The comparison which came to mind for me was Pokemon, especially the first fight with your starter when you only ever have an attacking and a stat changing move.
Adding a controlled randomness however felt like it expanded in a unique direction compared to where Pokemon obviously adds more depth with expanded moves and teams. I think incorporating both (a variety of moves and characters with unique stats and movesets) would make a fantastic foundation for a competitive strategy game, maybe one well suited for a mobile pick up and play demographic.
I really hope you do expand on this! Great submission!
Thank you so much! That's really kind of you to say!
I'm proud that I managed to submit anything remotely functional for my first game jam. I'm definitely gonna do more after this, and hopefully next year I'll have the skills needed to better execute my vision.
Thanks! It's great to hear people saying they'd be interested in this as a full game!
The rolling might not have worked in the download version. Some things got messed up after I built and uploaded the game, but I got them mostly working again in the web version at least lol
Thanks! I'm glad to see you messed around with the build mode and understood how it worked.
I didn't get the chance to have the game reset back to the building mode after the enemies were cleared. In hindsight I probably could have, but I didn't wanna risk it with the submission closing in.
Frantically managing your resource to optimize your route under a time crunch seems like it has a lot of potential, and I think this could be a really good game with more time put into it. There's clearly potential for added mechanics and a more refined game loop.
Great concept! One of my favourites I've played so far!
Art was super cute, and it nailed the WarioWare design of having games that you can instantly understand and complete.
My one minor critique is that it was unclear in the catching game that you needed to catch exactly X number of items, but that's really just a nitpick.
Genuinely really solid! I'm shocked this is something you threw together in 5 hours!
Movement felt really solid and fluid, world design worked well, especially for showing off areas you could only access after getting abilities. Even though it's a parody I think there's something here you could expand into a more complete project.
The art was also very nice. Combined with the movement it gave me the vibes of the earlier Momodora games.
Overall, I'm looking forward to see what you guys produce in the future, this was a great experience!
I loved the art in this game! Super nostalgic feeling of Newgrounds Flash games, in the best way possible. I especially like the animation of rolling at the start of the game.
Mechanically I like the concepts. Clearly there's the ground work here for much more depth and new features, and I hope you keep working on it after the jam. At it's surface though, I like the idea of managing a small resource pool that's constantly being replenished.
Super clever concept! I honestly enjoyed it way more than I thought I would!
This might seem minor, but it's really smart how you previewed the dice faces. A lot of games in this jam have had a similar mechanic of orienting the dice, but this was the first game I played where that felt intuitive and easy to follow. Great job!
One change I would like to see is having some sort of indicator showing where the pawns are going to move next, to make it easier to plot your next move. That, and having the pawns themselves move a bit quicker.
Presentation was also great! Graphics were simple but they looked good and everything was very readably on the screen. Also, the title page and the art for Jack were especially impressive.
Top notch presentation! Surprisingly chill and cool vibes considering the gameplay, it honestly compelled me to want to just wander around and explore the level.
Gameplay feels fairly responsive, though as others have said the arrows could use a bit better feedback. The dice mechanic was cool! I think if it were fleshed out more it could be an interesting central gimmick for a roguelike game!
Interesting concept! Brick Break meets Space Invaders.
I think expanding on this idea could make something really fun. Maybe having shooting like Space Invaders, but instead of shooting the enemies, you shoot the ball to bounce it around.
Really clever concept for a match-3 style puzzle game!
At first I thought it was going to be mechanically a bit shallow, until I realized that it's less about actually trying to line up the dice, and more about finding which dice will trigger the most at once, which causes very satisfying chain reactions.
I kept being surprised by how many types of dice were being introduced, and it was a really compelling motivator to keep playing. I found myself excited to unpack and understand the effects of each dice, and to keep playing to see new ones.
Something I'm curious about design wise is whether the dice are slightly weighted to land on a matching face or not.
Fun concept, easy to understand, and surprisingly tricky to master! Also excellent presentation on both the game and the itch page!
Something I've said on other games with an orienting/rolling the dice mechanic is it would be good to teach and show the player some of the different maneuvers to orient the dice how they want earlier on in the game, but that's a hard thing to pull off even in a fully published puzzle game.
Fun game! I felt like the pace was good, it lasted just long enough to not get stale while the dice rolls kept things interesting. Also, even though the graphics were minimal they worked well with your aesthetic.
That's good feedback on the instructions, and I'm happy to hear people like the concept! My main goal was just to submit something where people could visualize the concept of the game, so I could get some feedback on whether it was even worth trying to build out more.
As for the bullets, they definitely did have more feedback at one point, but they started phasing through the enemies without hurting when I gave the enemies movement, and I just didn't have time to fix that lol
Nah that's totally fair! I'm frankly just proud I managed to submit anything at all, but I'm the first to admit that what I submitted is a broken, minimalist dumpster fire LOL
Like others said, it's a bit hard to figure out the commands until you find that menu, but otherwise an interesting narrative experience. I found myself constructing my own story about this world as I went along.
Good vibes all around. There was a cool moment where it clicked what was going on and I realized what I was seeing as a white void was the dice, clever use of negative space!
It felt really good to get into the flow of the game, running to combine dice while planning out my next moves based on the conveyor.
There's a few quality of life changes that I think this game could use, however:
Like other comments said, a way to discard unwanted dice would be good.
I think combining colours should work in all directions, not just with the dyes. For example, combining a red 1 with a yellow 1 should produce an orange 2. This would cut down on the time spent waiting for the right two colours to come by to make the correct dice, and add another layer of depth to the gameplay.
Lastly, a button to swap held dice without combining would be nice.
I think this concept has a lot of potential! I hope you keep working on it after the review period has ended!
I don't know why this comes to mind, but I think it would be really fun to replace the standard jump with a mechanic where you pull back and fling your little bundle of dice. Then again, I've also always been a sucker for fun pieces of physics gameplay lol
Really clever interpretation of the theme! I think this would work really well with some sort of rhythm aspect tied to how the blocks change, similar to a lot of those levels from recent 3D Mario games. That, plus tightening up the controls a bit would make this something I could totally see myself grinding out levels on riding the subway or something!
Also, one minor design critique is that there's no disincentive to keep bouncing on green zones to max out your health, but I can't think of a good solution to that problem, and given the time constraint there probably wouldn't have been a chance to implement one anyways.
This was a cool concept! I can see the Slay the Spire inspirations.
I think the most interesting idea present here is actually introducing 4 distinct party members, which each draw from their own "deck" of options. It adds a surprising amount of depth, even when the options are more limited.
Overall a good concept, and super impressive for the time given!
I thought the dice movement felt pretty consistent! After a bit I got used to the idea of rotating and shifting the faces to orient them how I want, and it made sense that it was a representation of rolling a 3D cube (though I might be biased because I spent so much time figuring out the orientations of a rolling cube for my game, lol)
I think if you had more time to flesh this out, it would be good to have a few early levels which show the player different techniques for reorienting the dice, though what you have is really impressive for a jam!
