Tower of the Dice God by Skyward4d
Changelog: - Added a new build the day after the deadline. Fixed a display bug in the game-over screen that showed up in the release browser build. Nothing else was changed.
Controls:
Movement: Arrow Keys/WASD
Shoot: Left Mouse Button
Open/Close Shop: Tab
Enter the titular tower, and blast your way through waves of dice demons in the pursuit of fortune and glory!
You play as a die, who is rerolled every 10 seconds to one of their six faces, each with their own special properties!
Upgrade your many-sided hero at the shop as you climb to the top of the tower!

| Itch.io | https://skywardford.itch.io/towerofthedicegod |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/tower-of-the-dice-god |
Ratings
| Overall | 238th | 3.857⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 15th | 4.329⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 585th | 3.314⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 180th | 4.114⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 766th | 3.343⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 771th | 3.243⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 57🗳️ | 53🗨️ |
The game was really fun to play and keeping progress even when you die makes it not frustrating and motivates you to keep going.

I had a few janky collisions with the side walls when trying to jump against them, and would love to see more enemy types.
Other than that though, I really enjoyed the shop system and the saved progression between runs. :)
However my run ended when I jumped of the screen and that's it. Also it's kind easy to game the mechanics after a while. You gather all the enemies in the middle and then just jump around them, while they are staying in the middle. That's exactly how I ended up off screen, lol)
anyway, really good!
Most of the upgrade felt like they had a really satisfying impact (and the crit text is always cool!). If you were to build it out a bit more it would be nice to see some diversity in the enemies you face, maybe even a boss fight! (Although that definitely wouldn't be doable in the scope of a jam).
The dice roll mechanic taking you from periods of power (2/3/5) to periods of weakness (1/4/6) felt good to me


Thanks so much for playing, and for all the valuable feedback.
All extremely fair comments about the jumping, I knew the implementation was less than ideal, but didn't leave myself enough time to go back and rewrite it.
If I pursue development post-jam, that will be the first thing I fix!
It's quite fun and addicting to be honest. Ended up unlock most of the upgrades including limit break which was really fun. Though at some point you are one-shoting enemies so the damage upgrades end up feeling pointless. And the different weapons are not too well balanced because there are so much enemies on the screen that you don't really care for bouncing off walls or target tracking. You just want AoE at some point.
Also I don't know how intended this is but I found that the best approach was to maximize move speed a jump in order to alternate all 4 corners of the screen to have enemies running in circles in the middle.
Last thing, regarding the dice... Is this somehow related to the latest GMTKjam theme ? Maybe a continuation of an idea you had there ?
Overall, well done !

Thanks for the comments around the balancing.
I was definitely having second thoughts about 4 and 6 as the development went on, since I agree with you that they're pretty useless as the game progresses. If I was doing it again, I think I'd replace them with more of a chain-lightning attack and a damage over time that spreads to nearby enemies (like fire/poison or something) so they can influence more than just a single enemy at once.
And yeah, more dice-specific upgrades along with enemy variants would have ideally been included, but I decided to cut them out of the scope of the jam. Thanks for playing, and for all the feedback!
Gameplay feels great! Ability switching every 10 seconds feels like a really really good use of the theme. And shooting felt excellent. The abilities were different enough to be easily recognizable and they all felt good. Having dice 1 as much weaker was a brilliant way of keeping tension up. The only thing I found annoying is that if you were to try to sneak below a group of enemies but they were too low, you'd instantly lose all your health and was very unforgiving. Having your whole run disappear because of one mistake felt a bit frustrating. Maybe only allowing 1 damage and then half a second or so of damage prevention would have made it easier on the soul.
Overall a really well made entry and great amount of polish. Visuals were clear and UI looked nice. Movement strategy was quite simple and maybe repetitive so that's something that could be improved, but it all felt very fun nonetheless. Great work!
Coming into this jam I actually expected a lot more weapon switching games. It might be possible I somehow subconsciously avoided all of them, but this was the first one I saw that did it. It was interesting to change up shooting strategy and positioning as your dice changed, though once I maxed out jump height I could always just dodge things until I got a more effective weapon. That was a nice surprise btw, because most people wouldn't think jump height would be terribly valuable here but it definitely is once maxed.
A pretty neat shooter with a classic, addictive upgrade loop. It's nice to see a pure random game after seeing so many roguelikes with 3 card choices pop up lately (including my submission :P )

I was avoiding a large pack and somehow jumped out of bounds of the map and I assume I just kept falling into infinity.
But anyway, this was just fantastic. The game design is so onpoint. For some inexplicable reason I was just hooked to keep leveling and going on and on. I can sit here and say how there could have been more variety in enemies and perhaps more clarity in what the power of each number does, but honestly I just kept playing and playing because it was just that fun. A job well done and thank you for the entry!
Great entry overall though!

I feel like it would've been improved if it was top down, especially since the jump was little buggy. Still a fun game. Good job!