Dice Chess Bowling

Knew it was a GMTK jam submission from the thumbnail/name already! 😜

This 45/46 ended up being my best run.

Looks neat and has a chill vibe. Could use some more feedback for when pieces attack you and when you knock them over (for score). Right now it isn't quite clear when you lose lives and end often comes kinda out of the blue. And knocking pieces over would feel more satisfying with some spicy effects. The score additions could pop up with/as the KO effect to make it easier for the player to distinguish what pieces are worth what. The enemy piece appearing/disappearing and moving could use some visual flare love too. It looks very stiff and rigid currently. And the pieces can really sneak spawn behind the camera and attack you from there quite quickly before you even notice they're there.

One thing that also might be nice was to somehow indicate the intention of the enemies more clearly. Sure they kinda obey the chess movement rules but as they do repeated moves with kinda no delay, it can be quite unpredictable at times. Shouldn't be anything too obtrusive as there can be a lot of enemies on the board but some subtle arrows or something along those lines might be nice.

This happened to me several times that the king just didn't like to play by the rules and was teleporting in and out from the board.

Still don't really understand what was the difference between RMB and space rolls. Didn't feel like there was enough difference between em to warrant having both of them. My tactic was pretty much just spam those until a 4+ roll and then go for a LMB attack for the most valuable piece. Never saw any knights by the way.

Landing on a one was very bad. Quite often you couldn't even get enough force to roll the dice to a different face and was just doomed to get knocked around by the pieces. The dice was also horribly slow on settling down. Sometimes the pieces and just bully combo you from full health to death without you having any say to the matter. I think some tweaking of the physics could be in order to make it feel snappier. And when the dice has settled, it could use some nice effect too to make it more clear to the player. Sure the "roll power" label was there but it wasn't really useful for this purpose and it didn't offer any relevant additional information as the same thing was visible on the dice itself. Not sure if it would still make spamming in wait for it any less prevalent though. 🤔

The scoring could be more interesting too. Landing those sweet multi kills should definitely net you more points. Could even have a rising multiplier that resets on a non KO throw or something to encourage more strategic play.

Aight, I've done my duty now playing and feedbacking all the games of this event I can play (ie. just this as the only non windows only game). 😎

Pros:

• Very chill aesthetic, music and background were nice especially
• knocking over a bunch of pieces at once was satisying
• Being blasted into the fair on a hit was fun
• Randomness of the die encouraged strategy with where to target
  Cons:
• Easy to get "stunlocked" on low power roles, anything below a 3 is almost useless and just leaves you open
• Not much of a difference between throw types from what I could tell, would often end up going over pieces instead of through them
• No pause menu :(

Love the music and atmosphere around the game. The light and models look really nice too.
The low rolls felt way underpowered, sometimes having no luck rolling off of a 1 using any of the abilities.
The time that the die takes to settle felt way too long, with the idea of this being bowling I expected a heavier feeling die. It felt very floaty.
Sometimes it was hard to tell if hitting a chess piece would hurt it or me, based on velocity. Some kind of visual or audio effect to indicate that the die is going fast enough to knock over a piece would be very helpful.
I really liked the movement of the chess pieces slowly and methodically chasing the die. They acted strangely at the edges, sometimes going up onto the edge or going into it and being unhittable. The bishops seem to follow the edge like a rook instead of stopping as I'd expect them to with no move diagonal space available. The kings seemed a little fast, but it makes sense for them to be a threat as a high value piece. Some kind of indication in general when a piece is about to move would be helpful. Sometimes they would spawn right next to me and that felt unfair.
I wanted to take moves faster than I was able to, but the music staying calm and cool helped me to remember to be patient and take careful moves. It may be bowling, but it's still chess