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It's a bullet hell shooter with elements similar to Galaga and class arcade games. Controls work fine. There aren't any bugs.

Thematically, it's all over the place. I play as a hand (why?) I'm shooting at stars that shoot me (why?) There are dice, and when you hit them your projectiles bounce off of them (why?) It seems like it has dice in it just to try and fit the theme, and so far as I can tell, there's no unique gameplay related to the dice. The dice might as well be any other object in the game, anything that rotates when you shoot it, any other thing that hurts you when it hits you. It all kind of blends together and becomes grey. There isn't anything to make this stand out.

You call it "The Die is Cast" Why? Is there any gameplay that relates to this theme, or is it just another phrase related to dice, so that might as well be the name? If the gameplay is in there, it's not made clear to me.

I've played some of your other games, and I get a general feeling that while all of them technically "work" from a functionality standpoint (no bugs, controls fine, there's a start, middle, and end) they're lacking a unique gameplay hook to draw me in and keep me engaged. 

I think you would best be served as a designer by taking a step back from simply making games that "work". Go study some other successful games and try to pick apart the reasons why the design achieves what it does. Try to understand what makes a game like Voidigo or Enter the Gungeon tick, not just from a "can I code this" perspective, but as a holistic design. 

Then take that design, strip it down to as few systems as you can, and try to make something with its own identity. I guarantee you it will do better than anything else you've made thus far.

(+1)

Hey Ted, thanks for your review. Many good points there. About the themes, yeah, there were a bunch of ideas I ran out of time for that would tie a lot of things together, including the title. I guess I got too ambitious and bite more than I could chew. There were several enemies themed around casinos, magicians and stage plays.

I’m a little disappointed I was not able to communicate the roll the dice theme better. The only way to score in the game is via the falling dice and you need to roll them to get them into the largest multiplier bin (in the center) and with the largest side facing out.

I was not expecting you’d check some of my other projects but I am glad you did and you are absolutely correct. I have been learning Godot over the past 18 months so a lot of my projects have been self-imposed challenges in all kinds of generes, styles and mechanics. And they are all jam projects where I have been trying ideas and also seeing what people like or dislike. I feel like now I am well positioned to be able invest in a larger project where I can compile what worked in these jam projects and move it forward however I want now that I have the technical skills to do that. I am still undecided so any ideas will be helpful. Also, what’s your favorite game? I did take notes of all the ones you mentioned in Discord and I want to know what is that would please hard critics like you. And if you have any book or other resources I’d also be interested in learning about those. So far I’ve been working with ā€œa theory of funā€ (r. koster) and ā€œgame design workshopā€ (t. fullerton), and ā€œunderstanding comicsā€ (s. mccloud).

This is the video that got me interested in game design:

Jon Blow sets a really high bar for design, but I'm always trying to approach my designs this way. It changed my perspective from "how can I contrive a bunch of stuff and make content" to "how can I discover what's interesting about thing I'm making, and then change the design to bring out what's naturally good about it."

I designed all of my puzzles in my first game, Mooselutions, this way. I think it also applies to other game genres. You have to play your games a lot to understand what's really happening in them.