Rollie's Forest
Submission for the GMTK 2022 game jam. The theme was "Roll of the Dice"
Rollie's Forest is an auto-battler deckbuilder where you collect dice from enemies.
After you defeat enemies, you will roll to discover a new dice. You can then add that dice to your dice bags.
The game rolls for you. You only need to decide where to allocate your dice. Everything is controlled with the mouse.
The music is by Steven Melin.
The sounds are from the free GDC Sound Pack
Everything else was made by me. A lot of the art is modified from my other game, Monster Girl Manager.
Post Mortem:
I feel pretty comfortable with where the game landed. I had initially planned to add artifacts that activate cool effects, like a pygmy foot that re-rolls ones or a pentagram that rounded rolls to the nearest multiple of 5. Didn't have time, but that's ok. The game feels fine without it.
I also wanted to make number animations play during the rolls, to add some information clarity and add some polish to combat. Screen shake, numbers colliding, sums auto calculating. Stuff like that. You don't need it, but it would make it easier to tell what is happening at a glance.
This is the first time I uploaded to html5, so there are some bugs with screen resizing and window swapping. For example, if you tab out of the game, it will only display black. Annoying, but I don't really plan to launch more games to html5 soon. It's good for free flash games, so maybe I can use it to make more prototypes.
My biggest issue is the balance. Some of the dice, like the d20, have a huge range. So you could have a bunch of d20s, and still lose to a rat with a handful of d6s. This randomness can be frustrating.
Combine that with event randomness, and sometimes you will never get the opportunity to collect higher tier dice.
The death upgrade system was a last minute add to help with game balance. I find it works very well and was worth adding. It also makes the game far more enjoyable long term.
Overall, I'm interested with the concept. It manages to capture the addictiveness of deckbuilders roguelites even in this prototype stage. It feels like a "pure" representation of the genre.
Maybe I'll make a mobile port for this as a test for my other games. This game feels like a perfect candidate for mobile.
Comments
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I have enough defense die and not enough attack die that against the bear, he outspeeds and does no damage, then I do no damage, repeat ad infinitum.
I hate those slimes… Basically no attack and basically all the defense results in absolutely nothing happening. Screw slimes.
Two hours later... i did a damage!!!!
Actualy game just gave up and went solid black before i ever did damage...
Finally did it
I think you should add an endless mode
i feel like the game is playing more than i am playing the game
I like it. Played in my mobile, thankfully it's mobile friendly. Added to my collections so I can find it and play again. Good game!
The only 2 complaints I have are
1 the already mentioned deadlock if your d is too high and your a too low
2 if you leave the tab the game window turns black. the music still plays (it's such a jam btw) but I cannot interact with the game.
other than this I love it.
I left the tab when I saw this comment.
I don't know what I was expecting, but I lost a whole 7 minutes of progress because I had to reload the page and I'm blaming it on you.
One of my favorites, honestly. The pacing and aesthetics are great. Sometimes you just want no-frills direct to fun games.
Alas there's a bug where it shuts down ... around the 3rd round I think? It's always in the upgrade area, like if I try to double upgrade. Past the second upgrade. The music keeps playing but the screen goes dark. What's weird, though, is I don't recall the bug being there before. I have updated Firefox but other than that I can't think of anything to narrow it down.
Thank you for the report! I'm looking into expanding this into a full game possibly in the future. I'll look into the issue if I decide to make this into a full title.
Not anything I haven't seen before, but very well put together. The gameplay is fun, and the deck building is competent. Though the dice rolling animations drag on a bit.
I really enjoyed this!
One issue: it’s possible to end up effectively deadlocked with an enemy if you both have much higher defense than the opponent’s attack.
Nice job, the pacing of the turns & rolls is excellent, and the decision of where to allocate your dice is engaging. I feel the game could be improved if it was possible to progress a lot further based on your decisions - at the moment I feel like you are supposed to die once you hit a particularly difficult enemy, and unlocking the permanent upgrades is the only way to beat it. It would feel fantastic if the player could defeat these more difficult enemies through good decision making or some other added skill-based mechanic
Really fun and nice, simple concept. I had fun playing this and enjoyed reading your post mortem. I will say I did experience a blank screen so unfortunately had to stop my longest run. Loved the art and music as well, it did suck me in for a little while! Nice work.
One of the best I personally played so far. I would not be interested in a full release with the concept being exactly as it is (meaning just power up and auto play), but I understand there wasn't much time. I would be very interested in a full release where you have more options and whatnot (power up dices in various manners, more characters and so on)
Is there a page where to follow existing games/further development of this one?
A game that plays itself. Okay.
Really interesting game. You definitely accomplished your goal of capturing the roguelite addictiveness into this minigame. I'd definitely consider picking it up if this got a full release.
Some ideas if you decide to expand this would be extra uses for the dice. Perhaps you could use the dropped die as a single-use max HP die. Actually didn't get any HP increases until I beat multiple "bosses".
Luck's usefulness seem to cap out fast so perhaps high enough rolls wrap from rewards from 1d20 to 2d6 kind of like D&D weapons go from 1d12 to 2d6. This would also add some balance since it gives slightly more consistent rolls.
Had a few times I almost got stuck in infinite loops when I focused too much on defense so maybe a give-up option or game speeds up temporarily after 6 rounds.
Unfortunately, the black screen bug can also happen on the buy screen too without changing tabs. Was spending my 100+ points and it blacked out on me. Still worked well enough for the first several runs so got plenty of enjoyment in. :)