Rolling the Dice

This game is my contribution the the GMTK Game Jam 2022. 

I didn't really plan on participating but when I was browsing YouTube on Saturday morning I noticed the video revealing the theme: "Roll of the Dice". I couldn't help but brainstorm 🤔 and suddenly I had, what I thought could be, an interesting 🧐 idea for a puzzle-game-mechanic.

The game is really just a prototype; it's not much of a looker ... 🙁 ... and there is no sound  either ... 😢

I've seen some amazing looking stuff on the submissions page, next year I should probably try and team up 😊.

I had fun coding up this prototype though 😃 ! I'm curious to what people think of the idea, so feel free to leave a comment!

A puzzle-game

The game is sort of like dominoes but with dice. You have to rotate the dice so that the sides that face each other match. I  don't know how else to explain it

Made with Unity

I used unity to build the prototype, I hadn't used unity for long while so I had to look up lot's of basic stuff and I didn't bother to install the latest version either so that might've had some effects.

Hacky

Some solutions I had were kinda "hacky" such as using a spotlight to indicate which cube you have currently selected (This totally backfired in the final level).

I also decide to use dedicated colliders for every face to figure out how the dice are currently 'connected'. As a developer this method is not one I would have considered as a viable solution if I wasn't under such a harsh time-constraint. I was surprised to how neatly it worked when I actually got to the point where I could put together some levels.

The hacky-bits were what made my weekend fun so thanks GMTK!

Download

The file I added to this is a standalone playable for MacOS only. I can imagine that being a problem for people so I try and see what I can do to get an HTML5 build online or maybe the unity project itself. 

Ideas

Having made the prototype I'm no longer so sure the mechanic is really the puzzle-gold I thought it could be when I first thought of it. The challenge mostly comes from losing track of which connections you solved and which you havent.
The fixed value-layout on the dice themselves can make it hard to carefully design levels with a specific solution.

Apart from the blue dice that are fixed, thereby forcing you to come up with a solution that matches their starting-orientation I had some ideas for other dice but didn't get around to implementing them.

• Color-matching dice that are all selected and controlled at the same time
• Dice that can only be manipulated along specific axis
• Rotation-fixed dice that can swap places with other fixed dice.

Another improvement is to count the number of moves you require to solve a puzzle and use it for some sort of high-score.