I Am Become Dice

17 Jul 2022

Play on Itch

This was my entry for the GMTK 2022 game jam.

The theme was “Roll of the Dice”, the way I interpreted that was to make a game where you control a die with your numeric keys (1 to 6). As long as a key is pressed the corresponding face of the dice will emit a “thrust” which propels the dice in the opposite direction. Conceptually it is a fusion of Outer Wilds and QWOP controls.

It is definitely a rage game like Getting Over It or I Am Bread, though I wouldn’t put it quite in the same league in terms of design. I think the primary issue with the design is when the dice rotates it becomes impossibly hard, so rotating at all becomes the fail state. The winning strategy is to restart every time the dies orientation gets perturbed, and that simplifies the game too much. You could even say it creates a layer of disconnect in the design, between how the game works and how it is played.

Perhaps I should redo this movement scheme in a new game, maybe have the dice be in a mech or car that is moving on the ground. If movement is on the ground then that locks down the orientation and means the player doesn’t have to constantly contend with gravity, though having taken care of those annoyances you would have to build the gameplay up in some other way.

One neat little thing about this game is that it uses music I made myself in Bosca Ceoil, I was never much of a musician, but I quite like these tracks.