Dice Against Time by Rowdy3

[raw]
made by Rowdy3 for Ludum Dare 51 (JAM)

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A turn based dice game where you have to save time! Literally.

Father Time has tasked you with fixing the time anomaly that threatens the universe.

Roll your dice, assign them to challenges to move on and gain awesome powers every ten seconds!


A husband and wife team effort with some additional support by our wonderful bestie who prevented us from starving.

JakJak -> Coding, sfx & game design

Milki -> Art & game design

LuckyLuke -> Helpful ideas & provider of the most awesomest of foods

Chuck -> Fellow hard worker and reliable moral support

The song was provided by a friend, you can find his super cool stuff on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aRdW

http://benediktgrosser.bandcamp.com/

We're pretty proud of how we conveyed the theme into a turn based thing. :) It's not perfect, a lot of stuff we had planned is missing (special dice, replacing die faces, additional obstacles, more to do with your dice) but what we got done feels like a good start and hopefully we can flesh it out a little more at a later point.

We hope it's an enjoyable experience to ya'll! <3

02<em>tutorial.png 04</em>game.png 06_game.png

Ratings

Overall 305th 3.788⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 385th 3.596⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 202th 3.788⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 704th 3.538⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 150th 4.269⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 273th 3.435⭐ 25🧑‍⚖️
Mood 500th 3.538⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 30🗳️ 30🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 268647
03. Oct 2022 · 23:30 UTC
Neither of the game links are working, I'll check back here in a couple hours to see if I can give it another shot. No rating yet
ChillerTyp
04. Oct 2022 · 20:11 UTC
I like pixel. ^^
Pete Thorne
04. Oct 2022 · 20:14 UTC
Do you have the ability to upload a Mac or HTMl version? I'd love to play!
🎤 Rowdy3
04. Oct 2022 · 20:24 UTC
@cosmonautical - We added another link to google drive in case the others do not work :)

@pete-thorne - Sadly WebGL does not work because of all the multithreading stuff and I am not sure if I can compile a mac version without owning one. I will look into it though!
Austin
04. Oct 2022 · 23:34 UTC
Nice! I love dice mechanics like this! It seemed a bit on the easier side and further play throughs might become lack luster. Other than that I enjoyed the game loop.
WFMG
05. Oct 2022 · 00:11 UTC
Good job getting the turn-based stuff down. Not my go-to genre, but this is competently made.
Miche
05. Oct 2022 · 12:22 UTC
Super fun game, I super liked the idea of it, I think that with a little more polish, some passives, and a little more variety I'd super enjoy this as a roguelite enjoyer.
The artstyle is nice!
OVerall very good job, I like how the "10 second" rule was implemented here, as most of us probably just thought of 10 seconds IRL.
🎤 Rowdy3
05. Oct 2022 · 13:20 UTC
@miche Thanks a lot! I agree, more passives (we had equipment with passive bonuses in mind) and more variety (believe me, there were tons of ideas!) is what the game is lacking right now. I have suggested to the husband that we should work some more on it and get everything done, but the code is so messy we would probably have to start from scratch. 😅 Because real time was so obvious I really wanted to go with turn-based for the theme, haha. Glad it worked out!

@wfmg & @austin Thank you guys! <3
jaybaus
05. Oct 2022 · 22:01 UTC
The level of polish is really impressive, it feels like a finished game as opposed to a jam game! The graphics and audio are really nice and the game mechanics are solid, overall a great entry. Nice job :)
blaster391
05. Oct 2022 · 22:10 UTC
A very polished entry! Visually it looks like a finished product which is a great accomplishment in 72 hours. It took a couple of runs to really understand the choices I was making, but I found the experience engaging throughout.

It would be great to have more options available as the game progresses, maybe making the consumable dice re-rolls permanent? As many levels I ended up just having no options and would hope to get lucky.
ActuallyTheMoon
07. Oct 2022 · 04:56 UTC
Great concept with pretty cool visuals. The mechanics are really solid even though sometimes they feel a bit too luck based (but then again it's a dice-based game, so luck is sort of the point lol). Would love to see this expanded to a full release tbh, it's a very compelling game.
triggthediscovery
07. Oct 2022 · 05:07 UTC
Well made game! I think the game would have benefited from giving specialty dice more often (or giving two at once), I liked the strategy of flipping/rerolling certain dice when I had the chance.
jonmerrin
07. Oct 2022 · 15:02 UTC
Hey! This was great. Really polished, seemingly bug free, and well put together. I liked the idea of using the dice to overcome obstacles, and I especially liked the extra die you got every 10 seconds. It made me feel like there was a measure of strategy on top of what was otherwise random die throwing. The visuals were great and the UI was super intuitive. Really great job!

I think I agree with Blaster about making the consumable dice permanent, with a single use per round. That would've encouraged me to pick them over an extra die sometimes, which on my second playthrough I realized I never wanted to do. Making them permanent gives the game a sort of deckbuilding aspect to it that I think would compliment the luck part really nicely.

I often got stuck without the dice to use to pass an obstacle and nothing to do about it, so I just had to take the extra time penalty. That's a bit unsatisfying when it's neither my fault and I can't do anything about it. Maybe some sort of incremental progress, or more ways to affect your dice, might help.

Overall, really nice job, and really well put together! You should be really proud of this!
michaelaranda
07. Oct 2022 · 16:08 UTC
I guess it's just down to the RNG, but almost all of my rounds ended up forcing me to pass, since I didn't have the necessary dice to activate any of the options. I liked the concept, though. I don't think I've seen a game where dice are used to unlock options in a game, and I think I'd enjoy playing a full-fledged game built around that mechanic. Nice job!
KokkakNiphon
07. Oct 2022 · 20:50 UTC
Great concept! reminds me a little bit of dicey dungeon. By the way, the RNG feels a little bit off sometimes because you have 0-1 decision to be make. I think around 30% of the time that my dice cannot do any action, maybe I have quite a bad luck. Anyway, this is a cool entry that's really worth trying.
robobarbie
08. Oct 2022 · 02:49 UTC
Really fun! I love dice based games that rely on a combo of luck and skill. Would absolutely play more of this!! Great idea, great execution, great art, great everything.
Kitkii
09. Oct 2022 · 21:21 UTC
Very well put together game. Really liked the use of dice to have different actions however I felt the die that makes everything all 1 face a bit pointless as it never came up when needed. I really liked the way each option has different times needed to make the move. If the game was possibly more difficult then I think those rolls would really matter about which ones, you choose. The music was a great choice and although I can't vote for it you can at least tell your friend that the music was great, and art were great though big fan of pixel art games.
Druvsaft
14. Oct 2022 · 14:57 UTC
I don't want to call you daddy :(

This game has a lot of potential I think! The art and UI is really great, the music is nice, and the core concept is fun! Unfortunately I found it quite tricky in the beginning to be able to process. Maybe I was choosing the wrong helps from Father Time, but a lot of the challenges I just found myself not being able to complete any of the solutions with no way to reroll or anything, so there were a lot of just passing.

I could maybe see this working better as a sort of Yahtzee game, where you can always re-roll dice and choose which ones to keep? In my mind it's frustrating coming to a new screen and having no viable option, so maybe having at least one action you can always take, even if it doesn't lead to anything, would lessen that.

Overall really nice job though, was fun!
Alchemic
15. Oct 2022 · 04:12 UTC
Absolutely fantastic. Great take on the theme. Very refreshing to not have to stress out over a timed task.

Amazing artwork, 10/10.

I managed to finish it first try, maybe it was a bit easy?

Typical "dice placement" game issues like bad RNG, but that's just the nature of the game I suppose.
Tess
17. Oct 2022 · 21:54 UTC
The art is really 10/10. I also did this on the first try, could be more challenging.