Play game
Dice Climber's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #354 | 3.889 | 3.889 |
| Overall | #1914 | 3.074 | 3.074 |
| Enjoyment | #2355 | 2.722 | 2.722 |
| Presentation | #3214 | 2.611 | 2.611 |
Ranked from 18 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?
The blocks that make up the terrain are themed around dice, and each floor of the building uses a die roll to initialize its blocks and keys.
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?
No
We used pre-existing audio
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Such a hard game! But there's a lot of depth to it, very good job on that!
Thanks for coming to my stream! Here's a recording in case you'd like to refer to it
Thanks for playing! Was cool to watch you play it and learn things in real time. And sorry I made such a hard game haha.
Nice! I like the concept quite a bit. It was pretty challenging though, I barely get past 3 floors :') - Even if I tried to cheat here and there by jumping against the ceiling a few times to break through without having to get the keys. It's neat to have to quickly plan a route through the floor to get to the next one efficiently.
I am amused by the play on ice climbers as the name too :D
Yeah, it seems like most people find it pretty hard. I wanted it to be sort of arcadey and to reward high skill so it's intentional, but maybe not such a great fit for a jam with so many other games and limited time to play/rate stuff haha. Also, breaking through instead of getting the keys isn't considered cheating, it's an intentional mechanic as I wanted to provide a lot of possible decisions to make from the die rolls. Anyway, thanks for playing!
Nothing wrong with a challenge!
Very cool game! I am garbage at it, but it is a really cool concept and maybe I need to try it with a controller. Definitely can see all the work put in and really appreciate the awesome design. Great job!
It's a really cool idea (and throwback to ice climbers I suppose hehe) and it's fun to play; however I did find myself basically giving up hope if the roll was too low (floors of 1 felt way too punishing). Thinking of ways to balance this while keeping some random unpredictability, maybe the rolls happen on a per-tile basis? maybe you can re-roll floors or tiles on the go?
Just some random thoughts, I liked the game and think with some polish it can be really cool! Good job!
Managed to get a 2620! It's a challenge for sure, but feels super rewarding when you manage multiple really hard rooms back to back. Thanks for sharing on stream! :D
Thanks for playing! It was cool to see you discover little strategies naturally that I considered while developing the game, like breaking through the bottom of lower numbered floors, and skipping keys below a 1 floor to give yourself a safe platform. Glad you liked the game!
I am not very skilled at these sorts of things, and I could not get past the first or second lock on any attempt.
But I see what you did with it, and it's very well done!! Excellent work!
Cool idea with nice level design! The constantly changing floor tiles allows for lots of creativity and different strategies when going through each floor. There's really no critism I can give that other comments havent said.
It's a really clever idea that you could expand on more!
Wow, this was much more fun than I expected. To be honest, the instructions contained a lot of 'technical' stuff that players would naturally learn from just playing the game, stuff that doesn't need to be told out loud. I think all you really needed to say is that the dice blocks disappear under your feet and you have to collect all keys on a floor to unlock the next one and players would figure out the rest on their own.
The biggest drawback gameplay-wise was, I think, the floatiness of the character. It was simply difficult to control. GMTK and Jonas Tyroller have some good videos on platformer design and how to balance all those variables. (My secret formula as 0.5 pixels/tick squared acceleration and 5 pixels/tick max speed.) In addition to that, coyote time, variable jump height, yada yada.
But if you improved that and the presentation, added a bit more juice, this could be an easy 4-5 stars. Well done.
I'm glad you think a lot of the stuff in the instructions file would be figured out naturally; that was my hope at least, but the "tips" section was basically included because I was worried that people might not give it enough time for those things to become apparent. I probably wouldn't have included that stuff if not for the fact that this is for a jam with ratings and thousands of other games, haha. Given more time for art I would have at least had an animation signaling that you're set up for a wall jump, and a distinct frame for a high wall jump.
Movement is something I'd like to improve on, though I am mostly pretty ok with how it is here. One thing I would have implemented if I had more time is a buffer for jump inputs, so that you would still get your jump if you pressed the button within a couple frames of hitting the ground or a wall. Coyote frames I'm not so sure I would want though. It does have variable jump height at least.
Anyway thanks for the comments, and glad you had fun with it.
Conceptually awesome. Been a while since I've played a tower climb game. The use of theme is interesting. The use of dice as the tower looks awesome. Being able to use the walls as platforms by breaking them was something I've never seen before and had some interesting applications.
Best feedback I can give is it feels a bit punishing even for a tower climber. The standing jump is just short of being reliable to go up levels. And if you get a platform of ones with 4s or higher above the floor disappears so quickly that it feels impossible most of the time. The keys and locks seem to be an answer to that problem but they are often to hard to reliably collect and when paired with the short jump height and a narrow opening its hard to feel like a justifiable loss, which for this genre is a key component.
Always nice to see other Gamemaker projects in these. Overall, a lot of good work. You have a solid concept and generally executed it well.
Thanks for the feedback!
I agree that the general balancing of the die rolls was one of the biggest challenges, though with some persistence I've found that it actually provides some interesting nuance that is usually manageable if you're careful. For example, if you see that the floor above you rolled a 1, you can skip the keys on the current floor which allows you to use the lock blocks as a safe platform. That combined with planning of your route to the key on the 1 floor can usually allow you to deal with the situation. I'm sure there are ways the system can be improved but I did want it to be pretty punishing considering it's a game you can just keep retrying in short bursts.
The jump height is pretty deliberate in combination with the possible floor heights. The most common floor height is short enough that you can jump from the ground level to the ground level of the floor above. The least likely floor height is one tile higher, which necessitates you to use a high wall jump (hold up while wall jumping) barring other means like springs, which was a deliberate decision.
Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback, will definitely consider all of these points if I continue to try to make this into a more fleshed out game post jam.