itch.io

ok that was unsettling... in the most interesting way possible

love the layout choice too

Yeah of course I don't mean to put you in the spot of predicting if you the game has financial success potential hehe; I just meant if you felt that the loop and metagame part had potential for engaging players long enough for it to tell the things that it wants to tell. I think you already answered all of it, really.

And yeah my plan is to continue steadily working on it as I have now until I have something I'm fulfilled with, hopefully gathering a (however small) audience along the way. There are a few concepts/ideas/stories I'd like to convey through the game (as pretentious as it may sound), so I really hope it lands with at least some people.

In either case, thanks for all your feedback and positivity :)

Hello Mates!

Wow, really thorough feedback, thank you so much, this is great! It feels great knowing that someone enjoyed the demo/prototype so much!

The game does get  too hard on match 4/5, bu that's in part because it needs a difficulty pass once the entire progression is complete, and in part because the story has nothing else just yet so there's no real ending.

I'll also look into that bug you mentioned, never seen it before.

If I may ask just one final question - do you see potential for this becoming a full game? It is my goal for now but it'd be great to hear if others can see the vision.

Thank you, but I was under the impression that this forum was for voluntary feedback and not for soliciting paid tester work. Good luck regardless.

Hey everyone! I need some critical feedback on my game Dominot, which now has a short demo.

https://synaut.itch.io/dominot

Overall I'd like to gauge if the game interests/intrigues you, if the aesthetic is tiring or it hooks you, and if the core gameplay is engaging and seems sustainable for an entire game.

Thanks in advance!

Ok played it, here's some feedback:

• First of all, love the aesthetic, i think it's going in a great direction!
• Maybe minor, but it takes too long from loading the game to actually get playing (several loading, disclaimers, "cutscene", etc). Cut that friction down.
• While the character controls aren't bad, the air handling is abysmal - feels super stiff mid-aid, can't even change facing direction. This all really takes away movement expressiveness from the player. I'd work hard on this.
• Coins are hard to see - not sure what their use is, but they are too small and not distinctive enough.
  • Something similar happens to the boulder of the kick tutorial, took me a while to realize it was even there
• First enemy too long to appear, had to walk forward in a straight line for a while to get to it. Get to that action sooner.
• It feels like mashing the basic attack resolves most situations. Maybe I just didn't get far enough to find more combat depth, but even the hopping enemies were easy to handle like that
• Something similar to the air handling happens with the dash attack, you can't cancel out of it and it makes the control feel taken away from you for way too many frames

Hope it all makes sense, those are just off the top of my head playing over it.

All in all I think it's headed in a good direction, but moment-to-moment feel and control needs adressing asap. Good luck!

Loved this - very simple but elegant concept.

Very awesome!! Fun concept; struggled for a while to understand that you didn't have to drag the mouse to stretch and that it was intuitively more like "pushing".

Would probably make a very cool bigger game :) hope you take it further

I really liked this! it's a really cool combination of the basic dice walker and a dungeon crawler. With some more polish, it could be a very cool roguelike.

Also, love the presentation; reminds me of playing Windows 9x games back in the day, which I don't know if it's intentional, but game me some good nostalgia :)

The concept is solid, I like the idea of building a world with the dice; maybe you could be building towards an end goal/level, and you have to strategize how to build the path (e.g. each dice value has different number of enemies; where you place each dice on the grid changes the enemy types, etc).

I'd try to take the idea further!

Great presentation and has a bit more of a twist than several other dice walkers; having a small "backstory" also makes it more memorable and charming. Good submission!

Loved it! It's actually one of the most solid concept/prototypes I've seen in the jam!

Like, there's a really cool roguelite game in here with more work and polish. The gameplay is fun and unforgiving (maybe a tad bit much), but as long as you tweak it to make it super dynamic, it's fine.

Dice should resolve faster as I believe others have pointed out; maybe have a dash besides the jump too, which also pushes enemies apart from rolling attacks?

Another quick idea would be that you could customize each side of the die with the items you pick up along the way (attacks, blocks, spells, you name it). That way, you can customize your playthrough for different playstyles.

Maybe integrating rolling dice to the randomization of the dungeon itself? Like, each room rolls a dice, and that room gets N exits according to that roll...

Anyways, sorry for the rambling; I think this is a really cool jam entry and has the potential to be an actually good, fully fledged, successful game :) congrats

Thanks a lot!

Totally agree on the undo button; I already have it working on a newer build and will upload it post jam. Was a bit worried it'd kill the flow or difficulty of the puzzles but it's actually quite the opposite, since it removes the need on longer levels to re-do the whole sequence (tho sometimes you need to, as specific moves at the beginning might make the state of the board unsolvable later!).

Either way, thanks a lot for the feedback!

I was hoping for more FPS style takes on the theme, so cool that you did! I really like the presentation; sadly, I think the gameplay needs a bit of work. Mainly, there's a lot of downtime waiting for the dice to be retrieve-able; maybe add a secondary button to pull it back? It could even have a longer or shorter cooldown depending on the roll, things like that.

All in all, cool concept and idea, just needs a bit more of polish and I bet it'd be a really fun fast paced game!

Such a beautiful presentation! Really 5 stars, the look is really charming and cohesive.

The gameplay is really arcady and fun! Only thing I'd maybe change is having the ability to dash horizontally to attack enemies more straight on. But it's a really fun entry!

Hey I think you had a nice thing going, with some more tweaking and polish, it'd be a fun game! The shooting might be a bit slow tho.

Either way, congrats for submitting! Also, 46 seconds before the deadline, living the danger haha

I really enjoyed it! Did you make the art? Either way the whole experience has a cohesive style and presentation, and the music and sound is awesome too. Cool game.

After rolling two dice (and getting one curse and one blessing), subsequent dice didn't do anything, was that supposed to happen?

Anyways, cool and creative game, movement and combat were really satisfying, I dig it!

A very simple but very cool idea! Haven't seen anything like this on the jam so far. With some polish it would make for a great time wasting game.

Maybe the speed ramps up a bit too fast, could start a bit slower and slowly build out from there. More difficult levels could even include more dice to keep track of.

All in all, a really cool and original concept!

I think you had a great idea here, and as you said, you might've overscoped a little, but I applaud you for having such an original take.

Obvious missing things were a bit of a tutorial, and just a bit more polish on the presentation (which was already on the right track for a charming look). But good job submitting either way and if I were you, I'd try to take the game a bit further to see where it goes :)

It's a really cool idea (and throwback to ice climbers I suppose hehe) and it's fun to play; however I did find myself basically giving up hope if the roll was too low (floors of 1 felt way too punishing). Thinking of ways to balance this while keeping some random unpredictability, maybe the rolls happen on a per-tile basis? maybe you can re-roll floors or tiles on the go?

Just some random thoughts, I liked the game and think with some polish it can be really cool! Good job!

A really cool shooter! Had fun with it, and really loved the artstyle and presentation.

The only thing I'd point out that detracts from the fun is the movement, it's a bit slow. Maybe it was just me, but the only viable strategy for dodging i could find is to continually move in a circle away from bullets, as doing any other movement I wouldn't be fast enough to avoid them. Could be improved with a faster speed, or with a dash (hey, maybe dashing also rerolls your weapon!).

Anyways, cool submission!

I think there's a really cool game in here with some additional work (and also love that we had a similar idea of dice "walking" with progressively smaller dice numbers.)

The look and presentation are definitely on the right track, very relaxing.

The gameplay makes sense after reading the rules and the extra info you left here, but it still needs tweaking. Randomness in a puzzle game can be tricky, as you don't know if you'll have an actual solution each time you (re)start a level. In my head this could go one of two ways:

(1) No randomness, or at least a more deterministic outcome each time: with a certain "state" of the board, you always get the same sequence when placing a specific die. Otherwise, you'll never feel you're "advancing" the puzzle, and you can't build the sequence out in your head to reach the goal in a satisfying and "earned it" way. That way you can also ensure that every playthrough of a level has a viable solution.

(2) Fully embrace the random: throw the set goal out of the window. Turn the goal into making something aesthetically pleasing, or making the highest tower, or getting the most dice on the board before not having more viable dice to place. This makes the game less of a puzzle and more of a toy, but it has its own value and is more of an experience.

Sorry if that unsolicited wall of text seems like a lot. It's just that I think there's a really neat idea in this game, and my mind worked through the design as if it was my own, figuring out where to take the prototype next. It also doesn't mean that what you submitted is bad, quite the opposite actually!

Anyways, I'll stop my rambling, good work and good luck :)

Very cool presentation, it has a lot of personality and with a little bit of tweaking, it could be the look of a complete game and not just a gamejam entry!

As for the gameplay, the mechanics are cool but it needs a bit of polish, especially to add a bigger strategy element (for example, having to perform certain moves in order to line up the enemies in a certain patterns to knock them out, having set dice per level so you can plan out the solution, etc.). Also, I wish you could just restart the level instead of the entire game when you lost.

All in all, there's potential here!

I think this was a potentially cool idea! Sadly, I'm not sure there's an actual win condition?

Make it a bit more polished and relaxing (the sounds are a bit too aggressive) and it could be a really satisfying game.

Very cool presentation, loved the art, the music and the story! And the clicking gameplay I did not expect to like, but spent a while on it trying to progress and getting upgrades. A little more variety on the upgrades would be cool

It's a cool concept! I think the battles should play out a little bit faster, but there's some potentially engaging gameplay here

I was just curious, it makes sense that the first intuition is to make the dice roll like in real life (as evidenced by the number of dice walking games everywhere) but I understand that it's not super easy to keep track of (I had the suspicion it'd make for a worse game when I asked).

Anyways, once again, cool game, good job :) 

Satisfying movement and sound, makes for a very relaxing experience!

Thanks!

Awesome idea to make a survival horror out of the theme! The presentation is great, really cool style all around. Might be a bit too hard.

Loved it, one of my favorites from the jam! Really simple and tight with a good presentation. Great look and feel! In a similar interpretation and use of the dice to my submission, but with a different twist.

A quick design question, did you consider setting the switching of the sides when moving to be set (i.e. like real dice, rolling to the next face) instead of random? That could add a "spatial" element to the puzzles as well, but could make it kinda difficult. Not sure if I explained myself properly.

Anyways, loved it, 5 all around!

Very cool idea, fits great (and the title is just superb btw). Also I love that we made similar aesthetic presentations :)

It's an interesting idea, it certainly stands out; I think just a bigger integration of the dice theme would've been good (as other mentioned, maybe as part of the different conversation minigames)

The visual identity you were going for is really charming! I do think it might've been a bit overambitious for the jam, and it's a bit hard to understand what to do at first, but tweak it a bit further and you have a very cute game in your hands.

Thank you so much!

This is really creative! What I like the most is the style, I think you had a clear direction and it's really cohesive. Of course it needs a bit of tweaking to go (mostly the camera zoom and controls) but the visuals are overall great.

The gameplay is good and interesting, maybe just a tad slow (maybe intended considering the turtles, hehe) but all in all, really good!

There's a pretty cool idea here, using dice with different number of faces, and assigning different probabilities... probably needs more work but the concept is there!

Thank you so much! Yeah difficulty needs tweaking (: