Its a very fun and interesting concept but the design part is leaking.
This game is really hard until you learn to cheese it.
Also maybe I'm just super unlucky but it almost never rolled the one when I needed to. I think a system that changes probabilities depending on the rolls or the same system as in tetris with blocks will help a lot.
Also I was struggling with the tutorial. I completely missed that you have to use mouse 2 to drag dice into towers until i checked the gifs. I was having a bad time cuz of that. Also a button that automaticly picks allt he dice will be great (or again I missed it in the tutor idk).
This may seem like a lot of bad stuff but the idea, graphics and sound are really ewally good.
Fixing that stuff will make it a top tier game.
Play game
Dicey Towers's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #462 | 3.800 | 3.800 |
| Enjoyment | #728 | 3.436 | 3.436 |
| Overall | #828 | 3.521 | 3.521 |
| Presentation | #1614 | 3.327 | 3.327 |
Ranked from 55 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 roll dice towards enemies to attack them. You can also spend dice to purchase upgrades if you roll the right number.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
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?
We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam
Comments
Thanks for all the feedback! I agree that the game needs some tweaking with the controls and some balancing with game mechanics. Also there actually is a Pickup button on the HUD to pick up all dice (or you can press F on keyboard). Also simply right-clicking will pickup/hold a die. I don’t know if I’d call it “learning to cheese the game” as I haven’t come across anything completely unintended, but I would say there’s definitely a somewhat steep learning curve to mastering all the tools, controls and mechanics available. Either way, thanks for playing and sharing your thoughts! I’ll definitely take them into consideration as I continue development!
Love the game, the towers' pretty powerful, the art looks great, the inventory is great if the dice out of bounds, select all dice for multi-hit, pretty good of a job. I almost lost due to the second enemy spawnpoint being really far edge, but I didn't get far anyway :)
Fun concept, and loved the idea of the dice towers, though the extra die tower seems very easy to exploit if you keep a single enemy alive.
A very neat little game. It's kind of not my sort of game, but I don't want to be harsh on the game because of it. I did have an issue with the dice bouncing back really far (though that's kind of my issue), and I lost my first game because I didn't realize there was a second spawning point. Otherwise, it seems like a lot of fun, but I just couldn't get into it myself.
This was a neat idea! The gameplay got a little stale after a few waves, but I enjoyed the core premise and the presentation was pretty solid to boot. Nice work!
Cool concept here, I like the use of the theme in this submission.
Nice art and some cool music too! Would like to see some more levels in a post jam version of this ;)
Really interesting concept! It was a nice incorporation of dice into tower defense and I like how you've got the risk reward of using dice to get upgrades vs having them readily available to attack. The way to attack through was unfortunately very annoying to use. I ended up just repeatedly picking them up with the hotkey and then mass clicking to send them out to the middle of the screen and hit enemies
Well done on this game. The idea is fairly creative and it's an interesting take on the tower defence genre. One complaint that I do have is that I would have liked some indication of how much HP an enemy has remaining. The music fit fairly well I think and overall the game is really good.
Wow, best jam game I've played so far by a long shot!
It has a fun, unique idea - some cute and simple graphics, and solid mechanics. I like how the game builds up as it goes on, where there's risk and reward between saving your 1s or using them, the chaos of trying to find where all your dice rolled off to, and the energy of getting rid of those darn cards. The music is nice and catchy, too.
I encounter have some bugs, but they were fairly small. A few of my dice rolled all the way off the world a few times (good thing for the collect button), and they did keep bouncing off of what seems to be nothing.
Overall, stellar work.
Thanks for the feedback and kind words! Glad you enjoyed my game :) Hmm I haven't seen the dice completely roll off the level before, but yeah the pickup button would alleviate that issue. And as for the random bouncing, I'll admit the collisions definitely need some improvement as they are rather janky. However, there also is a bit of intentional randomness/jankiness with the dice rolling as a die does not roll perfectly in the real world, so it may shift direction or slow down upon hitting the playing field.
Really unique game, haven't seen anything else like this in the jam so far! It was way more active than your standard tower defence, which I really enjoyed. The art and music were also really good! Keep up the good work!
Love the playing cards! The enemy design is really fun! I had a hard time selecting the dice and the downtime took a tad too long, but otherwise a nice game!
great tower defense idea! I think it will be better if we can see the enemies HP so you can count and play tactical, good game!
Very creative tower defence game! The dice collisions are a bit funky but other than that pretty fun! The pixel art is very good too, I really like how the cards look like they are dancing. The tutorial is also nice.
Really amazing game concept/mechanics... The dice were sometimes hard to select, but otherwise very well done!
Most fun I've had going through the random submissions queue so far! Great use of the dice rolling as a form of attack (where the side value affects the damage dealt), while also paying attention to the sides rolled to get bonus effects. I didn't expect Pierce to be omnipierce for one attack, and I expected the status to remain when used for the extra die tower, but otherwise not bad. Two big problems stood out to me, though; one, it relies on right-click functionality but doesn't claim priority over browser, so with Firefox (latest version available as of this time), it keeps opening the right-click menu every time I click for in-game functionality. Immediate loss of a pip of enjoyment, dealing with that frustration.
Secondly, having to click and drag or just click for every. single. attack. My joints aren't getting any younger, and the constant repetitive motion had me tap out at the end of wave 3, because my wrist started hurting. Maybe have it so that all dice in the playing field automatically roll towards where you click, instead of having to select them every time? Still keep a cooldown before you can roll again, so that you can't just spam click, though. Additionally, I encountered a minor bug where if the enemies walked forward onto the same space as any of your dice, that die won't do anything to that enemy and will pass through them as if they're ethereal; it should impact them and rebound off according to the angle of attack, not ignore them and deal no damage at the same time.
Also, pulling out the view would be nice, just to be able to see the entire playing field on a single axis (vertical or horizontal, don't care) so that I can watch what's happening with later waves; only barely caught the second spawn point's wave when they were coming up the path towards the crystal because there was only the one spawn point and set of towers visible from the initial gameplay moment, and had to work a little frantically to deal with them. Overall, a fun experience. I look forward to you refining it further.
Thanks for all the feedback! Yeah it sounds like there are some browser-specific issues. I had tested in Chrome and did not have these issues personally. Something I'll have to look into though. I will definitely take your suggestions into consideration if I continue development! Some of these are issues that I'm already aware of and considering solutions for. Thanks again for playing! Glad you had fun :)
It seems like a bit of a dominant strategy to get a whole bunch of extra dice on the first round; perhaps you could put some kind of limit on this?
It's definitely an advisable strategy to focus on getting more dice early instead of rushing to clear the first couple waves, but I think I might have made wave 1 too slow. Of course it does take longer to get each additional die though as you need to roll ones with all your dice, and the waves do ramp up in speed and volume. However, I agree it does need some balancing to prevent the player from getting too many dice too soon. I think simply tweaking the enemy movement speed in the early waves to put more pressure on the player would alleviate this concern. Thanks for the feedback! :)
A thought on that; instead of making the wave faster overall, why not a mechanic where the longer an enemy has been alive, the faster they get? An acceleration value, in other words. You can make it higher for the higher-tier enemies (so the reds would have a higher value than the blues, for example). That would make it still a safe wave early, but if you faff about too much without addressing the enemy, they can quickly overwhelm you, too.
I feel like it could use some mechanics to controll all of your dice at ones if you have more then 1, but I couldn't use it even with tip in a description (like i should have selected them all, but i couldn't do it in the game for some reason).
Yet, it was very pleasant experience (even with thought that we absolutely HATE DICE), so good job! :)
Oh that's weird. So space or middle-mouse weren't working for you? Might be a browser-specific issue. I saw someone else having trouble with selecting all dice working correctly in their browser. I'll have to look into that. Thanks for playing! Glad it was a good experience for you regardless of the control issue :)
I liked the idea of using dice to defend a tower--and the piercing powerup being linked to a high-damage roll makes you think fast and see if you have enough time to trade it off for the powerup or use the high damage straight away. Unfortunately I was unable to finish the five rounds (I only got as far as the fourth one...), but I thoroughly enjoyed it regardless! My main feedback would be making the dice easier to select (I kept accidentally triggering the group select when I meant to drag a die), and reducing the knockback after hitting an enemy: the dice kept rolling offscreen in different directions, and it made it hard to keep track of when you have more than three or so. Regardless, an excellent entry! Congrats on submitting another great game after last year :)
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