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GMTK Game Jam 2022

Hosted by Game Maker's Toolkit

131k

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A jam submission

Dice ArithmeticsView game page

A puzzle game that involves rolling dice and maths!

Submitted by BuyMyBeard — 13 hours, 39 minutes before the deadline

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Dice Arithmetics's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Creativity	#1666	3.261	3.261
Overall	#2479	2.870	2.870
Enjoyment	#2781	2.565	2.565
Presentation	#2814	2.783	2.783

Ranked from 23 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?
Its a dice...THAT ROLLS (mind blown). There is a randomness aspect to the game too

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

Yes

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?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam

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Comments

keepsimplSubmitted1 year ago

Very interesting. I like the choice between modes for visualization. I can appreciate the difficulty in visualizing the sides with a top-down view like this. It might feel smoother if the overlay stayed there indefinitely (but faded) instead of having to cycle through it so much but it works pretty well. Of course that would create a new problem when they overlap, but 🤷‍♂️. I think these guys had a great solution using colors, though they also simplified the die faces to make it work.

Changing the win condition and having multiple enemy types were great choices. Definitely keeps it fresh, though some more info on enemy behavior would help. The last level is just evil because of the randomness 😂.

Anyway, great job on this!

Submitted

Roll the Hard Six

Leeding AppsSubmitted1 year ago

Nice work on your submission with some interesting mechanics

Submitted

Luca ZSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Interesting idea. I like the idea of changing winning conditions each level, adds a lot of depth and versatility. The art is good, the music gets repetitive quite fast. The puzzles have are a nice challenge. It might have been easier in 3D to see the dices other faces without having to press space, but this way works as well. Good job.

Submitted

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago

Well, recording music is a lot tougher than generating it with software, since you have to create and remember the song, and make sure to play it perfectly on tempo to make sure it loops well. In my local build, the song looped better into itself, which is weird.

I do agree with the repetitiveness, and I would surely like to put more time into these game jam songs to either have a more interesting underlying melody, or create a 8-bar variation to chain.

I'd like to experiment with 3d games, since they can give out more information with perspective, but limiting myself to a HTML canvas and not using any APIs or engine does limit the possibilities a lot. It makes for a challenging jam though!

Thanks for the criticism!

Luca ZSubmitted1 year ago

I didn't see it was a js game, certainly makes 3D harder that way. And i could see how recording music might take longer than generating it, but i guess that way you can get more feeling into it. The repetitiveness of the song is nothing uncommon for jam games, especially in songs with a strong melody.
Anyways, good job for finishing the jam with additional limitations to make it more challenging, lol. Was this by intention or because you don't have practice with other tools?

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago

Honestly it's a bit of both. I have yet to learn Unity, which I plan to learn through my classes over the next year. Right now, I find it kinda overwhelming.

On my previous jams, I used Pixi.js, which is a 2d graphics rendering API, but it wasn't really suited to make a tile-based game. For this jam I decided to experiment with the HTML canvas, which had a lot of limitations and wasn't great to work with, but was sufficient to make a tile-based game.

For the moment, I prefer to make games without an engine since programming is definitely my favorite part of gamedev, and doing it that way allows for everything to be at the same place. I know C# and made multiple SFML or console games in the past, but I am not too familiar with making a downloadable build and I thought it would be simpler to have a html game you can imbed in the page

Luca ZSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Thats fair. As a software developer, programming is the part i enjoy most, after planning and designing the systems of course. My first game was in school in c++ with a very simple drawing library. Was fun as well, and definitely learned a lot about solving challenges i wouldn't have had in an engine.

But once it comes to bigger games or more complex concepts its easier to rely on Unity (or any other engine) to do the heavy lifting of matrix manipulation, rendering, collisions and other performance critical functions, so the developer can focus on the systems that make the game what it is. There can still lots of programming involved, as much as you want, but it's easier to direct it at the challenges of your game.

But in the end, everyone can make games the way they want and it's quite cool to see so many approaches to how people make games. There is no right way (tho some might be easier to walk lol)

DasApfelkuchenSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Cool music and cool concept with really different levels. Its kinda conufsing(I didnt realize until the third level that the red an white dice had to touch and I have not understood yet when the red dice move)

Submitted

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago

The red dice moves once every 2 turns. There is another enemy type in level 4 to 6 : a blue dice that moves once every turn.

I thought it added some kind of difficulty curve and some enemy variety.

About the dice-touching mechanic, it's something I briefly explained in the description of the game, but I don't think I did a good job conveying that it was the goal of the game. It's not the most intuitive mechanic unfortunately, and that is why I realized it's important to convey this kind of information with gameplay by forcing the mechanic to happen in-game, for players to learn with experience.

Thanks for taking the time to play my game!

2C4NSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

It's a lovely game. I almost won on all levels but the last one was way too hard for me :D.
I think your game needs just a few tweaks and additional mechanics.

Like already people commented, with your design with random enemies some kind of indication of the next move would be perfect since now you could be just rolling back and forth wating for AI to make that specific move to win which can be a little frustrating.

Also a condition "To defeat: Odd numbers" for me was a little misleading. I was trying to beat level by "attacking" other dices when they had odd numbers. xD

Now that's propably me but prediction mode and dissasembly mode was kinda weird to work with, maybe because there's one side missing on your diagrams? I don't know tbh.

Over all i like your shot on this theme. Good luck and don't forget to improve. :)

Submitted

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago (1 edit)

Yeah, the AI is definitely way too unpredictable and can be very frustrating to work with. Level 6 is indeed way too hard, and you really need to master the game mechanics to beat it, and even then I only beat it 10% of attempts even though I know all the tricks since I designed it.

I definitely have to rework the AI or at least make it telegraph the next move, and some of the win conditions have to be rewritten to convey the information with as little confusion as possible.

For the prediction/dissasembly mode, it is a big design problem that most people who made top-down 2d puzzle games for this jam had to solve.

My first take was to have the "dissasembly" view since I thought having the dice show his sides by unfolding them was definitely more intuitive, but I was wrong. I went with "prediction" view which is the inverted unfolded dice, that shows the top side for each tile after moving.

I decided to make "prediction" default, and have a toggle that allowed for players to have the liberty to decide which view type fit them the most. I know most people went with what I call "prediction" as the way to convey the info in their game.

Thanks for taking the time to play my game and giving good criticism, I appreciate it!

AysbergTrSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Its very unique mechanic but I found it pretty hard to play especially with red dice moving randomly.

Submitted

Cursed Dice Dungeon

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago

Yeah, this game definitely taught me a lesson about implementing complete randomness for enemy AI in games. It can be quite frustrating!

☕hubertlozSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

I like it. It's interesting mechanic and putting the concept in tiny strategic game is fun. One thing missing though i think is more information. As other people in comments have said information about future enemy movement would allow more strategic thinking and maybe a dice diagram somewhere. But still ,it is creative and fun.

Submitted

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago

Yeah, my idea is to either rework the AI to make it more predictable, or at least to telegraph the next move for enemy dices.

Thanks for playing!

Lewis HamerSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Pretty creative idea. Slightly annoying that the red dice moves around randomly, perhaps telegraphing the move would be useful for the player. But then again that would make the game way too easy. It's a difficult problem. Get it right and this could be a really nice puzzle game in a full release.

Great job!

Submitted

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago

if I was to make the game again, I would definitely add a telegraph for the enemy next move, but I think even with it the game would be a bit too hard still. I don't know if you reached level 4, but level 4 to 6 contain a blue dice, that moves once every turn (way more aggressive and easy to get screwed over by it).

Thanks for taking the time to play it and give some fair criticism!

RingatingSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Fun game! The player has less control than a pure puzzle game, since the AI dice behave in random ways. I think this helps make it a bit more relaxed that a typical puzzle game, though, since I don't need to stress over every single turn when part of the outcome is out of my control. Good work!

Submitted

SurWeaverSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Quite a creative way to defeat your enemies! More interesting than some of the options I've seen here.

Interesting concept.

It's a bit hard to see the options for the enemy's next move. It would be nice not to display options where the dice can't go (like a wall or another dice).

Submitted

BuyMyBeardDeveloper1 year ago(+1)

yeah, its definitely something I've thought about, but I decided to go with giving the players the most information possible to be able to predict where to connect the right faces.

Thanks for playing and for taking the time to give some criticism!

ZizouSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

Interesting concept!

Submitted

GIMMIKO CLASSIC

PatbugSubmitted1 year ago(+1)

A great take on the grid-based subgenre! I enjoy the varying objectives from level to level. For a post-jam build, it might be worth considering telegraphing the enemy dice's moves. Overall, great work!

Submitted