Loaded Dice

Hey there, kid. I see you're itchin' to get back at that Rabbit, boss of the Casino. I'm right there with ya. I've been with you the whole time, I've seen what kinda racket they got goin' on. Who am I? I'm your Shadow, of course! I think we can get ALL the Casino's chips, but we gotta be smart. Careful... we're tied together, you and me. If I die, you die too. And vice-versa-like.

Roll dice in this Slay the Spire-esque deck-building dice adventure. Yeah, you heard that right. A deck of dice. Well, more of a dice bag.

I'm your Shadow. You get the results of the face-up die. I get the results of the facedown. Get it? 'Cause I'm in the Shadows. Ah, don't worry kid, I was always the smart one.

What happens with the dice results? Depends on who gets 'em. You whack a big punch, but I can get around defenses. There's a lot more strategy in gambling than you might think, so try to balance the dice results, and we'll pull one over on those Casino chumps. Play it safe or push your luck... They say to quit while you're ahead, but what fun is that?

Featuring classic (public domain) ragtime, special dice, a dice shop, and many enemies with special abilities.

Click the mouse - Roll dice, attack, choose targets, etc

Space - Roll dice

Esc - Quit

Special Dice Effects:

• Tommy Gun -  Double damage for that character
• Red Cross - Heals a portion of damage done
• Extra Roll - Grants an extra roll on next attack (There is a bug that won't let you attack after just one roll when you get this by the way)
• Mirror - A portion of your damage hits you

(Rabbit sold separately)

Some thoughts from the developer:

I thought this game turned out quite well for the short amount of time we had to develop it. The art is fantastic, and this is the first game jam I've done with a dedicated artist working on it for the entire jam. I think this idea was very good, though maybe a little too large for the two days we had to create it. The main issue I feel the game has is a lack of clarity. It's not really clear in the battle what exactly each dice does, and the shadow dice are too far away from your partner to be clear that they apply to them. A lot of the clarity issues would likely be solved with more time spent, but unfortunately that got pushed aside in order to finish the main mechanics of the game. We also would have added some more polish and sound effects with more time, but I think we got enough in for it to feel alright for a game jam game.

Initially we tried to make it so the dice split between you and your enemies (which is why the shadow's dice roll on the right side), which was neat but resulted in a less-than-ideal gameplay loop. The clear strategy was "give big numbers to you and small numbers to your enemies". This possibly could have been improved with clever game design, and I think there is still an interesting concept there, but we felt it worked better having to split dice between allies in order to play to each character's strength and weigh risks of giving one character poor dice.

Ultimately, I'm very proud of the game we came up with and the work we finished on it. I believe the core concept of this game, and a "dicebuilder" rogue-like game in general, is very strong and hope to keep exploring this idea in the future. Thanks for checking this out, and I hope you enjoyed the game!