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[Rarykos]

Die Rogue
PLAY IT ON ITCH.IO!

Hey guys!
I made a game for 7DRL. It's a fast dice rolling game, you shake, you roll and you choose which dice to use, trying to complete quests and maintain different stats so you don't lose.

While I was working on it, it struck me this might be a really fun game if I spend more than 7 days on it. I was thinking about making it a mobile game, since the size works, but it's not really casual. I wanted to go for confusing fun where you're doing stuff, being happy it works with very little knowledge what the actual black box is. Now I know I went too far.

I'd like to improve this little game while keeping that minimalistic spirit! I need your opinions!
So the game went from finished jam version to a work-in-progress web(maybe mobile) game. I'd call this the base game, there's a few things I still need to change like particle effects or add some cosmetic stuff like a pause button.

What feedback I'd love:
-What do you like about this?
-What do you hate?
-How quickly did you understand what's going on? This one's very important!  
-What made you finally give up and close the game?


Here's a nice comparison what changed in 7 days:

WORKING GAME SCREENSHOT



FIRST DRAFT HOW IT WOULD LOOK LIKE


Thanks for your time, have a good day!  

[Highsight]

Hey mate, I gave your game a quick try.  Sadly, in response to your question of how quickly I understood everything, my answer is: I still don't.

It took me two playthroughs to realize that my goal is located on the top, but even given that, I'm not sure what the green diamond with the numbers counting down is all about. There is ALOT of stuff going on in this game and it is going on very quickly.  It's a tough game to learn because there doesn't seem to be much in the way of difficulty ramp, you're put into the thick of it VERY early on, so experimenting isn't much of an option before you just flat out die.

I have no idea what is going on with my right and left bar, I thought for a little while my left bar had something to do with my health, but I'm guessing now that's actually something to do with my attack?  I'm not sure what a Skav is or how it gets alerted, so I'm really at a loss with this one.  I'm not quite sure what each dice does, I know that the hearts heal me, the brains give me sanity, and the ZZZs put the guardian to sleep more.  Aside from those though, I have no idea what the stars or keys do.  I also thought that the "brain" dice looked alot like speech bubbles for a while, can you think of a better way to convey sanity? I've done about 6 playthroughs now and the furthest I've gotten is floor 2, not sure how quickly I should be dying.

As for what I like, the shaking effects are cool, and I like how the screen starts turning a different color depending on what is going to kill you first (green for guardian, purple for sanity, red for health, etc...).  Graphically, it's very nice.  But all of this is greatly detracted on by the sheer lack of explanation and inability to experiment without dying.  Excellent job for a 7DRL, but it's gonna need quite a bit of polish if you wish to turn this into a final product.

[AllAboutGames]

-How quickly did you understand what's going on?
-I don't understand unfortunately.

[Fetus Commander]

Played it for a while today.  I can see this being a really addictive mobile game with people constantly shaking their phones to scramble the dice.  I'd stress that this was addictive to me, even with very little knowledge of the underlying point and initial frustration.

-What do you like about this?

This is one of the rare games where i wanted to keep experimenting just to see what crazy shit would happen, even though i understood next to nothing about the mechanics going in.  It seems like it's easy to die, but restarting is so trivial that it didn't really matter to me.  It feels "neat."  Wondering about all the various subsystems was a big draw for me.

-What do you hate?

Didn't really hate anything, but the pace (the time until death) seemed a little too fast for me

-How quickly did you understand what's going on? This one's very important!  

I still have no clue what's going on, but that's ok

-What made you finally give up and close the game?

Made it to level 3 and decided to save it for later so i could give it a better look

[Rarykos]

Thanks a lot guys!
I love that detailed explanation of your thoughts Highsight, really helps a long way. I'll try my best to make it worthwhile!

Haha I'm glad I made you curious Fetus Commander! I was going for that thrill of confusing fun, where you're trying to fight something you don't really understand. That'll be a big choice for me - how easy to understand this game should be. Honestly, if I just hide some things and make it look random that would work a bit Thanks for giving me stuff to think about!

[farfabet]

The game mechanic seems fun but as already said you'll lose a lot of new players because of messy feedback (mainly because of speed) and therefor final aim.

What I think I understood after 15 minutes of try hard :
- the game over comes with either 0 either sanity, health, guardian's sleepiness, of central counter
- try to make top dices combination by clicking on them and reroll them when needed
- in the meantime we can use dice to gain back health, sanity, guardian's sleepiness, and fight Skavs
- chance of guardian's wakup depends of Stealth, and Stealth up on each dice, the more dice we run the less stealth we are and the more we risk guardian's sleepiness and sanity
- if we don't fight Skavs we'll lose health
- I needed one last try to understand that Stealth reset and trigger are based on the count down timer

I didn't find out how to slow down time nor the function of stars or key dices.


I think it could be a really addicting game if there was a progressive learning for each mechanic and if we could make the game long enough to enjoy it

I'll keep trying it hoping to find how to make it longer :-)

[Rarykos]

The game mechanic seems fun but as already said you'll lose a lot of new players because of messy feedback (mainly because of speed) and therefor final aim.

What I think I understood after 15 minutes of try hard :
- the game over comes with either 0 either sanity, health, guardian's sleepiness, of central counter
- try to make top dices combination by clicking on them and reroll them when needed
- in the meantime we can use dice to gain back health, sanity, guardian's sleepiness, and fight Skavs
- chance of guardian's wakup depends of Stealth, and Stealth up on each dice, the more dice we run the less stealth we are and the more we risk guardian's sleepiness and sanity
- if we don't fight Skavs we'll lose health
- I needed one last try to understand that Stealth reset and trigger are based on the count down timer

I didn't find out how to slow down time nor the function of stars or key dices.


I think it could be a really addicting game if there was a progressive learning for each mechanic and if we could make the game long enough to enjoy it

I'll keep trying it hoping to find how to make it longer :-)

Thanks for your commitment, I really appreciate it! It's great to read what your thought process was 
Yes, I think it should begin more slowly, just so you have time to learn what's what. Maybe I'll just start with less gauges and reveal the rest as the game goes on. So it gets more difficult when you have to balance more.

[Gabahulk]

-What do you like about this?
I love the dice roll mechanic! Really fells like rolling a dice and the camera shake is just perfect! Also, minimal roguelike? AWESOME!

-What do you hate?
I simply had no idea of what was happening until I died like 10 times, on the 11th I got it, but it's still too many things to take account of and their location on the screen seems a bit off to me, it would be better if the table where you roll the dices were in the middle IMHO.

-How quickly did you understand what's going on? This one's very important!
In 10 "runs".(Too much time, maybe i'm stupid...)

-What made you finally give up and close the game?
I don't know how I didn't close in the first 10 times (I guess I REALLY liked the camera shakes ) but when I got it and still couldn't progress much it was too much...

-Extra thoughts

I think between levels it would be cool to have a little breather... Just so the player acknowledge his achievement.

[Quicksand-S]

Well, this really isn't a game for me since I don't particularly enjoy randomness that affects progression. Having randomness and a timer counting down made it even less my type of game.

Anyway, it works pretty well. I really like the nice, clean graphics.

It took me two deaths to figure out what was going on. This was mainly because I didn't even notice the quest at the top of the screen at first. It's kind of out-of-the-way. I kind of wonder if it might be better if it was below the various bars rather than above it, but naturally I can't say for sure that changing it would be an improvement.

It was also unclear that I could actually roll whenever I wanted to. That's something you probably have to teach players, since it likely goes against the majority of dice-based games people have played.

The only thing that I really hated was having the screen get darker. Things already happen fast. Not being able to see the images on my dice just makes a tense situation into an annoying one (for me, anyway).

I got to the third floor, stopped getting dice that could make the guardian stay asleep, lost and didn't play again.

[todd-gopherwood]

I don't have a whole lot to add, but I thought I'd chime in anyway.

Good:
-The game has a very slick presentation: dice rolling, graphic design, sounds, etc.
-Quick, easy to play, short games. Makes it great for a five minute game while you're waiting on something else.

Bad:
-This game is really hard to play on a track pad. It's hard to shake on a track pad while holding down your finger.
-I played about 10 games and had no idea what I was doing. Eventually I just stopped trying to win and looked at what happened each time I clicked on a die. I think I have an idea of how most things work, but I'm still lost on others.
-The darkening of the screen (as someone else mentioned) just makes it harder to see and doesn't really convey what you want to convey that well.

Thoughts:
-I'm curious how you're going to give a sense of progression to the game or increasing difficulty. Maybe the games are kept short so players don't need a sense of progression. They just keep the plate spinning as long as possible.
-How does the player get better at the game?
-I know this is not the direction you're going right now, but a yahtzee-esque mechanic might be interesting. Trying to role particularly combinations and being able to put aside dice.

What I understand (just a breakdown of what I think I understand so you know where I'm confused):
Clicking on dice both applies them to the quest, if they are relevant, and to the status of the gauges. Hearts increase health, Zzzs increase guard sleepiness, Brains increase sanity, swords decrease the left bar, and every die clicked grows the bar on the right. Every time the green timer runs out the bad guys attack. Their power is determined by the bar on the left. I think their attack power also increases every time the timer runs out. Completing the quest resets the bar on the right. I have no idea what the bar on the right does.

Anyway, enough rambling.
Interesting game! With some tweaks I could see it being a fun, quick game.
Todd