

We are glad you still enjoyed our little game, thank you again =)

Submitted(+1)

You just have to try to do as much as you can in this short amount of time.  I can tell that a lot of solid effort went into your game! =)

Submitted(+1)

I think that is the kind of game where if the idea is great, art and polishing doesn't matter. Btw music fit very well the mood of the game

Developer

Thank you, glad you still enjoyed the game even with some of its flaws :)

Submitted(+1)

I really like the idea of having to juggle the dice, but I feel like it would've worked better with more vertical enemies/level design. It was always more interesting when the enemies were up on platforms rather than on the ground.

Developer(+1)

Thank you, glad you enjoyed the juggling mechanic!

I'm not gonna lie, the level design part was done kind of last minute so I totally agree that it could use some fine tuning but the 50h were over so... gotta submit something :)

Submitted(+1)

Oh absolutely - always better to submit something! And at the end of the day, there was enough here for me to understand what you were going for, and that's always the most interesting part of game jams to me.

Submitted(+1)

I really enjoy this game. The fighting mechanic is awesome and the grapich and the audio also great.

Nice work

Developer

Thank you very much for the kind comment!

Submitted(+1)

I was really jamming to that music there! GG! I think I beat it then??

Very cool game and excellent take on the jam theme. I like the idea of having to keep the dice spinning. I did my best for a while... but then it fell... and I got lunar gravity?? And then I let it drop some more and then realized maybe the dice isn't so cursed! Good idea to have a leveling system too when you die, always helps those who may need a boost. Might not have really been needed since I think this was pretty short... but still cool. I also liked the monster design.

Anyways good job to you and the team for putting this together!! 

Developer

The team thanks you for the nice comment and feedback!

We lacked some time to better tune the existing curses, to add some more, and to provide a level design that would actually take advantage of the curses. We also planned on some more upgrades but... the deadlind is what it is!

It's still nice to know that you enjoyed and beat our game, it means a lot! :)

Submitted(+1)

This game was fun! I think that most of the curses weren't really very negative, and so I didn't really feel like I needed to keep it off the ground.

Developer

Thank you for your comment!

We had quite a few more idea for more curses or even a level design that would emphasise the jumping curses but yeah, as is, the curses aren't really too much of a punishment but it's good for casual gamers, right? :D

Submitted(+2)

Background art and character art is good, just needs some work on foreground elements as well, I'm guessing you ran out of time.

Music is nice, fits the game well.

Roguelike system albeit a bit basic makes it more approachable to people who have trouble completing the game, that's a nice touch even if that was unintentional.

Game fits the theme well unlike *cough* *cough* my game. All games that i played had dice/rolling being something positive, this game subverts the expectation by making it a double edged sword, you can kill enemies with a die, or, you could miss and get a negative buff.

Negative abilities don't affect the gameplay all that much, they're just annoying.

Not a lot of animations, particles, etc, you don't necessarily have to draw a new animation, you can use squash and stretch, interpolate, scale up and down, rotate. There's a lot of things you can do with only that.

You can't see die sides, so it's impossible to tell on which side it will land until it lands, doesn't affect the gameplay, but it feels way more random when you don't even have illusion of choice.

You can walk backward while moving forwards and vice versa, i know why it works the way it does, but it looks wrong.

My audio was crackling, not sure why, didn't have any issue with other jam games.

Enemies don't seem to know how to jump on platfroms, or rather, they're trying, but can't seem to get on them.

You did your best, i can see how this game can be great but it's not quite there yet.

Developer

Thank you for you insight =) !

I agree with pretty much everything you said ^^. We had a lot of ideas, tried to fit a maximum of things inside the game, and ended up with a lot of unpolished features that we couldn't tune properly because, well, 50h is short x). The big lesson we learned during that jam is "quantity != quality", and it would have been better to scrap some features to polish the others.

The sound crackling is on our end, it only happens in the web build, but not in the windows build or the editor... We are still investigating why xD.

Thank you again for your valuable review, it shed light on a lot of things we can improve on for the next jam =D !

Submitted(+1)

It’s really nice how you go from “how the heck am I supposed to not let it fall” to “oh, this is actually really fluid and fun” I can totally see this evolving, maybe with powerups and more levels

Developer(+1)

Thank you, glad you liked it!

We had quite a bit of other ideas, yeah, for curses, for powerups, it could have been way better but the time limit is the time limit... :D

Still cool to know you enjoyed juggling your dice! :)

Submitted(+1)

I found myself throwing the dice to the ground just to see what curses were available xD I liked the moon gravity one the most, but I am not too sure about the delayed jump one. It is a cool mechanic but I kept forgetting I had it and thinking it was just bad input handling (I am sure this can be fixed with some sort of visual queue though).  Had fun playing it :D

Btw, I found a bug where you can throw the die inside the room and the door will close leaving the player locked outside.

Developer(+1)

Wait, that's not how you're supposed to play the game xD

We actually planned on adding a little dramatic animation of the character squatting before jumping, to remind you of the delay but... yeah, 50h is only 50h :D

Nice catch for the bug, thank you for reporting it and thank you for your comment and feedback!

Submitted(+1)

The game has some surprisingly fluid combat for something so simple. Keeping the dice airborne has this really satisfying feeling like building a really high combo in an action game, especially when it repeatedly bounces on an enemies head. A more advanced combo system could totally be built from this if given more time. Great game overall :)

Developer

Thank you! That's also what we felt during development, juggling feels kinda nice and although the different physics parameters could be tweaked for a better feeling, it's still nice to play as is :)

The combo meter could indeed be a fun way to expand upon the idea, true!

Submitted(+1)

Great work! I love the idea! You could really expand upon this for a future release :)

Developer

Thank you so much for your kind comment!

Viewing comments 27 to 8 of 27 · Next page · Last page