Stien by Bauke Regnerus
A dice and card-collecting rogue-like game
How to play?
Stien is a game similar to Yahtzee or poker dice, but simplified. Each turn you roll three dice. You can then choose to hold any dice and re-roll the others. There are three possible combinations. The highest die determines the score (like Strike 3, or Trick 4). An equal amount of damage is dealt to the opponent, even three times the score for a Critical!
To end your turn, you can play a card that matches the combination and score. Status effects are triggered after the first roll.
Rage mode!
For the implementation of the theme "unstable" I added a rage mode that kicks in when you run low on health. You can rage to shake the table, re-rolling all the dice. At first it was a main mechanic, but it felt like just more randomness, so I restricted its use to near death situations. It's a more "hidden" implementation of the theme now, but it's better for the game.
Trivia
Stien (pronounced: steen) is Frisian for stone. A die is literally called a "gamble stone".
Play in browser troubleshooting
- Best performance in Mozilla Firefox browser.
- Known issues with audio stuttering.
- Alternatively you can download the game (Windows and Linux only)
Changelog-ish
Then post jam updates include bug fixes, minor balancing of the cards and small UI changes. I also added an alternative roguelite and casual mode, for everyone who doesn't enjoy permadeath.
Additional credits
Music tracks "Finding Movement" and "Master of the Feast" by Kevin MacLeod.
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Color palette is Apollo by AdamCYounis.
https://lospec.com/palette-list/apollo
| Link | https://baukereg.itch.io/stien-ld |
| Link | https://baukereg.itch.io/stien-ld |
| Link | https://baukereg.itch.io/stien-ld |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/stien |
Ratings
| Overall | 216th | 3.942⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 420th | 3.702⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 314th | 3.712⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1317th | 2.808⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 409th | 3.971⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 167th | 3.931⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 355th | 3.576⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 348th | 3.784⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 41🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
I think that entry really needs a checkpoint system as I would've like to retried to beat the enemy that I died against rather than start from the beginning.
I love this spin on the game! The addition of RNG makes it feel similar to a DnD fight system while still accounting for strategy.
The card option also adds a good sense of strategy as well, giving you the feeling of an "ace up your sleeve".
The art is nice and suits the theming, the music is good and audio leveling is well done. I like the little overworld map, it reminds me of Bust a Move 2.
Very well done! Excited to see if you take this concept further.
I REALLY wanted to be able to finish the game, but there were a couple times I got really unlucky D:
Here's some minor suggestions I have in case you plan on working on this project more:
-if player dies, let them restart the level instead of restarting them to beginning of game
-change the visual slightly for when you are choosing what dice to keep. I kept messing up because sometimes I was thinking I was picking which dice to reroll. I think moving the dice a little bit or putting a label over the ones you click that says "keep" could help with that
-The rng can feel really punishing, so maybe numbers could be fudged a little bit to give you a slight luck advantage
-I didn't even think of this one, but someone else suggested a 5 dice mode and I think that would be AWESOME too!
The one niggle I have is that you can mouse over the cards to see what they do at *most* times, but not when you have to pick a card, i.e. when you need it most. Of course after a while you know :)
I feel like there’s a lot of space for balancing here because I tried to play it a dozen of times, I managed to arrive to paladin 3 times and I never passed they. I think I made one mistake with the cards ordering by using a more powerful card with lower number and later not having the card to deal more points, but it wouldn’t have helped me. The problem I see is that there’s too much to luck here, I felt powerless and frustrated when I died.
Another thing that contributed to my frustration was that I could not power play the game. The game plays very fluid and some of the transitions are essential to place what’s the status of the game, but at times I felt that the transitions were too slow and the game was just having a delay to start the next round or something. That started to get me when I just wanted to throw the next dice and go faster. In the end there’s at least 50% of idle time in the game (opponent playing + phase transitions), and that doesn’t help retention.
Good lord, did I suck at this one...But I had such a blast playing it! I can totally see this getting expanded upon in the future. Let me know if you ever decide to do that!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1173717245?t=2h53m4s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
I liked arts and mood too. Well done!