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A jam submission

DICEMANCERView game page

Combat platformer with randomized attacks
Submitted by Antidissmist (@antidissmist), Haasio (@froglizardart), natanco — 2 hours, 5 minutes before the deadline
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DICEMANCER's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Presentation#984.4584.458
Overall#1384.0794.079
Enjoyment#1833.8983.898
Creativity#3713.8813.881

Ranked from 59 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
You throw dice, and your attacks are randomized

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?

Yes

We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam

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Comments

Viewing comments 45 to 26 of 45 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+3)

What a cool little platformer, I love the visuals & the theme song too. Wish there are more, the four dice abilities we got are already enough I think to make a challenging platformer, hope you continue the development. Excellent job!

(+3)

The concept is unique, the art is beautiful, the intro sequence is comedic (and well done!), and the game is easy to get a hang of. What's there not to enjoy? Great job with this submission!

Developer (1 edit)

thanks femboy dnd man

Submitted (1 edit) (+2)

Excellent presentation, the intro slides look great, the music was a bop and I especially liked the little animation of kicking through the door. I liked the variety of dice effects, and the UI for your attack queue was really well done. I feel like the attack randomisation was frustrating more times than it was engaging, although the idea of avoiding certain dice to change your playstyle is an interesting one. As others have noted, I feel like the level design perhaps doesn't show off your mechanics to their fullest potential, but it's good enough to demonstrate your ideas so it's good enough for a jam I think! Great work.

Developer(+1)

thanks for playing!!  I had a blast making the intro slides (as much of a blast you can have at 2 am, anyway) and learning how to write percussion specifically for the game jam lol.  Antidissmist had the idea to have the door kicking, and its hilarious.  We're currently adding more random funny animations for the post jam version.

Yeah, level design is definitely something we want to iron out post jam.  Attack randomization feels clunky still, and we're still trying to think of ways to make it fit better.  Maybe a remove dice pickup?  Currently, a lot of levels are beatable with only 1 or 2 dice (usually being ice and bomb dice).  We'll work on it though :P

Submitted(+3)

This was a really fun entry. I love the dual purpose the dice had as both a utility, and a combat tool, and all the art was phenomenal! I only wish there was more I could play, nice work.

Submitted(+3)

Excellent presentation. Great idea with the dice being powerups, but I'm kinda iffy on some of the level design. The physics are way too floaty for that precision jump with the two explosive barrels, and I don't like platforming shooter sections where enemies take a bunch of hits to die, leading you to peak out and take potshots over and over. Also, the explosion physics were a bit jankier than I think you intended, and too often I keep freezing myself with the ice dice. And in situations that you present in the game, the optimal, but boring, solution would be to keep spamming dice in a safe area until you get the dice you need. Either that, or rushing through the enemies. Oh, but bonus points for having regenerating health.

Developer(+1)

Thank you!!! This is very helpful feedback! We'll try to balance the enemies and tweak the platforming a bit

Submitted(+3)

It looks really beautiful and polished! I also like the combat system! The movement abilities are also really cool, and the intro comic book style cut scene looks great!

For some feedback: I think the difficulty goes up a bit too quickly, and not always in a fair way. You sometimes force the player to make a leap of faith, and the randomness adds to the unfairness when you don't get the attack you need to survive whatever is on the other side of where you are jumping.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback!  I've been doing comic art recently, which definitely influenced the style of the cutscene haha.  

Time was definitely working against us for the level design.  Antidissmist pumped out all 4 tutorial levels and an intermediate level, and the final two were designed by me in the final stretch of the jam (the ones that used teleport in weird ways).  We had trouble getting the other platforms in visibility, but didn't have time to implement a camera pan, so we settled for putting a sign down to indicate a leap of faith.  If we decide to fine tune the game after the jam, level design and balance is definitely something we'll look into.

Thanks for playing!

Submitted(+4)

I really liked using the movement powers in your game and wish that this was the main focus and developed more. The combat wasn't engaging, so I ended up skipping most of it. Would have been great to have some puzzles where you need to use two powers and check that they are lined up the right way in your indicator.

Overall, the game looked great and I had a fun time :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing!  We'll definitely keep that in mind if we continue development after rating period.  Puzzles sound like a great addition to the game (maybe dice acceptor/target blocks that you need to hit to trigger a certain platform?)  We had more planned for the combat, but we ran out of time before developing too much, so the crabs will have to do for now haha

Developer

Brooo that’s a fun idea! Making sure two certain dice are lined up.. Would take away from the dice rolling of it all, but makes sense 

Submitted(+3)

I love the visuals, but I felt like the abilities were a bit inconsistent. At least in my experience to climb walls with the explosion I needed to spam a ton of attacks at a wall, but if I didn't just have the explosion ability my other die would just bonk against the wall. That being said the gif  of the main character doing sick explosion combos sold me on playing the game.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for the feedback! The red die usually just gets in the way, maybe we'll give it some more uses.

Also thanks for noticing my gif, I had to re-record it like 10 times to get it good enough haha

Submitted(+3)

Loved it! I have a feeling the bomb dice were buggy for me, sometimes they would send me flying and sometimes I'd only bounce up like 1 player height which made it tricky for platforming. Similarly, the ice dice didn't last long enough for me to reliably use them, maybe a bit more forgiveness there would go a long way. You've got a really solid base here for a great game, well done!

Developer(+2)

thanks for playing!  The bomb dice had variable outputs based on whether you jumped at the same time as casting or not, but we did a pretty bad job at explaining that so that's on us.  If we expand on the game after the jam, we'll definitely make ice dice last a bit longer and also have a melting indicator so it's easier to time them

Submitted

Ah, that explains it then. I thought jumping would help, but I must have been timing it wrong.  Will have to give it another shot later.

Submitted (1 edit) (+3)

A beautiful and creative take on the theme! I absolutely loved the sprite work in this, the character design is striking and the music is groovy as heck >:) 
This was a blast to play through, my only issue is with the next die being chosen at random. It felt like maybe a linear cycle would have allowed for a more tactical play through. That being said, the gauge by the mouse helps mitigate this a lot. 
Overall a superb entry, good job guys! I'd love to see an expanded version of this someday :)

Developer (1 edit) (+2)

thanks so much!  The visual style and designs kinda just popped up as we went lol (i attached some concept art we churned out on day one).  We wanted the player character to give off cool guy vibes, and the world sort of grew around them.  At the end, Antidissmist had a spur of the moment thought to slap a saxophone song into the game and boom, now that's there haha.  Natanco had a bunch of really neat enemy character sprites animated and ready to use, but we didn't have time for them to make it in.  

i think working with RNG and the theme was one of the biggest challenges we faced during this jam.  People have mentioned that the game might be more fun without the RNG, but we needed to keep it so the queue indicator was added to mitigate the annoyance.  

Thanks for the feedback!

Submitted(+2)

aah I know exactly what you mean, I really feel like the rng aspect of dice rolls made my own entry worse in the long run lol. Loved hearing more about your development process, that concept art is dope :)

Submitted(+3)

Game with a great level of polish and amazing visuals! Congrats for the submission!

Submitted(+3)

That was very enjoyable ! I'm impressed on how good the level design was, the hints of the ice and scorch marks on the walls was also a nice touch. The power ups and the way they are used in this was creative and it was balanced to not be too frustrating.

Finishing it was very rewarding !

Submitted(+2)

Good game all around, I just think additional testing and iterating with the level design might yield more interesting levels that make the player feel smart for solving it their own way. Of course, there is barely any time for that during the jam, so I hope you keep working on it after, the foundations are there for sure!

Developer(+1)

Thank you!! I agree, we were pretty rushed and didn't have much time for testing everything we wanted

We appreciate your feedback!!

Submitted(+1)

Really great game, it was worth it for a robbery ;)

Submitted(+2)

This is a great entry! Though, like another review stated, the explosive and ice die seem quite powerful and I ended up skipping one of the levels using the explosive die because I was getting frustrated having to use the other die. BUT I do think that's something pretty neat and it's good that the intended level progression was able to be broken by the player. Another small thing I noticed and appreciated was that the boxes took damage from the ice die instead of just exploding and the sprite changed to communicate that. It's an extra very-small thing that was neat to see in a jam game. 

Developer

Thanks soo much!! We wanted people to be able to play through in different ways, but yeah that usually ends up with just rocket jumping

We'll have to think up some creative ways to use combinations of dice more effectively.

So happy you enjoyed it!

Submitted(+3)

Incredibly polished, great mechanics, this is a 15/15 for me! (You don't see "rocket jumping" in platformers often!)

Submitted(+3)

Super cool visuals and neat concept. I had fun playing (and breaking c; ) the game using the best tool THE EXPLOSIVE DICE. Cool game!

Submitted(+3)

Awesome idea and great visuals! It feels good when the dice come back to the player.  It's interesting that some dice affect movement and not just more damage. I just wish the dice changing was more predictable or controllable for such a platforming-heavy game.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing! Yeah, platforming is a genre where moment-to-moment slip ups cause you to lose, so randomness might not be the best choice.  I've thought about making the consequences of negative random outcomes less punishing and more recoverable, keeping the chaos while giving the player a fair chance. 

Submitted(+3)

Yayy I made it to the endgame! Congrats for your game AntidissmistHaasiophis and natanco. I had fun and found the core concept nice and engaging, you could use it as a base for a bigger platformer game. I want to praise the visual style too, it added a lot to the game charm. I hope to see Dicemancer one day on Steam. Keep it up my friends.

Developer(+1)

Thanks sooo much!! We're hoping to add some more stuff after the jam (most importantly, fixes)

But we really appreciate it, and glad you had fun :)))

Submitted(+2)

I really like how the dice affect the way you move around, seems like sometimes it's in your interest to avoid picking up a die to more consistently use another one. The only real issue is that it seems like you can pretty much completely ignore the enemies and run through them while taking pretty minimal damage, focusing exclusively just on movement. But since the movement is fun, that's not such a bad thing!

Developer(+1)

Thank you mimpy!!! I agree, the enemies aren't enough of a threat to be much of an obstacle. (only crabs were able to squeeze into the game in time)

Some of the dice are there to make you rethink what you need for the level, and I'm happy you noticed!

Viewing comments 45 to 26 of 45 · Next page · Last page