Thank you for taking a look!

I got stuck in a soft lock a couple of times when the dice would just rock back and forth between two faces.

This is intended! :) The pause menu’s ‘Retry’ option is there as the solution. I thought given the internal logic of the game, there was no reason to give the ‘Game Over’ treatment to the player should he get into an infinite loop. In hindsight, I am thinking right now I could also have put no game over for when you get a void top face, and just let the player sorrily lying there! :) Although I suspect some people would have thought they ran into a bug, so this may not be wise.

It’s great some people ran into the loops actually, I wished this would happen. ;)

I appreciate the amount of effort in getting a cube to role in what appears to be a 2D engine.

That was some feverish near-to-last-minute effort indeed, and it did pay off; I was so happy finally getting the cube to roll somewhat nicely on my first try! XD

The engine/framework is indeed a 2D one, that would be Ct.js, which I discovered through its partnership with Mini Jam and offers a navigator/Web build (which is an advantage for game accessibility). Although animation-wise, things would have gone about the same way with Love2D (you just have to program your own animation system, but it is not such a big deal once you have done it before).

Thank you. I was aiming for a twist indeed. :)

Ah, a side (! pun not intended) effect of my having not have the time to put the faces on the die… :S

Explanations:

Well, the upper right-hand cube shows you the state of the die: each of the six drawings represents a face/side. It is clearer when you have at least one picture that is different from the others, as you roll.

For instance, in the first level, once you have rolled on the ‘stamp’ (the little smiling sun), you can see that it gets attached to the bottom face, and as you roll, its current occupied face changes.

The main mechanic is that the top side decides how the die is controlled: when the top side is the player (ie the beige human face with no mouth), you get to roll the die. When the top side is something else… something else happens. This is up to you to discover. ;)

The existing possible types for the sides go as follows: player, Sun, nothing, arrow (with one of four orientations), friend (blue human face), enemy (red human face).

Sorry for not having drawn on the die; I tried towards the end, but it did not display, so I preferred giving up and relying entirely on the UI display (which worked well enough for me during testing). A rare case of where 3D graphics is actually easier than 2D graphics! X)

Agreed on both counts, and as I said on the game page and some comments already, this is entirely due to lack of time. X)

The latter levels were conceived in a rush and reduced to tutorial / proof of concept. (And I confess at least one mistake, in level Minefield, where the lower-left sunny tile should be placed one tile away.) On the contrary, Face Value has very good level design, but… these guys were four level designers. XD Kudos to them, but be understanding of the manpower/time issue!

mindDie, on the other hand, has good design with a single designer (who did not even use a level editor).

Actually, each puzzle game I saw had its strengths and weaknesses. I think mine has some originality, which is what I strove for; the initial brainstorming took me a lot of time, and resulted in less for the final level design. I admit I could have even better managed my time and come up with a better game, though, but that’s how things went. I would say the current game is somewhere in the 75%–85% range of what I originally intended, which is fair. :)

Thank you and I am pleased to see someone like it.

I felt like  the solution was 'just follow the path' a bit too often.

This is all too true. I had more ambitious views, and almost managed to come up with precise levels at the end of the creation time, but that was way too risky for such a genre, so I played it safe and submitted a non-broken game. Granted, in hindsight, I could have used the level-skipping functionality to allow myself put unverified harsh brain-teasers, but I feel this would have not been right.

However, this "complaint" boils down to "I would love to see more levels", which is a good sign for  a gamejam game!

Haha, great! :)

All in all, I had fun playing. This is a great proof of concept, well done!

Thanks! :) Originality was my target, so I am particularly mindful of your appreciation of the concept.

its a little confusing to confirm which side of the die you are on with the visual provided

As an aside, one of the useful supplements would have been to make the displays of the faces smoothly transition from one place to another (in a nice curved way). Unfortunately, I only thought of this one in hindsight, some time after submitting. X) While the non-painted cube is the most obvious shortcoming (yet most complicated for 2D graphics reasons). I also wanted to tilt the displays as if they were in perspective.

I still think my UI positioning is better than the alternative I had also thought of, which was to use a classic cube folding pattern. I have seen two other games use this latter solution (diSe and very good game), which I think is less readable. (And these are good games; not stabbing them in the back! XD)

Ah, I was worried people would find the music not calm enough, thanks! :) Usually, developers often go for soothing music for such a game, as you can see in other ones, such as DOS and especially the (very sweet) Marimbla.

I wanted to give a feel of mysterious adventure and progression, through both the music and the scenery, which I think is another specific feature of the game (as far as I have seen).

I hope you’ll work on it.

I will; I want to at least take revenge on those undisplayed sides. XD

Did you know: I intended the blue and red faces to use pathfinding, with the blue ones directing you towards sunny stamps, and red faces directing you towards holes. I scrapped it near the deadline and replaced it with the way simpler current behaviour! I may switch this back to my original plan. I even thought of a tutorial level where you have red faces lead you through a ‘corridor’ to a chasm, before a blue-face stamp saves the day. This all went in the dustbin!

This makes me think I will possibly write a post-mortem about the game, with a series of anecdotes and choices. :)

it will be a cool TimeKiller for mobile devices

… and for desktops. I am sure many a nerd likes to have his big computer run Baba Is You. ;))

I really liked the music and all the sound effects.

Thanks for the music (we should really thank Kevin MacLeod, there XD); as for the sound effects… there is only one, actually. XD But the most important: the roll of the die. I wanted to put others, such as when you fall in the void, when you get a stamp printed, when you win, possibly the sound of the wind blowing… All cancelled. ._.

Thanks for your appreciation!

De rien ! ;) Je ne suis pas passé par le tien malheureusement (trop de jeux à tester, notamment à peu de votes)… ._. Je jetterai un œil ! :)

Thanks for your feedback. Ironically, I usually go for way more comprehensive instructions (see my two previous games for examples), and I decided it was more subtle to let the player guess what was happening. I took a risk, there. X)

As for the cube display and as already told: agreed, time mismanagement. ;)

Thank you very much! :) (I only see your comment now, as I have been busy doing some heavy testing; I am still in a rush before the end!! Just passing by.)

I am happy as you are a fellow puzzle game creator. You’re nice saying some levels were tricky, I think level design is a half weak point of the game unfortunately, but the first (half of the?) levels are decent, I think.

I was very happy thinking of the UI display element, but… it was meant as an addition to the display on the faces, so I managed to have a great helper without the actual thing. XD I hope this does not look too weird!

As for not using pips, it was indeed totally voluntary right from the end of my heavy brainstorming. :) Although I have seen some non-puzzle games use this idea! For example, see The High Roller (Hardly Working Inc), which uses the card suits (plus 1 and 6).

(English below, because let’s roll in a polyglot way!)

Merci, content que le jeu (prototype) te plaise ! Oui, comme je l’ai répondu à claysec et aussi évoqué dans la fiche du jeu, pour la représentation des faces (ce qui était une grosse préoccupation pour moi, à raison !), c’est clairement améliorable, mais je n’ai pas eu le temps de réussir à afficher directement sur le cube en complément, et pas pensé sur le coup à afficher la rotation fluide des indicateurs de face… :/ Les heures initiales dont j’ai eu besoin pour fixer le concept m’ont coûté un peu cher sur la fin (même si je pense m’en être sorti raisonnablement). En y réfléchissant, je pense que j’aurais pu afficher sur les faces visibles du dé via une seule image pour chaque valeur possible ; j’ai tenté vers la fin, mais cela ne marchait pas, alors je n’ai pas voulu prendre le risque de casser le jeu peu avant l’échéance !

En revanche, pour les indications un peu laconiques, c’était volontaire de ma part, parce que j’ai plutôt voulu laisser le joueur comprendre par lui-même via la conception des niveaux, qui sont progressifs. Dans mes deux jeux/prototypes précédents (Breathe Heart et Blocage entropique), j’avais mis plus d’indications, mais j’avais déjà l’idée d’être plus elliptique et de me concentrer dans l’idéal sur créer des niveaux « tutoriel » (ce qui se voit déjà pas mal dans le deuxième jeu, qui est je pense le plus abouti en l’état actuel).

J’ai prévu d’améliorer le jeu dans le futur. :) En fait, je dois améliorer mes quatre jeux actuels ; j’ai du pain sur la planche ! XD Pas eu le temps avec la série de game jams que j’ai enchaînées dans la foulée par défi, mais je ne vais pas abandonner ces jeux.

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Thank you, glad that you enjoy the game (prototype)! Yes, as I answered claysec and also mentioned on the game page, as for depicting the sides (which was a big concern for me, rightly so!), there is clearly room for improvement, but I did not have the time to manage displaying directly on the cube as a complement, and did not think in the heat of the moment of showing the smooth rotation for the face indicators… :/ The first hours which I needed to stabilise the concept were a bit costly to me towards the end (even though I think I fared reasonably). On second thoughts, I think I could have displayed on the visible sides of the die using a single image for each possible value; I made an attempt towards the end, but it did not work, so I did not want to run the risk of breaking the game shortly before the deadline!

Whereas the somewhat terse instructions were voluntary on my part, because I rather wanted the player to figure out by himself through level design, with progressive levels. In my two previous games/prototypes (Breathe Heart and Entropy Block), I had put more instructions, but I was already thinking of being more elliptical and ideally focusing on creating ‘tutorial’ levels (which already shows quite a bit in the second game, which I think is the most thorough in the current state).

I intend to enhance the game in the future. :) In fact, I must enhance my four current games; I have a lot on my plate! XD Did not have the time with the series of game jams I did one after the other immediately afterwards as a challenge, but I will not give up on them.

Thank you! It would have been clearer if the drawings were also directly shown on the die, but unfortunately, I did not have enough time to make it happen in 2D. Some dozens of minutes before the end, I was still hoping to achieve it and drew that little sunny guy on side faces, but you do not get to see him in the ‘final’ cut. ;)

PS (18/07/2022): I have just had this idea that I could have made the face indicators move smoothly, so that you better see the rotation… Too bad I did not think of it yesterday! ._. Anyway, I will implement this in a future update, as I like to enhance my games over time. :)