Dicey Doodles Postmortem

Introduction

On July 15th, the GMTK Game Jam 2022 kicked off in full swing. The theme this year was “Roll of the Dice”, spawning games that revolved around RNG, games where you manipulated rolls, and even games where you were the dice.

For my part, I developed Climbing the Dice Tower, which sees the player physically rolling dice in 3D space that create platforms for a 2D character. In the weeks that followed, I slowly refined the game and rebranded it Dicey Doodles.

While I’m quite proud of what I was able to accomplish, the project saw a mixture of successes and shortcomings. Here, I have outlined what went right and what could have been better. 

What Went Right: A Productive Game Jam

As a solo developer, I had to motivate myself to keep a constant, productive pace. While I worked every hour available to me, I also made sure to take care of my physical and mental health between tasks. Stretching and hydrating between milestones allowed me marathon development without fatigue compromising my work. 

Jams have a reputation for wearing out participants from a neglect of self-care in the face of a tight time window. So being able to maintain a healthy workflow and still produce a submission is no small feat. 

What Went Wrong: Manpower and Post-Jam Workflow

However, I was still the sole developer on the project, and I lost a chunk of time to events outside of the jam. So I was ultimately limited in what I could accomplish by the deadline. I did manage to create a project that conveyed the project’s core idea, but it lacked an interesting environment play in. It felt less like a game and more like a prototype. 

While I would go on to create the basic level the game sorely needed, I lost the pace I had established during the jam proper. In the weeks that followed, I only fiddled with the project bits at a time and started to chase ideas that would lead to scope creep. In the end, I had to wrap up the project where it lied so I could move on to new things. 

I believe a big problem was a lack of clear direction. When the jam was underway, I had a theme I had to deliver on in the allotted time. But once that was gone, I had an undetermined amount of time to answer an open-ended question. In the future, I will create roadmaps for myself to establish clear milestones. 

What Went Right: Unique Interpretation and Aesthetic

In every jam I participate in, I try to reinterpret the theme in a unique way. So, with inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons, Toodee and Topdee, and RPG Time: The Legend of Wright, I set out to make a game where your rolls on a tabletop would physically interact with a character confined to sketches and paper. 

A lot of that idea’s appeal comes from the setting, and I wanted to reinforce that in how the game looked. So the playspace is confined to a piece of paper on a wooden desk. After the jam ended, I went on to draw a classic fantasy hero on notebook paper, and then used those sketches to make a player character quite literally made of pen-and-paper.

I am by no means a professional animator or artist, and I’m sure my original artwork could be improved through iteration. Regardless, I feel like I accomplished establishing the game’s unique look and feel. 

What Went Wrong: Powerlessness and Cut Content

While the concept behind the game is novel, players are often frustrated by the random positions of the dice. Since the roll covers the entire playspace, it’s not uncommon to have no path forward after multiple rolls. Dice will also sometimes tumble offscreen. 

There wasn’t any meaning in the value of the dice, either. Originally, each side was to have a corresponding platform with its own unique property. However, developing meaningful mechanical differences between them proved to be infeasible due to aforementioned time constraints and the stagnation of development post-jam. 

What Could Be

For the foreseeable future, I’m wrapping up Dicey Doodles to start new projects and endeavors. However, if the title were to ever be expanded into a full game, there’s a number of things I’d like to see. For starters, I’d like to bring back a variety of platforms. Perhaps the top edge of a 5 could act like a diving board, or a 1 could be climbable sides. 

I would also be interested in the dice spawning things other than platforms. Perhaps they could spawn objects that drop upon enemies, or power-ups for the player to gather. 

Finally, I feel like the overall experience if the player had at least some control over where the dice landed. Perhaps, instead of spreading across the screen, they’re thrown towards the cursor. Or perhaps the player can drop and drag die before returning to control the paper character. 

Final Thoughts

Dicey Doodles is a big accomplishment for a solo developer with a limited schedule, and I’m proud of the output I had during the jam. However, the game was limited by a lack of resources and ambiguous direction post jam. Despite this, it serves to showcase an interesting concept, and has plenty of potential to be made into something special.