Thanks a lot, really kind of you! And yes, I agree that the battles seemed a bit long. We didn't want the player to get so strong they just blew everything away in one go - what fun would that be? But early on, they take a little too long I think. We did plan on having a "dice tray" mechanic that took unused dice from a throw and put them in the tray for some kind of special power, but as you can imagine we did not get around to coding that aspect, as awesome as it sounds.
The strategy is to eventually forge enough combos onto your dice that you can take stuff down faster, but you probably wouldn't see that until much later in a normal game, which I think will likely be 2-3 maps, maybe 4. We certainly didn't have time to make that though during the jam. :)
Thanks again for the kind words!