The idea is great and the execution is top notch!
Your game is funny, pretty well balanced and quite juicy.
Very good job!
So far, my best score is 35425!
PS: I think the "level" and "modules attached" count are inverted on the web build
Alex
Creator of
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Thank you for your feedback, really appreciate it!
The hand was designed to be controllable fully by mouse, and the character is controlled fully by keyboard, which means that you could give the mouse to another person and it would be a 2-players game!
This way of playing is just as enjoyable, if not more :D
Even though it seems you did not manage to do as much as you planned, you can be proud you posted a submission to the jam that works very well.
The visuals/sound are a bit rough but the balancing and gameplay ideas are really interesting! Even without being able to switch size in the middle of a battle, you can still perfectly see how scale would affect the gameplay if the game was larger.
Oh, and the self-deprecation through the dialogs is pretty funny.
Nice idea and execution, I really enjoyed your game!
I think that some information could probably be made clearer though. For instance, in the last level, I did not understand why I was hit by many arrows but it was only 1/5 of them that did damage, and sometimes I just got killed instantly out of nowhere.
Cute graphics, but the gameplay is way too complicated.
Here are some issues I noticed while playing:
- The character's collision box feels way too big. I found myself floating in the air even though I felt I shouldn't.
- The inventory equipping thing is interesting but feels kind of useless. Having to pick up the dice from a chest doesn't add much when you always have only 1 chest and is just annoying. Either add more chests or just make the character have the dice on them at the start (without having to pick them up).
- Even with only two action buttons, navigating in the menu to equip dice, roll them, etc. feels too confusing. Either change the menus or remove them completely.
- I don't know why you added the possibility of throwing away your dice but it feels kind of useless and may even confuse players. I thought it would make me use it, but instead, it made me get rid of the dice (that I actually needed to finish the level).
- The trees blend in too much, so they don't really look like platforms. Because of that I died by trying to jump over a bit while under a tree.
I don't know what your plans are so I'm not sure it would work for your game, but I will still attempt to suggest some things that could help you solve several of your issues:
- Try removing the inventory completely and directly show the dice you have at all times in a corner of the screen.
- Remove the chests and make it so the player already has the dice equipped at the start of the level.
- Make the Z button cycle through the dice and another input to roll them. Make it so pressing the X button makes you use your currently selected die.
- To make the trees look more clearly like platforms, try making the trunk more transparent (by making its outline gray, and do the same for anything you can't step on or collide with.
Even though your game is not perfect, making such a game in 48h on Scratch is actually quite impressive. Good job.
Good concept, but I feel like the dice assignment should have been more frequent. The fact that you roll the dice and assign them only at the very start kind of make you forget that it was a mechanic and that it was important.
Also, since the melee weapon is way too risky (for not much reward), the ranged weapon is the only weapon you can use if you want to survive for a long time. The problem with that is that assigning dice to the melee weapon's slots becomes useless. You could make the melee weapon more powerful to prevent that.
Really nice concept and atmosphere.
The only issue I have is the fact that I don't know what I am going to grab when I hover over stuff, and I don't know where my dice will land either. It would have been nice to have items highlighted and to have some kind of shadow or even "ghost image" of the dice to indicate where they'll land.
Other than this small nitpick, great work!
Quite interesting concept.
It's a shame you often can't see the face of the dice you're targetting. Giving that knowledge to the player at all times (with an onscreen indicator for instance) would add some more strategy in my opinion.
Other than this small issue it's a pretty neat game.
Note: I accidentally made the game crash by graplling onto an enemy which was falling.
The visuals are quite fine and the controls are okay. I just feel like you should have used a keyboard input to shoot and not the mouse. Shooting with the mouse when you don't target with the mouse at all just feels weird.
The sound effects feel like they are interrupting themselves which deosn't sound good, and is not satisfying.
In my opinion, the big downside of this game is its clarity and its weird choices for the UI:
- Having to select the difficulty after clicking on "Random difficulty" is weird. It would have been better to display the difficulty and having an "OK" button.
- You can't really know when you got hit because you have no audio or visual feedback besides a number in a corner going down (which is not enough).
- The big enemies should have had a sound effect for when they get hit (and not only the small enemies).
- Having the enemies disappear a bit after they are killed (and not instantly when they are killed) is confusing.
- Then, there are many issues with the '?' circles.
- They don't really feel like power-ups. I thought they were a trap or something at first. You could have animated them a little bit or could have added some kind of glow to show that they have a positive effect.
- When you touch a '?' circle, it just feels like the game froze. That is probably because you don't have a sound effect nor a good visual hint to tell the player that they need to do something.
- The menu itself is quite confusing. I felt like I had to choose an option among the 4 but instead there was only one option which I was supposed to click on. If you really wanted the player to know all the available upgrades while getting only one, you could have made a little animation cycling over all the options and stopping over one of them.
- Being able to pick up a '?' circle several times in a row does not feel normal. I guess this is a bug though.
Also, that is fully subjective, but I don't feel like the game fits the theme well enough. Replacing the square enemies with dice or simply showing a dice roll for some of the randomness could have helped with that part.
Interesting concept with nice visuals. The game is also quite easy to understand.
But I feel like it's too hard to control which face is going to face up with only one axis of movement. And, the face detection feels kinda weird. Sometimes I felt like the face that was facing up was "6" and it detected something else.
Also, the physics are kind of buggy sometimes. For instance, after getting quite far away from the void, I got completely stuck under a table when landing after a big jump.
This made me lose and felt really bad.
Even though there were some issues with the game, I quite enjoyed it. Great work!
A quite interesting take on the theme.
I really like the simple color scheme and visuals. The combination of simple 3D and pixel art works quite welll. And the sound effects fit the visuals perfectly.
Also, the stomp animation is quite satisfying.
The game is quite easy to understand but not easy to master. The fact that a "right" stomp gives you a bit of additional time is such a good idea.
Very well done.
The art and sound effects/music are fine. The game is quite interesting visually. However, the background is maybe a little bit distracting.
Gameplay-wise, the game is a nice take on the theme. The only big downside I see is the time it takes to restart a level (the animations take too much time in my opinion).
Another downside would be the time it takes for a die to flip (it may seem short but when you have to do it many times, it seems quite long). And another one would be the camera angle, which doesn't allow to see that many sides of the dice. It would probably be better to choose an angle which allows to see at least 3 sides of the dice so that the player doesn't have to move them that much to figure out which face is on which side.
Also : I played in browser and in full screen mode, the game is quite a bit slower for some reason.
Other than those small downsides, the game is very dice.
The art is probably the best part of the game. The sound effects and music also fit quite well.
The gameplay feels like it could be interesting, if the actions available to the player were displayed more clearly.
For instance, it took me some time to understand I wasn't supposed to wait but was supposed to start rolling dice by clicking on the red dice.
I see there was an attempt by highlighting the squares where you're able to move/place stuff, but highlighting possible actions (for example the character and/or the dice) would make the game much more easy to understand. Also, I feel like the enemies' arrows (indicating where they are heading) are too small, it took me a few turns before noticing the arrows were there.
So, the main issue with this game is probably its lack of clarity.
In the "Die" parts, the controls are a bit buggy (when you go diagonally towards a wall you don't move at all and get stuck on it. Also, there are some maps where you can't dodge bullets because the pathway is too narrow, which makes the game feel unfair.
Also, the "Spin" part is quite buggy and after a while I was forced to spin several times before being able to roll the dice again which is probably a bug.
Interesting idea, but the hitboxes seem a bit unfair and the fact that when you are cornered you almost have to take a hit is just frustrating.
Also, it would be nice to have controls that take into account a wider range of keyboard layouts because on an AZERTY keyboard, the keys for the actions really don't feel good.
The visuals are quite basic and the game feels like it lacks some sound effects.
The gameplay simply feels like "a platformer but there are times where you are forced to wait", which doesn't feel good at all.
Rolling a "1" for movement is just like rolling a 0 since most of the time, if you try to move from your safe spot, you get killed. And if after your "1", you roll a "6" for the wait time, it just become frustrating.
You are not punished nor rewarded for moving with a short or a long amount of time. So, I simply ended up waiting for a 5 or a 6 every time I wanted to move, which was really boring.
I believe that the idea of having something happen on a dice roll on a platformer could have worked if implemented in another way though.
The visuals are probably too simple but at least they are quite unique.
The music is a bit too repetitive in my opinion.
As for the gameplay, the game feels a bit too easy but the idea could be interesting if you really had a limited amount of rolls. For every level, I had the time to roll 5+ for every slot, and had a lot of time remaining.
The game feels a bit too difficult. I believe the difficulty should be easier at first and get harder and harder. Currently, I feel like the game is difficult and gets even more difficult with time which does not feel great.
Maybe try to have fewer and shorter trains at first.
I don't feel like the player has enough information to know when the trains will actually arrive. It would probably be better to have something like a number to indicate the order of appearance of the trains.
As for the visuals and the sound/music, they are quite dull and the game feels like it doesn't play enough with the theme.
The visuals are simple but work. The sound effects are fine but i feel like the game lacks some music.
As for the gameplay, I feel like there should be a delay before the die starts rolling because otherwise the first roll that is displayed is useless (since it is replaced by another one even if you do a quick click).
Also, I feel like the fact that your attacks are randomized each round doesn't add much besides confusing the player. Indeed, having to learn which number does what each time you replay the game is not fun and does not really add much to the gameplay.
Also, the healing cloud feels useless since you have to be inside it to heal up but you can't stay there since enemies are coming for you from all sides.
The visuals are not very interesting. It's just very dark and everything looks to much alike in my opinion. I also feel like the game lacks sounds and music
As for the gameplay, first off, it was really hard to play because I don't have a WASD keyboard. Giving the player the possibility to play with other keyboard layouts or even adding keybinds for the arrow keys would have made the game more accessible.
The character feels confusing to play and I don't understand why sometimes I cannot jump even though I am on the ground, sometimes I can jump but only low and sometimes I can jump but only high.
The level design is a bit dull and the fact that you have to start all the way from the start when you die makes the game way too punishing in my opnion.
The visuals are quite nice but the interface is not clear enough in my opinion :
- it took me a while to understand the game was actually a tower defense
- I didn't understand how to change the color of the dice before dying during the first game
- Also, sometimes when putting my dice on the colors, it wouldn't change
- I often accidentally grabbed several dice at once although I only wanted to take one
So, highlighting some parts of the table when you have dice in your hand or highlighting the dice you're going to grab when you hover over them would make the game much more easy to understand and play.
The music and sound effects are fine.
As for the gameplay itself, it is indeed fast-paced. However, the decision-making felt too easy for me because I felt like using only white dice was a viable option.
The main reason for this being the fact that chaning their color takes too much time, and also the fact that colored dice didn't seem to affect the gameplay that much.
The audio and visuals are quite nice. The story is simple but is enough for this type of game.
As for the gameplay, the fact that you can have the same roll twice in a row makes the game very repetitive (I don't know if this is a bug or I simply got unlucky but I got a "1" four times in a row and a "6" four times in a row").
The hurtbox of the character is maybe too big (at times, I felt like I shouldn't have died when I did).
Maybe having different levels for each side of the die would fix the repetitive aspect.
Other than that, the character is simple to control and the level design is fine.
The fact that you can save your jumps for other levels doesn't seem to add much to the gameplay though.
Interesting idea, but the gameplay is a bit boring. The choices for the upgrades are too easy (very often, there clearly is a "best choice").
The graphics are simple but nice, and the sound effects are a bit weird but kind of fit the visuals.
As for the music, it loops quite well but it is too repetitive in my optinion.