Rolling for Royalty

reminds me of Inscryption, but original enough to be fun

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

Registered just to say what a great game this is. Really hope you keep working on it because it has so much potential.

My little suggestion would be to have the option to buy more rerolls, as well as a face that cancels out an opponents dice that turn.

This game was top notch. I loved the idea and you should definitely continue it. There is so much you could add to this game and as of now its already  really fun. Totally didn't break the game as it is rn though... lol

This was so enjoyable, finished it in one sitting because it was just that fun! I really love this concept and can easily see it as a fully fleshed game. It seems like you've already had lots of comments on how to improve it, so if you do intend to develop this further, I can't wait :)

This game was so fun! You should definitely continue this. I look at the comments and basically agree with what Bhavesh said, specifically that you should be able to see your dice, cancel a purchase, and splits and special map features.

damn dude!! this game is insane finished it in one sitting ,it has huge scope plz dont stop working on this game add more content launch for mobile I would love to play more of this

Just played it twice in a row! Very fun little game with a cool concept. The way in which combat plays reminds me a lot of the combat loop in Darkest Dungeon. Would love to see a fully developed version of this (improved art, more visual effect, some AI adjustments, larger campaign, more different enemies etc.). Some pointers for if you'd want to develop it further:

• A way to view all your dice's faces at all times would be nice (pressing TAB and having it pop-up for example)
• When you select an item in the shop have it highlighted next to the dice when you're selecting a face to put it
• Option to cancel out of a purchase, I once accidentally mis clicked and was stuck with a bad face 
• The option to throw your dice yourself, making it more immersive (and the option to turn this off because some players might find it cumbersome)
• When collecting the gems from the chest make it interactive. Let me hoover up those gems baby (different kinds of gems would be nice as well)
• When expanding the campaign: give the map splitting paths so you can choose where to go next. Think different biomes where if you enter the look of the playing table changes (sort of like in Hearthstone with all its different 'maps')
• Maybe give the maps special locations that let you upgrade your dice or start quests (the lady of the lake wants you to retrieve the king's sword, make your way to spot #24 and fight the troll then bring it back etc.)
• Rewards could also be themed special dice (after completing the lady of the lake quest you get a special lakelady-die.)
• Multipliers are terribly overpowered (especially when you make one dedicated multiplier block). Ways to mitigate this might be that every multiplier face can be used only once per battle, after that they get turned off. Also give the higher difficulty enemies multiplier faces!
• Damage numbers! The dice 'hits' against enemies could be more visually impactful, but also show the total damage done after applying a multiplier to release that sweet sweet serotonin
• Father development has to have more options for dice faces. First things that come to mind are things like your classic bleed, blight, trap, freeze, capture, take an enemies dice for one round etc. Think Quarriors-levels of different dice
• Opening and closing the store chest and waiting for the reward chest to open gets a bit tedious after playing for a while. Some quality of life improvements could be made there

This is just me spitballing but it says something that this little game you made inspired me to make an account and type up all these ideas. You've got a super solid base here and I'd love to see it developed into a full indie experience! :)

Pretty fun game, maybe a round limit for battle is needed. I manage to gain lots of money at first 3 levels by stacking the armors and make all faces of three dices to 4x multiplier and 1 dice to half 4 armors and half 3 aoe dmgs, which allows me to beat any level with a single shot. 

Finally beat it lol, no gem faces as well

Could you port it to mobile? All the controls would work.

This game is beyond awesome. I would die for more content.

The multiplier dice are so, so absurdly broken it's hilarious. The fact that they stack as well makes the game's balance break in half. After the first boss, I was quickly in a position to simply farm up money, from which point I became completely unkillable. Any time an enemy would get close, I'd simply reset back to max shields, and then proceed to farm even more money.

Upon reaching the final boss, I had 3 die that all had 4x on every side, and one that simply had the spread attack on it. I hit each of them for 132 damage. It could have been more. The game is absurdly easy to break, but extremely fun in concept! Just needs some balancing.

Honestly, it's probably best to remove the gem faces - the idea of adding risk/reward with them is good, but it's far, far too easy to stabilize and then break the game in half.

Very addicting!

I barely survived the first boss (the one which gives you the 3rd die) at one point having only 4 health, but it got much easier from this point on. I specialized this new die in multipliers (1 of 3x, 4 of 4x (and I decided it's not worth it to invest in the last slot as I can reroll it anyway))