Gambled Away was made within 48 hours for the 2020 GMTK Game Jam with the theme: Out of Control.
Combat in Gambled Away is handled through battles of dice in the name of the player’s chosen warlock patron. Each round players retrieve a set of 5 dice from their dice pool and may play a number equal to their action cost. Dice are made of different materials such as metal or wood and can be used to knock your opponent’s dice and change their values. After both players roll, the defense and attack values of the dice are resolved to deal appropriate damage to each player. Dice may be set on the board to provide temporary or permanent modifiers to dice on the field. Rounds continue until one player is defeated, resulting in a die being taken by the victor for future bouts.
https://kevin-ray.itch.io/gambled-away
As a fan of tabletop dice games, I wanted to bring the strategies and mechanics of deck builders to the physicality of dice. At first, I considered making this game non-digital for prototyping but I figured that I could test impossible physical conditions of literal exploding dice in a video game format. This prototype helped me learn about the allowances dice provide for new mechanics but also their limitations. Future work on this project will go to building more dice powers and providing new synergies between those dice as well as randomized narrative events to add more dice to a player’s dice pool.