This game gives off an amazing first impression. The art and animations are all wonderful and it got me really excited to play this game. However, the gameplay felt a bit short. The enemies were all a bit hard to hit, especially the flies, since it's not possible to attack vertically. I like the idea of the dice, and it feels right because of the setting, but I did not feel like the dice did anything or gave me an advantage. There probably was just not enough time to make the visual component for all these buffs. Maybe I sound a bit too critical, but I really want to like this game, because it truly looks phenominal.
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Slash the Dice | GMTK 2022's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Presentation | #48 | 4.567 | 4.567 |
Overall | #540 | 3.678 | 3.678 |
Enjoyment | #1409 | 3.117 | 3.117 |
Creativity | #1445 | 3.350 | 3.350 |
Ranked from 60 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?
It's a Hack'n'Slash game with a dice that randomly gives your weapon an elemental power, elements may cause more damage to one enemy but may heal the other, it also have several types of dice with different chances for elements from balanced to chaotic.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
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?
We used pre-existing audio
Comments
I adore the art style! Moving around felt a bit slow but other than that pretty solid game!
A very interesting game. The sort of rock-paper-scissors aspect of it is quite engaging, and the RNG part wasn't too obstructive, which was a problem I saw a lot of games face this jam. I didn't really like how the combat felt personally. The attack animation felt like it locked me in a little too much (especially when used in the air), and I found it harder than I would have wanted to avoid getting hit while attacking (especially with the flying enemies). I think I would have liked it a lot more if that was balanced differently. One nice-to-have which I understand not being here would be more enemy variety within the elements, but I get why that wasn't there. It was a nice game all around, though. Good job.
The Cuphead-like atmosphere is really well done!
I may need a new pair of glasses, but having a black spear over a black background made me miss more than one hit 😅 I think there’s also a little bit of improvement that can be made to the transition between the movement and attack positions.
Nice work on this! As others have said, the art and animations are wonderful and impressive! I liked the variety of enemies and the weakness/strength system (I used something similar in my game). It did seem like it took a while for normal attacks to do enough damage to enemies, so I wonder if speeding up the dice roll (even when not killing enemies) would make battle more dynamic?
Nicely done :)
Fun game, although the hitbox for the spear seems a little on the small side, and the flying enemies are pretty hard to hit anyway. Liked the idea of the elemental effects, though I wish there was a way to speed up the charging, maybe by defeating certain enemies or having pickups.
Fat 5 stars for Presentation!
Definitely a very interesting base with some incredible art direction especially for a jam game, but even otherwise. Some decent setup fort combat mechanics and a interesting way to mix it up in terms of damage.
Though I will say that the dice honestly felt a little more "bad" than good most of the time. Not just with the actual bad rolls which were interesting but mixed it up a bit, but more just, I didn't really run into a lot of situations where it was "needed" more so I could do it if I wanted the slightly increased damage sometimes. Which honestly I didn't super need. Though that might've just been since I wasn't clear on the actual damage?
Could be helpful to get the damage across more by having some sort of visual indicator of health possibly? Could help with that issue, though I'm not sure. It probably would be a little hard to fit in with the art too so maybe not.
One other thing I would say is it did feel a little.. slow I guess with the attacks. Mostly I think because there were a few trailing frames at the end that made trying to avoid attacks while attacking quite difficult, which to be fair. It fits some game styles so it may be intended to may attacking more dangerous, though for me it more just felt punishing, since there's not a very quick movement option for avoiding damage. Ex. a dash or a dodge etc. that would allow you to get out of the way at the end of those couple frames or so.
As well I would say the map layout, was a little hard, I'm not sure if it's just me being used to games having ledge grab like this, but I could not for the life of me reach some fo the jumps. I'm not sure if there's something I was missing with it, or just if they're slightly too tall, but I figured I would point it out.
To finish off I'd say at the moment, it doesn't really feel like the enemies scale too much with the waves, at least compared to the start. Or possibly they're just quite strong at the start, not sure. Either way though it ends up with the early waves, taking quite a bit to get used to to manage to get farther. Which I mean could fit, it's just a little hard early on.
Along with that there's not too much feedback on your "progress" throughout. Since really you just move around, kill enemies, repeat (and heck you have to hunt them, which is a little weird) and not much else. I mean obviously you get more dice, but there's no score or anything equivalent to give some clear "progression".
Overall though an interesting base for a platformer hack and slash that I'd be interested to see where else it goes. Especially when it comes to the art, but also with some more polished combat and mechanics.
Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
In fact, the damage increases as much as four times compared to a normal attack. You can kill a deck of cards (a green enemy) with a single hit, for example. And yes, there was a flying text in the plans to give feedback to the player about the damage, but we didn't have time.
We were well aware during development that dash in some form is simply necessary for maneuverability, but we also did not have time to make it.
I think you're right, the initial wave of enemies is really too complicated and not much different from the others, and it feels like you're fighting the same wave. We will fix this in the future.
I agree, the gameplay flow is repetitive, we essentially gave the player an arena with enemies in which he can try different dice, there are thirteen of them in total.
Thanks again for the whole article! We will return to all comments when we finalize the game.
This was an interesting one. I enjoyed the combat but I wish the animations were a little quicker. Outside of that I would suggest giving the spear some more contrast against the background (it's hard to gauge my range if I can't see the weapon) and maybe increasing the frequency of the dice rolling. That aside, I had fun with this. The combat still felt pretty punchy and the animations were solid. Nice work!
Love the visuals and the animations especially! One piece of feedback is the spear was blending into the black background in some places. Could use an outline to highlight it or something. Great work on this!
I really love the art and animations for all the characters, although some of the main character's animation gets lost in the black background.
I do think the main character's attack seems a bit stunted since so many enemies are kind of hard to hit, specifically the red and green enemies. It would probably feel better if the first attack either came out faster or had a longer range or had an element to it that hit upwards.
Some sort of dash could also really help with getting to hard to reach enemies and also help move around the map faster and more satisfyingly.
The dice mechanic works really well and it's not overly complicated and just provides a dash of strategy.
Overall this is a really fun game and I liked it a lot <3
This is a really well made and polished game. The animations were very charming and cute, and gave a lot of personality to the game. The combat was good, although I didn't like the fact that control was taken away from the player whenever attacking, although it did allow me to make some jumps that would have not been possible otherwise. Also I would like an up slash attack so the flying green enemies were less difficult to deal with. I found this games take on "you get an ability off a dice roll" interesting, the fact that you could choose which die you wanted made for some strategy. Overall, solid game and I think you guys should continue with this game. Good work!
nice idea and art.
the game a little too hard. recommend less punishes punishes players. try fill the roll bar faster.
after experience it very fun game.
This has some really good looking and unique graphics. Was a bit hard with the souls-like character controller with the locked animations. Made dodging and avoiding things almost impossible. Still this game has a lot of heart in it and deserves a top 20 position in terms of presentation alone.
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