Magic Dice Forest
48 hours
Game Designer
Developer
Level Designer
Audio Designer
Project Brief
Unity 2D
Visual Studio
GarageBand
Game Overview
This is a Mini-Adventure Game. Players need to explore the magic forest to build stronger dice. With the stronger poser, the player can defeat enemies and the final boss.
01
Project Timeline
Team Member
Project Type
GMTK Game Jam
My Role
Connor Zhang, Demi Liu, Qihuan Jiang, Linka Guo, Whitney Zhang, Mina Li
Tool Used
Roll of a Dice
When a player attacks, the player's attack and defense in a turn are determined by a roll of the dice. Also, during the play, players can upgrade their dice sides to gain stronger abilities.
Mouse left-click to click, hold, and drag to the opposite side to move
Defeat the enemy to upgrade your dice, by dragging new abilities to the dice sides.
Game Mechanics
Roll the dice to either attack the enemy or defense
Find treasure box to get strong rewards to upgrade dice.
Build a stronger dice
Avatar Movement
Originally the player's movement was controlled by using WASD to move up, down, left, and right, but I think that flicking the dice like marbles might be a more interesting way to move.
This in itself can also serve as a special side game mechanic.
Player Guidance
Since we don’t have a mini-map, and the game map is relatively big, we designed a BOSS DISTANCE system, to guide the player, and to show them where to go.
There are a lot of explorers on the map, so to design this system doesn’t force players to only move in one direction.
Defeat the boss and win the game!
My Design Contribution
What did I contribute as a game / Level designer? How did I make this game better?
I put this BOSS DISTANCE on the map to lead the player. The game map is bog, so I need to find a way to lead the player to the boss.
Level Design
Due to the avatar’s special movement, I designed some special terrain that not only increases the difficulty of the game but also adds to the player's enjoyment.
Because of the mechanics of bouncing dice and dice hitting obstacles and walls that bounce, these tight, and pinball-like terrains will bring fun and variety to the game.
Tutorial Design
I designed the tutorial for the entire game, and when I designed the tutorial, I tried to break down each action and note into small sections so that the player could learn the actions slowly.
Design Problem
Because of the avatar's special way of moving, if the player uses a lot of force to flick the dice, the dice will fly far away, causing our designed tutorial area to be missed.
Problem-Solving
So, I placed speed bumps in each small area to make the avatar stop at specific places so the player could read the tutorial. Also, in between each tutorial text, I would limit the actions the player could do to one or two actions. This is a very good teaching PACE.
Game Showcase
Various enemies have different properties. Players need to think about how to defeat them, but also not to die. The game encourages the player to explore the map and gets stronger each time.
Player needs to build a strong dice to defeat enemies and win the game. They could avoid fighting for sure, but if the dice is not strong enough, they cannot defeat the boss.
To add some randomness, I put this rolling dice mechanic to the game. Player cannot choose which side of the dice they will get, so it’s requires some luck.
However, if your dice is strong enough, it’s easier to defeat enemies.
Game Art
Player Feedbacks
Summary & Future Development
In terms of gameplay, it does seem a little too simple. Right now, players only need to tap an ATTACK BUTTON to attack or defend, which can get a little boring. Players need to be able to control the action more, for example, when rolling to a certain side of the dice, players need to go to the corresponding thing to complete this action.
I think the randomness of this game is still a bit high. For example, during my own playthrough, I would often keep rolling to shield, causing me to get stuck on an enemy for a long time. Maybe I should reduce the number of shields, or implement some pseudo-randomization in code in a controlled manner? (For example, when you roll to shield twice in a row, you will definitely roll to sword the third time)
For future development, I'll be adding more and more interesting dice, such as the healing dice mentioned in the feedback. I’d also like to add some more interesting and challenging dice to make this game more rich. In fact, I think this game has great potential to be made into a rouge-lite game, where players can have more powerful dice skills as they explore - if you didn’t die!