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Can you tell me more about the hex map in the first photo on this page?

Thanks for the question. The number next to "d20" in the enemy details section matches the number you'll find for that enemy in the "Enemies (in d20 order)" table. It's only there if you e.g. roll on the enemies table, get a 7, and want to make sure the enemy you find in the enemy details section is the same once (since it'll say "7" in its d20 box).

If you roll on the enemy table and then look up the enemy by name, you can ignore the d20 number.

Does that make sense? Let me know what you think of the game.

Thanks for the comment. Movement is clockwise only, like in Monopoly.

This is really useful feedback. Thank you. When I update the game, I'll take all of this into account.

I've just published my first paid game, after 30+ free games. Thought I'd take a swing at something a bit more polished.

It's a dungeon crawler where your party of three heroes make their way around a labyrinth, and aim to defeat the final boss to win the game.

The combat is based around rolling a pool of dice and assigning each number to a hero depending on what action you want them to take. A nice mix of random and strategic.

https://ahobday.itch.io/labyrinth-of-a-mad-god

I’ve not actually play-tested mission 2 yet, which explains why it’s easier. Do you have a sense of why it was easy compared to the first mission?

Each successful hit applies your current damage amount. By default that's 1, but e.g. the "Strength" offensive effect applies +1 damage per hit. So each hit would do 2 damage.

An attack which does 2 hits would do 4 damage if you had the "Strength" effect, in that case.

On stun/bleed: I think all of the effects are written accurately for their effects. So e.g. bleed adds damage per hit if you roll any [6] for a given attack (e.g. if I attack twice, and only get a [6] in one of those attack rolls, the bleed effect only applies for the hits from that attack, not any other attack roll I do).

But e.g. "Stun" makes the enemy skip their next attack, and that doesn't stack or anything. No matter how many successful stuns you get on your turn, they'll only skip their next attack, not the one after that etc.

I didn't read the description closely enough and assumed that these skirmish games could be played on a single piece of A4 as the play area 😂 Which is the sort of limitation I get excited about.

Yeah, here's an attempt to explain it:

By default, on the player's turn, you get 1 attack. An attack is an attempt to hit.

If it's successful (you roll the target number), that 1 attack does 1 hit.

The "Haste" effect gives you one more attack per turn.

Now you have 2 attacks. You roll for each attack separately, so each has a chance to be successful or not. If either of the attacks is successful, it does 1 hit.

The "Flurry" effect gives you +1 hit on a successful attack.

If you had both Haste and Flurry, you'd have 2 attacks. If one of the attacks was successful you'd hit 2 times. If both were successful you'd hit 4 times.

Does that make sense?

"+5" on an item name means 5 more damage per attack, not per hit. e.g. if you only attack once but the attack does 3 hits, you'd get +5 damage total, not +15, because the bonus is per attack. (There are some effects that let you attack more than once in a turn, like haste, at which point you'd get the bonus more than once).

"-5" on an item name means you take 5 less damage from each monster attack. So you're right: if you got a -5 item on floor 1, the earliest a monster could damage you is a strong monster on floor 3 (3x3 damage).

"Attack" and "Hit" are hopefully used consistently in the rules, but combat is broken down like this:

Turn → Attack → Hit

Depending on the effects you have, you can attack more than once on your turn, and each attack can hit more than once.

Thanks for pointing out the invulnerability combination, as well. I've updated the PDF so that the "Doubles" effect now only works on non-6 doubles. I also changed the "Block" effect, which stops all damage from the minimum attack target number. But you can increase this to 6 for strong enemies, with other effects, which is another way to block all strong enemy damage.

Incredible. How did you make the roller, and can you share it?

Thank you. I’m not very familiar with skirmish games so I’m curious about any problems with it.

Wow, thank you for this. Do you have any feedback on the game? If it feels unbalanced I’d like to improve it.

Probably inspired in part by your recent dungeon crawler. I assume I've seen multi-column tables like this elsewhere, but yours is the only one I remember.

Also want to report that I have the same issue in Safari.

But I did not have this issue yesterday, when I uploaded a project image without issues.

Haha, no apologies necessary. I'm grateful anyone is playing my games at all, regardless of how long it takes.

Amazing, thank you. How have you found the new enemy scaling, where strong enemies multiply their damage?

You might have missed under "Uses for vigour" that you can spend vigour to increase a combat roll by the number of vigour you spend. e.g. if you fight a Wyrm and you roll a 5, you can spend 3 vigour to increase it to an 8, which does 1 damage to a Wyrm at full health. After that the number you need to roll goes down as the Wyrm's health lowers.

Does that make sense?

I'll update the rules to make it clear that you can increase the combat roll past 6.

I like the line between d6 result and HP, as a way to communicate HP but keep word count down.

If I understand your post and JavaScript correctly, the "+1 damage" is only supposed to last for the next fight, and only affects the player. The equivalent of e.g. a strength potion.

It would be interesting to try to introduce some choice into a solo 36-word dungeon crawler. So that it couldn't play itself.

it is a masterpiece. Thank you. And feel free to submit to the jam. I don’t have a problem with it, though I guess they might.

I create solo TTRPGs, so along with a setting I'd need rules/mechanics for play.

Does that fit with the theme of the jam? e.g. if the <8 pages was both a description of the world, and the rules for how to play? Or is that moving away from the intention?

This is fantastic. Thank you. If you try a different method of keeping track of effects, I’d like to see it.

Glad to hear it. I’m interested to see your current equipment, if you can write it out or take a photo?

And do you find it easy enough to keep track of everything in combat, or is that a chore?

If you want to dedicate your life to a project like that, I won’t stop you.

Be careful with that sword afterwards. It’s pretty dangerous.

Despite how all of my games look, I’m a designer in my day-job.

I think what I had in mind was that I’d work with you to produce a more polished layout, and probably change some text slightly to make things clearer where there’s any potential for confusion.

Mainly I’m interested because you’ve hit on a good mix of simplicity and variety here, and I think you could charge a little money for it if the first impression grabbed people.

Having said, I don’t charge money for any of my games, and if we did work together on it I have no idea how the money would work, so I haven’t thought about this practically 😂

I've tried it, it's great. The extra words paid off.

Playtest comments:

1. The character creation says "Roll 3d6 3 for…". I assume the "3" is not supposed to be there, and I only roll 3d6?
2. I love the generated names, and the fact that the names are tied to rewards. This is the sort of casual world-building that doesn't come naturally to me.
3. The horizontally stacked d6 tables are clever. They save space and are fun to look things up on.
4. In the level up section it says "level up costx", which I assume is a typo.
5. I noticed there are some assumptions needed. e.g. "kick down door" is an action, but I could not figure out what that related to until I saw the doors on the third room type. I assume the only way I can enter that room is to kick down the door.
6. Once I recruited a goblin, combat became much safer, though I never fought a boss because I didn't play for long.
7. Exploding dice feel great.

There's lots of variety here for so few words. I think there's a few places where the rules could be made slightly clearer, but I don't mind that it assumes the reader isn't stupid.

If you ever want to collaborate on a slightly fancier/shinier/more polished version of this (still one page, still few words, still lots of variety), let me know. Could sell it for $1.

I haven't checked all 36 words so let me know if you find any typos. Thanks.

Thank you. The eight years of hard work really paid off. Glad to have finally released it.

The starting max health is 15, so a "rest" action would be wasted since it wouldn't have anything to restore (e.g. you wouldn't go up to 20 HP).

But you can always return to that nothing hex to rest in it later, to use the one-time rest.

Really glad to hear you like it. Let me know if there's anything you think I could improve.

macOS didn't flag it as an untrusted app, so I couldn't allow in that way. I used this command in the terminal to remove the "damaged" flag from the app:

"xattr -cr /path/to/application.app"

After that, I was able to open the game, but as soon as I click "Start" the app crashes.

I assume this means the game doesn't work on macOS (at least not the most recent version).

Amazing. I'll watch this happily.

Thanks for these questions. You're right that the rules aren't clear, so I've updated the PDF to 1.2.

To answer your questions:

1. The omega-drive adds one extra move and attack, for two of each, total.
2. It's assumed that the mech docks between sectors, but you don't need to do it manually. Because of this you choose a launch zone at the start of each sector.
3. Once you've defeated the last enemy in the sector, you can move on to the next immediately: no new enemy, and no event.

I downloaded the macOS version.

I am running macOS Sequoia 15.2 on a MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro chip.

When I run the .app file I see this message in a macOS dialogue: '"Not Actually a DOS Game.app” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Bin.'

I think it's a little bit of "obsession", and a lot of "I keep the games as easy to produce as possible". Which might be a problem: I assume good art and high production values mean more people will try the games.

Thank you for your kind words.

Yes, that's right. There's only one die roll per character in combat, and there are no decisions to make per-character. It would be a boring game played co-op, I think.

Best to think of it like a JRPG, where you might have e.g. 4 characters in your party, but are playing solo.

These are great, thank you