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Thanks for the feedback, even though it is quite a surprising one! I didn't expect someone would think it is tacked on, especially as the whole conception entirely revolved around dices. It started from enemies with a dice for a head, each with a number that defines their speed and would change everytime they get hit ; as dices could never be set to zero, we made them zombies.

We had several possibilities on how to attack them but the gun was the only one we kept as it was the most interesting both mecanically AND thematically : shooting dices added more holes, thus increasing their numbers and making the game more difficult over time.

The whole western atmosphere was defined afterward, as it was associated with both shooting and gambling. It was a good way to thematically limit the weapon to 6 bullets, requiring to regularly recharge and create several short phases of pressure.

Of course we could have forced the theme way more. We could have rolled a dice everytime your gun is empty in order to set the number of bullets, or have zombies start with a totally random value... but that would only have made for a worst game.

Very great visuals, I really loved it! It really sets a nice mood.

On the other hand, the design felt a bit weak. I was able to cheese the game by spamming money on the training opponent to remove any randomness entirely and finish the game with just one dice.  I would advise to add a turn limit to avoid cheesing and add more randomness on enemies to force players to consider bad outcomes in their strategies.

Everything else works very well though, so nice job!

Oh it's not a bug. The more you shoot, the more holes get added to the dice which causes the numbers to increase!
Glad you liked it! :D

That was really an impressive result for a game jam, and the gameplay has such a good feel! Every weapon bonus felt good and impactful, you did an amazing job, congrats! Shooting these slot machines is so pleasant.

It's an interesting concept, but I think it could have been done better: The difficulty is very inconsistent as it depends on your dice rolls which don't evolve over time. Maybe the six challenges could all have had a similar difficulty, but would require to actually use the dice roll to avoid obstacles, thus exponentially adding more things to avoid on your screen.

I still enjoyed playing it, the visual theme works very well!

The idea of randomly gaining mutations is a great basis, and the game has some very cute visuals that really catched the fantasy of looking through a microscope. I really liked the mood set by the intro cutscene.

Nevertheless, I felt like the mutations were a bit unbalanced, the one that increases the numbers of shots is clearly superior and makes the difficulty trivial. That made me wish it was easier to target some specific mutations by choosing what color you eat. I don't know if it was a design intention, but I don't felt it worked that way.

The dice roll stop is nice, but it gets a bit tiring over time.

Still a great entry nonetheless, it was pleasant to play!

The idea of changing the puzzle to create a path while getting rid of enemies is quite interesting, but I don't think the randomness really brings anything the design : Since enemies only come when I move myself,  there is no pressure from having to roll the dice several times, it's just feels like forced mechanic.

The game has nice visuals, but there is one big issue : It takes a lot of time to figure out how the game works because of the snow on the border of dices. If it was just tiles, I would have understood right away how it worked. Maybe the snow should have been more spread out with borders easily readable.

It should work now, if you want to give it a try.

The game should finally be working, now.

Our game is finally working, you can try it!

Our game is finally working, you can try it!

Our game is finally working, you can try it!

Our game is finally working, you can try it!

We also met this issue on our game : https://becher.itch.io/dead-dice-redemption

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Unfortunately, we're waiting itch.io support team to solve it, the issue is coming from them. 
We'll warn you whenever it's fixed. :(

Sadly our game got broken because we uploaded it during a traffic peak and we're not allowed to redirect you toward a functionning link.
We'll warn you whenever Itch.io support team fixes our problem! :)

A few games are having this issue after being uploaded right before the dead line, during the traffic spike.
We were told to contact Itch.io support, as the issue was from their side. We will tell you whenever it gets fixed!

Hey there! This is fixed.

Interesting concept, it certainly has a great potential in my opinion!

I think it's worth exploring what other options could be added outside of getting a better jump or a faster character, those were a bit boring in my opinion.

I'm also a bit disappointed that no part of the level designed required removing the right/left button.  That would have made for a cool "no turning back" moment.

That's a nice idea but it's probably too hard currently :

You don't have enough time to react against the enemies, it makes it very hard even without the sleep paralysis. The game isn't very forgiving as well, you get attacked even at the very start of the game which forces you to dash instantly and glitch outside the screen.

Since the gameplay took so much of my attention, most of the time I couldn't even notice the change of state before it was too late, it would require some impactful feedbacks for it to work properly, like something that changes the color of your screen for a short amount of time.

Very cool execution, thanks for this!

I found a small exploit that allows you to generate more boxes :
1 - Put a platform somewhere
2 - Put a crate on it
3 - Put a the bumper under the crate
4-  Remove the platform

And tada, you gained one additional box

That's a really well mastered level design you got there, I loved it! Did you made other games before this one? This really doesn't seem to be your first one, or you're very talented.

Some people said the screen rotation was introduced too early but I think it was perfect this way : I spent a the third of the game thinking it was an useless mechanic until it became necessary and I suddenly felt so proud when I figured it out after being blocked. Didn't think the storytelling could help teasing an important mechanic, that was a nice one!

There is still room for debate on some of your design decisions : For instance I'm not sure it was a good idea to introduce checkpoints as circles instead of lines, I sometimes missed them and felt very frustrated from having to do a puzzle again; I feel like this shouldn't be part of challenge.
Some slightly less punishing hitboxes might also help without affecting the difficulty too much.

Anyway, thanks for that; it was a good entry!

It was a very unusual take on the virtual aesthetic, I liked it!
The mechanic is also interesting but the level design isn't up to the level to make it shine, especially with all these unnecessarily long elevators that get quite annoying when you fail a lot.

This game isn't good :

- There is no reason shooting a rocket would blow your own car, it just creates blind spots that makes killing zombies impossible if your car is rushing toward them.
- Zombies appear very late on screen and are hard to see due to being green on green
- It doesn't really fit the fantasy of being flooded by hordes of zombies
- The randomness makes it incredibly unfair

That's a bit too much like Tricky Towers to my taste! Some design choices are different though : Being able to sabotage your opponent is pretty fun.

Interesting idea but the spinning really needs some work. This is definitely going to make some players sick.

It's beautiful, but really boring to play :

While jumping requires waiting the bird to get right next to you, bending down doesn't have any disadvantage and quickly becomes the default action. This really underlies the main challenge of the control switch as it allows you to always keep track of what the right action is.

Also, be cautious with simple random events : I got a high bird six times in a row; lack of variation is the last thing you want from that kind of game.

On a good note, the backgrounds gives a great vibe.

This is an interesting concept but clearly too complicated in my opinion! While it is fun to toy around throwing meteors around, it's just to hard to find the right combination of speed, angle and starting position. I always end up going for trial & error until I find something that kinda works and repeat it several times; doesn't feel very satisfying so I didn't finish the game.

It's still a great job that fits the theme though!

The theme really helps making your mechanic compelling and understandable. Moreover the difficulty curve is clearly well thought out and made for a very fluid experience, thanks, I loved it!

The concept is simple but extremely effective, it works way better than I would have expected based on your visuals! I would love a versus game using this mechanic with both players having to juggle with an increasing number of bombs!

I agree with Yam here... The idea is interesting but it is way too confusing to actually work! The level design would probably need to be even simpler for it to be understandable.

And yeah, the music clearly downgraded the experience.

The feeling playing this game is so great! I love the sense of emergency it has and how it keeps you constantly interested by changing the weapon you use! It's amazingly juicy and satisfying.

My main issue was that I was unable to keep track of my lifebar while playing, my deaths often felt like they came out of nowhere due to this lack of feedback.

The visual and sound effects make the game so captivating and satisfying!
Sadly the mechanic is very weak and doesn't fit the theme in my opinion.

The text speech bubbles appearing so slowly with that repeated 8bit sound made the game really annoying to me. :(

I really like the idea of creating new threats to protect yourself from the current one! It's a cool concept but I felt like it lacked some balance in its execution:

The positive sign goes too fast, it's really hard to trick him to fall on the ball when you start the game, it often feels more like luck than planification. The negative sign felt better in that regard.

I think the difficulty curve of the game could work better with enemies that are easier to counter but get summoned in bigger numbers.

Hey! Yes,  we uploaded a version that played on AZERTY keyboard instead of QWERTY by mistake.
Here is a link toward a better version; we tried to put it just after the deadline, but it was too late :
http://portfoliobecher.com/GMTK2/

Come on, read the post now.

Deer Flipper by Maytch

An unique mechanic teached through a very well rounded level design.
Even though the controls leave to be desired, I would still advise you to look it up.

Play Play by ThomasTouchdown, Ian_jmz & Dem4ply

Play play is an unusual plateformer presenting a theater play.
The player doesn't move out of the screen, it's the background that comes to him.
It's a very simple but efficient way to tell a story and show great visuals.

Sorry, but I hate it...

One bullet games are not very original so it's important to have something more polished than this in my opinion.
You only have a sound effect to know when enemies will shoot, they don't even turn toward your direction.
Why is there a big button on their head if it's more efficient to shoot at their torso? What's the point of explosions if they can't affect nearby enemies?

This kind of concepts is known to work well, so there clearly room for improvement... But right now it's not enough for me to enjoy it. :(

... Just read the post, please.