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A jam submission

Dice DefenseView game page

A tower defense game where the dice are both your enemies and means of gaining rewards
Submitted by WittyWare — 45 minutes, 42 seconds before the deadline
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Dice Defense's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Enjoyment#4873.5963.596
Overall#9413.4683.468
Presentation#9683.6733.673
Creativity#20093.1353.135

Ranked from 52 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?
Dice are rolling into your base and are rolled after each wave to determine your reward

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

No

We used pre-existing art

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

No

We used pre-existing audio

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Comments

Viewing comments 40 to 21 of 41 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

I loved it! Although I don't play tower defense at all.

I avoided the game description on the itch page and started the game without it.

First I learned how to put up towers, and then I learned how upgrade them with a random click :D

A cell highlight when hovering would have been very helpful, so the player could immediately understand the interactivity of clicking without needing to click.

Also, maybe you know, the cells at the top and the cells in the top right corner are hard enough to interact. The pop-up menu is covered by the edge of the screen. And in the corner, the pause and speed up buttons also overlap the purchase/upgrade menu.

Every level I felt that I was on the edge of defeat and could lose, but I managed to beat all the waves. Very pleasant feeling, and a lot of defeated dice, giving me coins, multiplied the pleasant feelings :D

Sometimes I didn't understand which turret was going to fire at which location. And it was a bit odd when turrets covering 2 roads would fire at those dice closer to the turret, rather than those closer to the end of the road (and the potential damage to the main tower).

But other than that, it was an enjoyable game!

Developer(+1)

You're definitely spot on about that hover-highlight. That's something I also noticed and am planning to remedy. The pop-up window not working as well on the edges is also known, but I figured since the edges are mostly not the ideal locations for towers anyway, I can leave it for now in the game jam release. I'm not sure what you mean with the turret firing at the closest dice, they should always fire at the dice which is the furthest along the path. Maybe you encountered a bug there, I'll look into it!

I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed it so much though, even though tower defense isn't your go-to genre. Thanks for playing and thanks for your insightful comment!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I love Tower Defenses 😍 This one is quite hard! Making progress through the waves is rewarding. Art and music are great, congratulations!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it! 

Submitted(+1)

Very well presented, I like the variety of units and am seriously impressed with how complete a tower defense game you put together. The details on selling and upgrading towers and the incoming enemies especially!

Rolling the dice for a reward is super satisfying though can leave you fate up to chance!

Developer

Thank you so much for your kind words! I really appreciate it. Glad you had fun and thanks for playing!

Submitted(+2)

Hi, sorry for the little debate that arose earlier. I couldn't stand the influx of criticism, I was wrong. I apologize.

You have a great game, well done for participating! 5 stars from me.

Developer(+1)

Nothing to worry about mate! Taking critique is hard, especially if you've spent a lot of time and energy on something. I'm not always the best at that myself, so I can't blame you for how you reacted. I really admire you coming over here and being such a good sport though, that shows real character! Massive respect from me. 

And thanks for the kind words, I know my game isn't perfect either, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. Best of luck with your future gamedev projects and I hope to see you again next year!

Submitted(+1)

I'm not really a fan of tower defense type games, and I'm really not good at them, but this was pretty good. The idea of your reward being rolling of the dice you defeat is interesting. I'm not sure there's much mechanically relevant to it (other than some randomization to your end-level reward), but it's at least interesting thematically. I'm not sure how well balanced it is, particularly with the different tower types. My first time through, I tried to fully level up towers of each type to figure out how each worked, and lost pretty bad. My second attempt I basically just placed a bunch of once-upgraded of the rapid-fire weapon and did better, but still lost bad after a few rounds. I'm certain I'm just bad at the game, but I am still wondering how well the three towers are all balanced relative to each other, and if there's really a good reason to not just use one type of tower. I did have more fun with this game than the other tower defense games I played this jam, so that's a good mark for the game.

Developer

Thanks for your insightful comment. I'll just say that the 4 tower types are definitely not evenly balanced in terms of effectiveness and the end of level reward system can also throw your run for a loop sometimes. That said, I do have some ideas on how to balance both better and will be working on that in the future. I'm really glad to hear you had fun even though this isn't your genre. Thanks for playing!

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Played for a while and had a lot of fun with this one, the RNG for the coins is a cool take on the theme and overall TD games, sometimes I got very little coins but managing to still defend against a wave was satisfying and rewarding. The visuals are really nice too! Nice job.

Developer

Awesome to hear, glad you liked it! I know the RNG can be against you sometimes, but I'm happy that you took it as a challenge and managed to beat it anyway. Nicely done and thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Very fun, I enjoyed playing through all the levels and it was very satisfying to see the big rain of dice hitting all at once afterwards. I think I was quite deep into the second level before realising I could upgrade or sell towers, but I guess I did learn it naturally enough through play.

This is maybe an unfair criticism, because I've felt the same way about a lot of tower defence games that were *not* made in a weekend, but I struggled to tell how strategically effective my decisions were, see strategies beyond "slap as many towers down as possible" and sense a payoff. I always like a slow tower in this sort of thing because it gives a very obvious visible synergy - "ahah, this slow tower would be useless on its own, but nested in amongst my high damage towers it's doubling their value", etc.

With the sheer number of dice it was also a bit tricky to tell if I was rolling above or below average. I think once I felt like I was absolutely rolling in cash, but the rest of the time it just felt like decent money, and at that point I wasn't sure I was really feeling different from if I'd just been handed a big pile of cash. It might be more interesting if you were handed a random assortment of towers to place and had to be strategic with what you had?

In any case, still one of the most fun games I've played in the jam and the only TD I've seen. Slick and polished, I would have believed this was a professional browser or mobile game!

Developer

Very kind of you to say, thank you! And I really appreciate that you took the time to write such an in-depth comment! 

I agree that I could've been a bit better with communicating your options for upgrading/selling, but this being a game jam I simply was hoping people would stumble upon it because I just didn't have time left for a decent tutorial. 

The current strategic element is mainly to combine high fire-rate, low damage towers with the inverse of those and with that create a mix that is able to kill both small and larger units. But I agree with you, a slow down tower or any other similar towers with a more synergistic element to it would be good to add. 

I also have an idea of how to make it more clear how much money you actually gained from this wave and how to offset how much it affects the difficulty curve. So I'm glad to hear that you pointed that out.

Thanks again for the nice comment and thanks for playing! Have a great day!

Submitted(+1)

A lot of fun and very polished, though a little easy - not a bad thing for a jam game though, most of them swing the opposite way.

Feels like the RNG with the random rewards could get out of hand pretty quickly, but I don't care because it's just too much fun to see them all fall down on the field, I love it.

Developer

Thank you! Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I can congratulate you on being the 2nd person to find the game easy by the way. Most people find it really challenging, so you're either very skilled or just super lucky with the RNG :D. And you're totally right, it can definitely get out of hand, but I just wanted to see what would happen if I left it in. I've already got a few ideas to remedy the impact it has, without removing the satisfying effect altogether (which I'm happy you enjoyed btw). Thanks for playing!!

Submitted(+1)

Congrats on finishing your game for the jam! Well done

The use of theme here boils down to randomized rewards after each wave. That's a fun take on the theme, but I could see it getting a little impractical for tower defense games as these games are really make or break on the balance. I think I needed a little more information up front about each tower's range - maybe show the range when you're hovering a tower before you buy it? 

I lost pretty quickly, but I still had fun building up those towers. The catapult seems too slow to ever be useful though, especially when it's the most expensive. It just didn't feel good to buy. 

Games like this thrive off giving the player as much information as possible - damage numbers, range indicators, wave counts, etc. Tower defense is a favorite genre, but it presents a lot of challenges for a game jam, especially in just 48 hours. Great job overall. 

Keep making games!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! Yea, those are all fair points. This was my first tower defense game, so I definitely missed a few marks. Mainly being better about showing stats for each tower. The randomized rewards I was aware of, but since it's just a game jam game I decided to roll with it (he he) and see how it would feel in the end, also because it's more on theme along with the fact that you enemies are dice who roll down the path. 

I still like the idea of some randomization in the rewards, since it does couple nicely with the dice theme, but there definitely needs to be a bit more control over it from the players side. I've got a few ideas on how to address that though! Thanks for playing and thanks for your insightful feedback! Best of luck with your own post-jam project!

Submitted(+1)

A fun and polished tower defense game! I really liked the visuals. The gameplay could be linked to the theme a bit more. You could have a "dice tower" that shoots at random time intervals or with random attack strength. Anyways, pretty cool entry overall!

Developer

Thank you! Glad you liked it. That's true, but I felt like I had already possibly introduced too much RNG with the rewards, I didn't want to go overboard since I still wanted some of the tactical feel to remain. Thanks for your feedback though, always appreciate some insight!

Submitted(+1)

I had a lot of fun playing this one! The gameplay and graphics worked really well to create a casual (yet still challenging) atmosphere and the rewards at the end of the level felt super juicy. Maybe I missed it, but some sort of wave counter to tell me how far along in the level I am is just about I'd ask for here. Great work!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! I'm glad to hear you had fun! You definitely didn't miss the wave counter and it is something I've heard before as a point of feedback, so you're not alone in this and I'll be addressing it later. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Nice tower defense game, though I wish the dice determined more than the enemies.

Developer

That's a fair comment, thanks for your feedback. Glad you still liked it though! Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

With no information about what the towers do (damage, range, cooldown) I find it difficult to make any meaningful choice on which tower to build or upgrade. That's why I was not very engaged in solving the game. I think the rolling of the dice between each round is a cool visual effect, but the random rewards didn't really improve the gameplay for me. However, I was curious about some of the towers and played a couple of times to discover what they do.

Developer

I definitely wanted to add some more clarity on that, but even then I feel like you can get a rough sense of what the towers do after playing a bit. But you are right and this is something I'll be addressing post-jam. The random rewards are also something I plan on tweaking a bit. Thanks for playing and thank for your insightful feedback!

(+1)

It's a 10, it would be an 11/10 if I wasn't so bad at it.

Developer

Hahaha thanks for the kind words! You can take solace in the fact that the game isn't balanced that well, so it's not necessarily you being bad ;). Glad you liked it though!

Submitted(+1)

This is a really fun tower defense game! I love how polished it is, and satisfying little details such as the towers getting taller with upgrades, and the dice determining your gold every round. It took a few retries to get going but it never felt frustrating. Great job!

Developer

Awesome! Glad to hear you liked it. Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

nice game! good looking and fun!

Developer

Thank you! Glad you liked it :D

Submitted(+1)

Very well polished! I especially like when the you collect gold from the dice after each wave. Very satisfying!

Developer

Thanks for your kind words! I appreciate it. Glad you had fun!

Submitted(+1)

Solid game, quite creative! The only problems I had with the game were that I basically just found what I thought was the best tower (the minigun) and then just spammed it everywhere, so it seemed a little unbalanced. The game was still difficult though, which was nice. I loved that I could speed up the process, but when I was killing a bunch of enemies, all of the sound effects were killing my ears. Great work!

Developer(+1)

Thank you! You're definitely spot on, the balance is a known issue and the minigun tower is definitely the best one right now by far. I might need to tweak the sound effects a bit when speeding up, that's a good point of feedback. Glad you still had fun though! Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

Neat twist on the tower defence formula! Funnily enough I found the game a little too easy, and the units seem a little unbalanced; the catapault in particular feels very under-powered. Maybe I was just lucky with my dice rolls though? Good work man, this was a fun one :)

Developer(+1)

Hah! You're the first that thinks it too easy. So congrats on your skill or luck, because you surely did something right, clearly ;). The balance is absolutely out of whack and you're spot on that the catapult is too underpowered. It's something I plan on updating after the game jam. Glad you had fun though! Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+1)

This game was a very neat tower defense game. I thought the use of the theme was very creative!

Developer

Glad you liked it! I appreciate the nice comments. Thanks for playing!

Viewing comments 40 to 21 of 41 · Next page · Previous page · First page · Last page