Man, what a blast this was to play! I think it's got real potential to be expanded into a full release. Plus I'm super super happy to see such an innovative approach to a jam like this. Outstanding!

Run on Linux and worked.
Movement keys are a bit confusing, EDSF?

Interesting idea. Took a few rounds to get the hang of it but eventually made sense. Never got to close the gate, as I ran out of time, but it was interesting while it lasted. Graphics are nice, and sound fits it pretty well. Good game overall.

Regarding ESDF: think about where you hands naturally sit on an English keyboard and you'll see why it's better than WASD (for people on those keyboards)

I was unable to vote since I did not finish my entry, I gave up after I felt like I could not connect worlds well enough to really show off the theme. Anyways, I wrote down my thoughts and hopefully this proves more useful to you, I know I always preferred hearing about the players experience. http://www.timbeaudet.com/blog/2014/08/27/game-review-ld30-game-icarus-crisis/

Once I figured it out, I quite enjoyed this - definitely one to keep fleshing out & polishing.

I watched the tutorial video, and maybe I wasn't giving it my full attention, maybe I don't play enough board games, or maybe I'm just slow, but I still didn't quite get it.

---
Here's my what I learned in my own words, in case it helps someone else get started:

The key realization I needed to make was that it's like a poker machine or slot machine where you can lock columns. After I realized that the key mechanic made sense !

* The top panel with the three white dice shows how many dice of each "picture type" you need to win. The picture types are the "hit" (*), "perception" (@) and "chance" (?).

* To commit a die, you 'lock' them by clicking on one of the colored versions in the bottom panel (you'll see the numbers in the top panel change eg 0/3 change to 1/3 ).
Any _unlocked_ die randomly change to another picture type ('hit', 'perception' or 'chance') each roll (this is just like locking positions on a slot machine and pulling the handle for a second chance).

* The probability of getting a particular picture when rolling the unlocked dice is determined by the color (see small not between top and bottom panels).

(Also, in case it wasn't obvious, after your third roll, when the button changes to "Continue", you can still commit dice to the encounter and win it - this should probably be "auto win" if you happen to be holding the right dice after that third roll, since accidentally pressing continue when you should have effectively won is annoying).

* When moving your soldiers around the map, the numbers on each tile indicate it's difficulty.

All of this would probably be more obvious if there was an actual 3D dice rolling animation, or a slot machine roll over effect - but hey, can't do everything in 72 hours !

Tip: Make sure you do exploration (non-mission) tiles to build up your dice (you'll probably need at least one soldier with 8), else you won't be able to beat the final mission (and I was so close !).

Extra points for not making the back story involve zombies !
(However, if humans themselves constructed the Icarus Gate, why does it have alien looking runes on it. Just sayin' :) )

pansapiens - Hey, thanks for the write up! You're correct about everything except the numbers on the tiles. They don't actually indicate difficulty, they're just used for when you initially deploy a soldier. A roll between 1 and 6 is made, and you can deploy on any tiles with the number matching your roll. Sorry for the confusion!

Nice game

Interesting game , i was very confused at first tho :D I like it.

interesting board game!

That was really fun! Great mechanic, the looping music surprisingly wasn't irritating, sounds otherwise were good - I got hooked. Definitely playing this again. Well done!

I loved this game- I even managed to get a "Victory" :-)
I had a problem understanding the formless ones. It seemed they didn't really attack, and when I attack (and defeat them) they didn't dissapear, so I eventually ignored them and just went out getting dice pools and completing objectives.
I loved this game, and was entertained all way through- There's definitely potential in this game. Good work!

Mekuri - Sounds like you may have found a bug. Sorry about that! Glad you were able to win regardless.

At the beginning I was rather confused, but once I got the grasp of it, it became rather enjoyable. One of characters got 11 dice, making him nearly unstoppable. Overall, one of the better entries I've got pleasure playing from the games sent here.

(though I didn't really like how I had to wait some time between switching turns and such; maybe reduce it a bit or allow the messages to be skipped early? ^^")

This is very cool. If I have one suggestion, it's to constrain the camera so the map is always on screen. Not that it really matters :P. I liked the parallax effects a lot.
- Qualia

After I figured things out on my first playthrough the second playthrough was really fun. And while I never really felt threatened to lose I did let 7 Formless through. Some gripes though.
If you kill a Formless, then they should disappear and have to be respawned just like your party.
You should be able to see the entire board on screen at once. Either as the default view or by allowing the player to zoom out. It would give a more board game feel.
A suggestion too, have the map randomly change shape. Keep it dense and connected, just not always a hexagon.

I think my two biggest pieces of feedback that would help make this better would be 1) don't let me go to a mission where I don't have enough dice to win. I kept doing that on accident because I wasn't clear on the UI for needed dice or whatever, and it's really frustrating. 2) In a lot of dice combat games like this (like Eldritch Horror, for example) you often get things that let you make meaningful trade-offs when you are in a situation where your roll is destined to fail, like rerolls or +1s or whatever. Something like that would really help alleviate the frustration when you lose on your second roll and still have to keep rolling. I didn't understand the value of ambushes, I was just frustrated that I lost an opportunity to find more dice. Similarly I valued finding dice over medkits, so a medkit ended up being disappointing as well. Overall I like the mechanic of rolling and choosing which dice of which pools to keep based on the probabilities, i thought that was a fun choice. I also thought that if I fought a dude it would make my counter go down, but apparently not! Nice work overall!

As others have said, quite a lot of fun once I figured out how the whole dice-roll thing worked. My biggest gripe is the keyboard controls, I kept being confused because I couldn't move around and then I realized I needed to use ESDF. But a cool mechanic that definately kept me paying attention and engaged for quite a long time, so good job overall. Impressive work for 72 hours.

Honestly loved it! Addictive, and a little bit hard though. I almost wish I had a similar idea.

Very good. Like the concept. Kudos for going board game style.

Seems confusing at first but once you get used to it, it becomes a very interesting game to play. I actually like how you can choose to either 'grind' for extra dice to make those important missions easier to complete or decide to fight off the enemies and delay your pending demise (although it's a shame that combat is a bugged at the moment as you mentioned). My only problem is that the view of the game map is a bit too zoomed in and there doesn't seem to be any option to zoom in and out of the map.