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A jam submission

Necromancer's Dreadful DiceView game page

For Mini Jam #83: Dread
Submitted by TheStoreman — 1 hour, 3 minutes before the deadline
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Necromancer's Dreadful Dice's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Use of the Limitation#143.7503.750
Concept#213.6673.667
Overall#413.2083.208
Enjoyment#532.8332.833
Presentation#772.5832.583

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Team members
The Storeman

Software used
Twine

Use of the limitation
It's a dice game, you roll to earn resources and defeat obstacles

Cookies eaten
Maybe 10

How was your experience with Mini Jam?
Really fun, glad to be here again

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Not sure what to do at first but when I did, I enjoyed it really well! Good job! Keep it up.

Developer

Thanks for the kind words! And thanks for the feedback. Tutorials are still a work in progress for me, so I'll keep it in mind!

Submitted(+1)

This game took me some time to fully understand it not gonna lie. But it was fun nonetheless. Well done

Developer

Thanks for taking the time to play!

Submitted(+1)

Interesting that you used TWINE for this. Not a bad game either. Not sure I ever really figured out what the right strategy was, but I still found it an interesting experience and a decent use of the limitation. Nice job.

Developer(+1)

I didn't mean to create a "right strategy", though I'm sure if you crunch the numbers there's one. This was meant less as a puzzle and more as "dice pool builder". Thank you so much for taking the time!

Submitted(+1)

This was great - a good variety of enemies that really encouraged me to consider and try a range of strategies rather than settling on a single optimised approach. 

Submitted(+1)

We found the idea of doing it in Twine very interesting. Our most sincere congratulations for your work!

Developer

Yeah, I've seen this tool pushed to its limits, so I kinda jumped on that. My programming background is super low, so this helps me work on rules and mechanics instead.

Submitted(+1)

I think it's really interesting that you used Twine to make this. At first I found the gameplay pretty confusing, but once I started casting spells I actually felt like I was digging around in arcane tomes looking for the right recipes. Nice necromancer sim.

Developer(+2)

Yeah, I got into Twine as a graphics-lite platform to learn about the logic of game design. It allows me to use text to do a lot, and now that I'm working on digital boardgames I can work with static "cards" like the enemies here. I did do stuff with GameMaker when it was free (so imagine how long ago it was, GM 2 wasn't even out) but having to make the interface itself was a lot of work.

Glad the theme came through! I'm no artist (as if you couldn't tell :P), and adding sound is still too new for me, so building atmosphere is an uphill battle. The idea of a necromancer was there from the start, before I even knew why you'd need blood or bones.

Submitted(+1)

I enjoyed this game! One thing I like is that the save system is optional. I didn't end up using it actually, since going back to the earlier fights let me try out different strategies, but I can see how some players would want to use it. Also, the powers, dice face choices, and enemy stats/abilities gave this game a ton of depth, especially for a game jam! If you ever want to expand on it or rework it at some point I think it has a lot of potential. Great job!

Developer(+1)

Yes, I wanted to add more variety for the elements, so for example some enemies are vulnerable to Bone, or hard to kill with Blood but normal to the others, etc. as a way to challenge builds.

Alas,  the dreams before a Jam haha. Thanks for taking the time! I do like how the system ended up.

Submitted(+1)

I thought the complex ways you used the dice rolls made what dice you picked pretty flavorful. Stocking up on certain dice let me play different ways, like healing through damage or getting double resources with mostly bone dice. I do think the fact that everything resets after each battle makes the game more of "just roll until you get the resources to win", unless you're calculating all the tiny differences in odds with the dice and reckless rolls and all that. I think if, for example, health persisted, you would sometimes have the question of "do I defeat it or do I roll to get more blood and heal?" or something like that would be neat.

Developer

Agreed, 100%. That was the original plan, but I ran into a little problem. If your health persists, the right play is to stall with weak enemies and just heal yourself. Same problem with keeping resources in-between fights.

The right fix would have been to remove the healing spell and add another event to heal, but by that point in the jam it was too late (I'm fine with resetting resources). I decided to reset health because I hate it when stalling and grinding is the right play. It was a band-aid over the real issue, though.