Snake Eyes
Cosmic dungeon crawler with puzzley dice-based combat. Made for the Dungeon Crawler Jam 2024.
Lead an endless stream of adventurers through the cosmic horror of the ancient ruins of a derelict spacecraft. Only if you find Solitude will you stay sane.
Plays great with keyboard/mouse, good with controller, or even on touch-screen/mobile devices (although the text is a little small on phones)!
Introduction
A mysterious ancient shipwreck is discovered drifting through deep space. The bodies of the crew are missing, and rumor has it the ship is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Ragamuffin adventurers from across the galaxy are flocking to this strange ruin, and YOU are among them. They say that deep within this ruin lie the answers to questions about the meaning of life and one’s place in the universe. Those who venture into the ruined ship seek fortune, glory, philosophical answers, and a cure for boredom.
It would be reckless stupidity to enter this shipwreck alone, so most adventurers just camp out at the entrance and mill around, waiting for someone more willing to lead them charging into hell.
Lucky for you, you have in your possession a BAMF DEVICE, a rare and very handy tool. Fancier devices are capable of bamfing around whole armies, but you’re broke, so you were only able to procure a SIX PERSON bamf device. If for any reason one of your six party members (you included) becomes unable to continue the adventure, new adventurers up top are waiting eagerly to bamf into the fray.
Hints
- After a few battles, read or re-read the combat help, make sure you understand how to use aggro to spread or reduce damage.
- You can click to move on the map to get back through areas you've already explored (sorry, doesn't work if playing with controller you'll have to reach for your mouse).
- In the incredibly unlikely event that one of your party members dies, don't worry, you don't lose the XP you spent on them, so upgrade away!
- Sanity only goes down when you take damage, so there's no time crunch, explore at your leisure. Don't forget to occasionally restore sanity in Solitude.
Credits
- Lead, programming, design, art wrangling, original art - Jimb Esser
- Writing, design - Siena Merlin Moraff
- Sound FX - Rose Evans
- Music - Cooper Savage
- Built using the custom engine GLOV.js - #crawler toolkit (MIT Licensed)
- Game source code available on GitHub (note: no license provided, all rights reserved by the original authors, just available for informational purposes)
Non-original Assets
- Monster and Portrait Art by Tyler Warren
- AAP-64 Palette (used poorly)
- Environment art derived from Future Fantasy, Rogue Adventure World, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
- Ability Icons derived from The Japan Collection, Sci-Fi Weapon Icons, IKnowingRabbit
- Other assets derived from Sci-Fi UI Pack, Sci-Fi Backgrounds, Cartoon Explosion, game-icons.net, Habbo Font, Oryx, Heartbeat Sound, Dice
- Title screen ship image generated using the ethically-trained Retro Diffusion AI
Comments
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I love the flavor text, how some of it is serious and some of it is completely silly. The characters are cute! So rare for a dungeon crawler. And clash amusingly with the setting. It's great.
I thought it was funny that the first choice I got for leader was between a firebird and an orc, and the orc was named Phoenix.
CRT filter makes the game blurry, or idk might be because my screen resolution is low. So glad I can turn it off.
Are you making a downloadable?
...Can I adopt the cat? Or return it to its owner, whatever.
There's a typo on LOG 100.7. Who's is short for "who is". The word you're looking for is whose.
Thanks for playing and glad you enjoyed it! Hah, love the random luck you got on your leader choices (didn't even occur to me that could happen, but with 100 names and 3 faces to choose from, odds are it'd happen to someone, I guess ^_^).
The CRT filter may have a bit more of an impact on a lower resolution screen, though it also helps more with the hard pixel boundaries and blending colors there too, but it is a bit of a matter of taste.
There are no plans for a separate downloadable, however you should be able to download the game via the Itch.io app and play offline. (I haven't tried in a year, though it worked for people after last year's jam, let me know if you try!)
The cat is simply a reference to my game in last year's Dungeon Crawler Jam (same engine and similar quality, though pretty different kind of game), you may enjoy =).
That typo is just a reflection of the mental state of the captain when she wrote that log entry, all part of the story! ;)Good catch on the typo, fixed now, thanks!This game rocks. Great game feel, nice mechanics, good usage of a variety of asset packs. Awesome job!
Thanks for playing, and glad you liked it! Took a decent amount of wrangling to get some of the asset packs into just how I wanted them, but they came together nicely I thought =). Just about the only one I used verbatim was the Tyler Warren monster art (except had to fix up alpha channels, heh ^_^).
Bro, I LOVED this game. I really hope you make this shi grow because I know I would sink countless hours into it. I was telling Cooper about a bunch of Ideas for ways the game could be improved and I know for sure this could be like a 20 dollar title! All and all I really liked it, I have around 4 hours in already and Im gonna be playing more because I want to go for a truly deathless run. The one I did utilized saving and loading mechanics but it was still really tuff! Hail to the King, Baby!
Thanks for playing, and glad you loved it so much! Maybe I should have counted "reloads" against you in the sanity loss column =). Feel free to leave any feedback and summarized ideas about what you liked and didn't like here, I'll definitely take them into consideration if I ever expand this into a full(er) game =).
Well a lot of these are just Ideas not really fleshed out well, but if they give you any ideas or better yet, help the game grow, then ill gladly share some that I had.
1. procedurally generated levels or dungeons. This would add a lot of replay ability and would help the game develop a fan base or a colt following.
2. adding new enemies with more mechanics that make strategy more important. Think how hard the game would be with an enemy that targets the person with the least agro! Then youd have to balance your supports in the middle, adding a lot of extra challenge. And bosses with unique gimmicks would also be really cool!
3. some sort of multiplayer mode, weather that would be a horde mode, or challenge runs, or racing through the same area. This one would probably be really hard to add, but cooper said something about joining in an earlier build so im sure somethings possible!
4. Items! obviously you could make different items do different things, like obviously a health potion or med-kit or somin like that, but also like a smoke bomb that lets you flee or flimsy shields that let you guard a character. I thought it would be really cool if you had to use items like your skills, where the items have a dice roll number and you would use your roll on that, rather than a skill.
5. some sort of reroll function would be really f-in cool and would help me out alot on my deathless run! But in all seriousness landing on a bad reroll is obviously a part of the games charm, but that doesnt mean it still doesnt kinda suck. Maybe a character skill, or item, or maybe a special altar room would give you a few rerolls. what ever it is, I think a mechanic like that would really add to the game!
6. (kinda) A character revive mechanic would be cool to explore, like maybe sacrificing someone else in an altar, or sanity room, or somin like that. idk just an idea that crossed my mind but im not sure how well it would fit. then again, you could just make the argument that everyone's crazy and they didnt die in the first place, so who knows.
At the end of the day im just some guy, so what do I really know. Im sure mechanics like this would be really tuff for you to implement, and who knows if thats what you want anyway. But I still really love the game, and even if it never gets an update, as much as that would suck, ill still probably replay it every now and then just because I really enjoyed it. Just last night I was telling Cooper and our other buddies that I thought the game looked really cool, but that I wouldnt like it... Then I ended up sinking 4 and a half hours into this one hour long game. I think you did a great job, and it was cool hearing my friends music and seeing his name in a game! I think you did a wonderful job and I hope you win first place, you definingly deserve it!
-ps. Sorry for the yap-sesh
I FORGOT TO ADD! this is really cool for a demo, but should you make a fuller version you should upload it on like steam or somin for like 5 dollars, as an early access build. Then one day when the game is done and a lot bigger you could bump it up to like 15-20 bucks. I definitely think thats worth it, and I know youd make bank off this game, even if its just a bit, yaknow?
Thanks for the reply! Yep, those are all pretty good ideas, and also almost all ones I'd considered during the jam, but ran out of time (or decided it was "better" to not have a reroll ^_^). Originally I was going to have a "wild" die you unlocked halfway through the game, or just add more than 2 dice at some point... but, well, didn't quite get around to it =).
Let me just express a concern about procedurally generated dungeons. While I like the potential for replayability with randomly generated layouts, I keep getting this nagging feeling that there might be a vested interest in that idea from some guy that would benefit from making it more difficult for others to beat his score by changing the racetrack.
Well, of course it could go both ways and someone down the line could get a map that's trivial to clear with all discoveries, but that's unfairness on the other end of the spectrum, no?
Wow - great job! I love the mechanics on this one. And... inspired by Moraff?! I think I just lost a few sanity points, myself! Makes more sense why I like your stuff so much now.
GG DirtDirector - no sanity loss, that means no dead crewmembers? Wow.
DirtDirector sends his regards... (in an evil mean tone) (Im on discord with him rn) But Im glad you liked it!
Mwha ha ha ha
Thanks for playing, glad you liked it, and nice job finding everything!