Rolling for Royalty

Loved it. Played twice, more aggro the second time, and ended up getting a x3 x4 3 damage to all enemies combo, which was funny to see. Some (long) notes for if this were ever fleshed out:

• Needs a way to disincentivize being overly-cautious and dragging a game out. Especially since you can only heal in battles, I'm always hesitating to take a few turns balancing shields to try to get a heal off before ending vs just getting it over with.
  • Of course the obvious solution is to just heal the player at the end of each match, but I thought it was kind of cool to manage health throughout.
  • Same thing could apply to gem faces. An even more extreme safety vs fun choice. I feel we are supposed to balance long term vs short term, but it could easily be a problem.
• Something about the x4, the multi-attacks, and the fire feel abusable in combination with each other. The end started to get surprisingly easy once I had more deliberate faces.
• On the other hand the gem faces don't feel necessary (potential spamming aside)- even without taking up a roll when you get them, they don't seem like they could pay off their values before you're already well-off enough in gems to buy whatever
• Might need some adjustments to make the lower value faces useful. I found it best to just save up a little and get expensive ones. So yeah balancing, difficulty.
• That said, I'm not sure how you handle players getting stuck, especially since they lose old faces by replacing them. What if their average gain in relative health is smaller than the opponents'? Of course just offering help when they're losing would feel cheap.
  • Do they get coins when they lose? That could work.
• Maybe if you finish a battle with a heal left it could automatically use it
• Might be good to add different color gems as payments go up, though it is satisfying to see them all spill in
• Coins glitch out of box at start
• For some reason I always want to click on the chest, mostly just to open it. Accidentally bought an item that way.
• On the other hand some animations could go faster, maybe getting faster as you progress in the game (opponents rolling, board dropping)
• It would be nice to see which face we're adding, to be able to check our die, cancel a purchase, maybe check the shop from the map.
  • To combine the first three, I'm thinking you just show the face at the top that you're currently adding and put an option to cancel.
• You can't always tell which die is which when they roll. Not sure how, but it would be good to indicate the other faces of a die so you know what your chances are when you reroll.
• I think I saw some rolling wonkiness- an opponent's die looking like it had rolled one face when it was just barely on another. I know one of mine ended up on an edge due to collision with another.

I got pretty nitpicky so don't worry if you're not trying to make it perfect. Just some thoughts.

I also honestly forgot this was from the 2022 jam because that's how caught up I was in it.

Luck? Where we're going, we don't need luck!

Great game. I loved the dice building mechanic a lot, though it was a bit easy to exploit. Adding less certainty to purchasable faces (only certain ones appear in certain shops, etc.) and giving opponents the ability to roll multiple dice or have faces that you just can't have would add a lot to the formula and make it a REALLY fun and engrossing experience.

What does the Fire icon do?

Very cool game!  I hope one day to see a longer, fuller version.

One tiny bit of UI feedback: It would be great if the screen looked inactive or something when you can't use it.  For example, when you try to click on the cross button or a dice while the game is in the middle of throwing dialogue bubbles at you.  At that point it looks like you can click that button, but doing so throws dialogue at you instead.

Thanks.

Nice concept! Some suggestions:

- Currently, shields and heal are almost the same, I would consider that the player's shields are only worth for the current attack (that is, what is left over is lost). That would differentiate more both actions, and also would make the game more tactical. In the case of enemies I don't know if it would work the same way.

- Make it possible to consult which die is which, among the ones you have rolled, so you can choose wich one to roll again. In many occasions you can't tell just by looking at the visible faces.

- Another way to balance the multiplier faces can be to make their price rise (double?) with every purchase (and probably you dont need the x4 option).

In any case, good luck with the final game, if you make it.

Thanks again for appearing on today's stream, here's the highlight! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1556348571

Absolutely wonderful! Just wanted to know I had a fantastic time with this game and hope to see more of it in the future! 

Hi. It's a nice game you have made here, It feels a bit like the dice forge board game, which I'm super fan of. There are also some problems:

• Way too much text with some giving really obsvious tips; I would recommand the "don't tell, show" tip. For example you don't really need to say you heal the player when the action of healing is mostly self-explanatory. Visual feedbacks are also simpler for that.
• Animations are very slow which break part of the dynamic. On the other hand some obvious actions could be automated, like the dice selection when there is no reroll left.
• There are a few issues with balance. First all actions don't have the same type of benefit: while attac and defense are used within a single fight, gathering gold benefits the whole game so if you can keep a fight for a arbitrary long time you can easily collect huge amounts of gold even having it snowball and grow faster after each fight.
• Also as others have pointed out the multiplicator action is way to strong. On my last run I had two dice covered with x4 so each round was like playing 8 dice of the best action. Each turn of the last battle I was gaining 16 defense and dealing 12 daages to all enemies, litterally destroying them. I think you could balance it with the concept of rarity so you can have strong actions that are rare, or in small quantity. That way your may also have a better interest in placing them in you dice to optimize your actions
• Finally I think the gameplay lack of variety as most actions are counters of others action: defense and heal against attack (in some sense they're like two separate life bars capted at 20), fire against block. I think this is what makes the game so easy because there is no surprise or need to adapt. Once you have your strategy set up you can follow it and the game become brainless

Anyway that was a really pleasant experience. Thanks for the game :)

Seems quite familiar to https://tann.itch.io/slice-dice

I love it