Hi everyone. I hope that everyone is doing well and is enjoying Dice Tribes. This is just a small announcement. My next game, Crop Rotation, is participating in Steam NextFest. You can find the demo here.

So what is Crop Rotation ? Crop Rotation is a card drafting game, inspired mainly by Luck be a landlord, but also combine mechanics from Autobattlers. Do give it try and if you enjoy the demo, do give it a wishlist and share it with your friends. I am grateful for the positive review for dice tribes, and I will try my best to deliver for Crop Rotation as well.

[ 2023-06-20 08:46:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix various tooltips and descriptions.

[ 2022-12-20 03:53:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix some bug related to idle dice.

[ 2022-12-11 03:48:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix Archeology bug.
• Fix Archeology description.
• Fix Chemist Lab description.

[ 2022-12-08 02:34:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix missing tooltip in events.
• Fix die showing modifier icon when there is no modifiers.
• Fix ship not able to move while fighting kraken.

[ 2022-11-22 04:12:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix voyage not generating win condition.

Quality of Life

• Show a small icon if the dice is blessed or cursed.

[ 2022-11-03 01:11:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Balance Changes

• Balance chance of finding unique location to 100% for some dice.

Quality of Life

• Warn when you may not have enough faces for collector ambition.
• Warn when ending turn will lose you the game.
• Add option to return dice when there are idle dice.

[ 2022-10-28 01:13:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quality of Life

• Add new mode of sorting - Keep dice sorted on every action.
• Add Profile switching.

[ 2022-10-14 05:46:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Balance Changes

• Trapper Hut cost 1 food to prepare.
• Add Floating Bottle as location while at sea.
• Weather will never be the same the following turn.
• Balance Chemist Lab.
• Increase Apiary starting value.

UI/UX Changes

• Show tooltip in custom mode screen.
• Add badges for beating scenarios.

Bug Fixes

• Update description for exploration and location.

[ 2022-10-07 03:52:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, 1.3 is here :) A few months ago I posted about a 2.0 update in the discussion forum and it can be found here. After working through the new features, I feel that the changes isn't big enough to call it 2.0 so it shall be called 1.3 instead. Let's start with the new ambitions and buildings since they are the easiest to understand and discuss.

New Ambitions

There are 3 new ambitions in this content patch, Flight, Voyage and a secret ambition. Flight is a simple ambition, so I'll let you experience it yourself. Voyage ambition is an epic ambition that requires you to set off to find the new world toward the east. Before you set off, you will need to build your ship and upgrade it. Upgrading it fully will give you an easier time while out in sea. Can you find the new world ?

New Buildings

2 new food buildings and 2 new utility buildings are added to the game.
They add new ways to play the games and also provide synergies with existing buildings.

Rework of existing systems

Exploration mechanics

The deep exploration mechanic is one of the mechanics that I wasn't satisfied with. I didn't like locations that provided just free research as they are rarely useful and they make exploring with some dice useless. There is also the problem with exploration being too random and also in some cases too weak/strong. In this patch, unique locations and research locations are merged into one. Each biome now have 2 unique locations, a common one and a rare one. The research locations now also provide a minor benefit in additional to the research. For example, the "Wheat Field" location provide a single use food resource in additional to the the Farm research.
Overall the new locations allow for new strategy, including one that allow you to beat the game without building any food buildings.

New Mechanics

Knowledge

Knowledge is a type of passive upgrades that you can get by using Science. Each tribe can have 2 knowledge at once. There are currently 8 knowledge in the game. There are simple ones like "Foraging Master" which increase resources in locations and also slightly more complex ones like "First Aid Training" which gives additional (5) face to dice.

Balancing the game

Tribes

Many of the tribes have also been reworked and updated with the new content :).

Ascensions

Initially I plan to have 20 levels for ascensions. However, after balancing some of the systems, and also looking at the few difficulty modifiers that I have, I find many of them pointless, so I settled on 15 levels instead. A10 is what the game is balanced around. If you have a good understanding of the game, it will be possible you to win 100% on A10. A11 - A15 each add additional challenges to the game, with A14 and A15 just there for anyone who want an unfair experience.

Quality of life

There are quite a few quality of life features that have been added to the game. I want to just point out 2 of them which is really useful.

Hovering over slots

When hovering over any slot, the dice that can be placed there will float up. This is useful by itself to see which dice can use the slot. However, it is even more useful when you hover over tools. For example, flip has always been one of the most troublesome tool to use since you can't tell what the outcome will be until you hover over each dice. Now you can immediately see what the outcome is by hovering over the Flip tool. This also works for other tools that have deterministic outcome or a singular outcome.

Event calendar

By hovering over the turn icon on the top left, you can now see the events that is happening on the next 2 turns. Although most events are predictable and you will know when they happen after a few games, this should help you when you are still learning the game. Secret events or events generated from other boards are not shown.

Others

Steam Achievements

Steam achievements have always been the last priority for me. Luckily, I didn't encounter any delay in the development of the other features, and I managed to integrate them in this patch.

Steam OS

Support for SteamOS is now available. I personally have not test it on SteamOS, but have tested it on similar linux version. If anyone encounters any issue, do report.

Updated Demo

As part of this content patch, I have also decided to update the demo to have 2 playable tribes. As mentioned in the past, the demo is more of a F2P version of the game, and allows more people to try out the game before buying.

Last Thoughts

As part of this content patch, I also reworked a lot of the systems to allow me to add new content easier in the future. The tricky thing is that I have implemented most if not all the ideas that I have. If you have new ideas, feel free to suggest and they might get added to the game :). Admittedly, many of these features should have been there on launch. As a solo developer, time is a luxury. In additional to that, it is hard to get feedback when you don't yet have players, especially when it is your first game. Thanks to everyone for the patience and I hope you enjoy this patch. And again, if you have read this far, thanks for reading :).

[ 2022-09-28 03:27:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix Random mode ascension not working as intended.

[ 2022-09-18 03:00:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix legacy ambition bug.

[ 2022-09-01 04:06:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix a loading bug.

[ 2022-08-08 04:01:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix Rat King Tooltip.
• Fix Scenario difficulty display

[ 2022-08-06 08:05:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dice Tribes: Ambitions is participating in The Nightmarket Festival 2022, and is 15% OFF until Aug 8 10am PST! The Nightmarket Festival 2022 is showcasing around 100 discounted games, and offering free demos for dozens of hot upcoming titles! The sale runs from Aug 4-8 10am PST. And includes live broadcasts to celebrate and showcase the lineup. The Nightmarket Festival 2022 is the first-ever Steam sales event focusing on promoting games from the SEA region, breaking cultural barriers, and raising awareness for the regions gaming scene. We introduce awesome games with a local touch, just like the night market culture commonly seen here -- filled with creativity, diversity, and great fun.

The Nightmarket Festival Live Show Program

Aug 5-6 23:00 - 08:30 PST (in Mandarin)

Featured games: OPUS: Echo of Starsong - Full Bloom Edition, My Lovely Wife, Alina of the Arena, Potion Permit, SIMULACRA 3, Minds Beneath Us

Aug 6-7 23:00 - 01:30 PST (in English)

Featured games: Asterigos: Curse of the Stars, Dusk Diver 2, Nine Sols, Dungeon Munchies, The Legend of Tianding Get your wallet ready and enjoy a diverse taste of unique SEA games waiting for you to check out! Forget the scorching weather, the partys indoors! We got your weekend covered! https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nightmarketfest_2022

[ 2022-08-05 03:00:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix Water well not consuming resources when rebuilding.

[ 2022-07-27 08:39:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes

• Fix bug with Grim Reaper ambition.
• Fix random mode's stats not recorded.
• Fix events not removed.

[ 2022-07-26 03:24:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

This week's update is a bit late, but here it is. The update comes with 2 new ambitions. The main focus of this week's update is to give Stone its own ambition and also add another building that uses Stone. This will be the last content patch for a while. Any bugs will still be fixed but the focus will now be on working towards 2.0.

New Features

• New Ambition: Legacy.
• New Secret Ambition.
• New Utility Building: Water well.
• New Mode: Random Mode / Quick start mode
• New Biome: Jungle
• Update tribes with new researches.

[ 2022-07-24 07:14:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

This week mainly focuses on QOL features. 2 key features are added - Planning Mode and Click Control. Click control (enable via settings) allows you to click to pick up the dice. This will make long session easier on the hand :). Planning Mode allow you to plan your turn. This is especially useful in the later turns when you have more dice and decision become more important. The Planning Mode takes some time to get use you but I believe it will be a valuable tool once you learn how to use it. It is also a work in progress, and there might be bugs so report them if you encounter them.

New Features

• New Food Building: Brewery.
• New Starting buildings for draft.

Balance Changes

• Update Grassland with new research.
• Archeologist is added to draft mode villager pool.
• Fisherman is added to draft mode villager pool.
• Change Archeologist from 122556 to 122566.
• Change Lumberjack from 222446 to 224466.

Bug Fixes

• Fix trading list to prevent circular trading.
• Rename Bee Farm to Apiary.

[ 2022-07-15 03:54:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

This week bring a big change to the draft's village utility. After level 1 ascension, the utility available in the village is now free to use, but can only be used once. This will make the early game less random and also make the mid game slightly harder. Here is the full changelog.

New Features

• New Food Building: Bee Farm.
• New Ascension Level: Different Village abilities.
• New Ascension Level: Danger Frequency.
• Danger becomes harder after the 3rd event.
• Flood now prevents you from building instead of destroying building.
• Update some tribes with the new research.
• New page in compendium to show biomes.

Balance Changes

• Rebalance the available researches in biomes.
• Remove construction cost from Fishery.
• Remove construction cost from Woodcutter Hut.
• Reduce turns for Rotting Wood from 5 to 3.
• Reduce turns for Rotting Food from 5 to 3.
• Reduce the amount of food gained by Hunter Hut from 15 to 12.
• Reduce the amount of tools available to Abandoned Tools.
• Increase the amount of Wood in Shipwreck location.
• Reduce the number of uses in Herbs location.
• Reduce the number of uses in Oasis location.

UI/UX Changes

• Replace Parity Slot with new icon.

[ 2022-07-08 06:41:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

This week build comes with another ambition. This time it is a secret ambition :). 2 additional difficulty settings are also added to the scenario mode. This will also be available in the demo. The custom mode is also updated with the various difficulty settings. There are other changes so here is the change log.

New Features

• New Secret Ambition: Grim Reaper.
• New Biome: Desert.
• New Unique Location: Oasis.
• Add Undead to Ghost and Skeleton.
• Add Difficulty settings to Scenarios.
• Add more options to Custom mode.

Balance Changes

• Research location can only be found by Doctor or Researcher.
• Tools location can now be found by Lumberjack.
• Increase food gained fom Farm from 7 to 8.
• Increase cost of Copy in draft mode from 1 to 2.

UI/UX Changes

• Rename Death Bed to Old Age.
• Rename Death Door to Death is Approaching.
• Replace Reroll and Flip Slot with new icons.
• Display number of villagers.
• Fix tooltips for Warehouse, Fishfarm and Temple.
• Fix Temple to not allow dice to be placed if there is not effect.
• Display resources depletion.

Bug Fixes

• Fix Graveyard not saving bone count.
• Plague no longer affect Undead.
• Fix Orchard description.
• Fix various other texts in Compendium.
• Draft now save the last selected level.

[ 2022-07-01 06:45:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Linux build is now available ! Do report any issue and I will try to get to them :)

[ 2022-06-26 08:43:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fix

• Fix Temporary Tools

[ 2022-06-23 13:33:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone ! First Content / Balance patch is here. This week patch includes a new ambition, new events, new buildings and also a new tribe. There are also some balance changes to some of the buildings to allow other buildings to shine. Balancing is hard, so any feedback is appreciated :)

New Features

• New Ambition: Collector
• New Building: Museum
• New Building: Warehouse
• New Tribe: The Curator
• Add 2 sort buttons to sort dice
• New Event: Merchant
• New Event: Rotting Food, reworked from Rat Infestation
• Rework Rat Infestation
• New Event: Flood, a variant of Fire
• Add additional Ascension level: Ghost Dice
• Add additional Ascension level: Shorter Danger

Balance Changes

• Slightly reduce the research cost of some utility buildings
• Remove dice restriction from Temprary Tools
• Update some tribes with the new researches
• Change Mountain's resources
• Visitor Village criteria changed from Any to 1
• Draft Mode now requires you to choose your ambitions
• Change Hopsital First Aid cost from Food to Science
• Decrease food gained from Farm from 9 to 7
• Orchard now takes 15 to build a tree. Apple Trees now takes 16
• Pond should not be Ocean. Fish Farm now only support 30 fishes
• Serious Illness now starts at turn 24 (from 25)
• Death Bed now starts at turn 30 (from 33)
• At Death Door now starts from turn 36 (from 37)
• At Death Door now have 5 slots instead of 4
• Add death event Death Touch with 6 slots

[ 2022-06-23 12:39:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Balance Changes

• Fix draft to always have normal villagers.

UI/UX Changes

• Fix a few more missing ui tooltips

Bug Fixes

• Fix Apple Tree reload bugs.
• Fix Train Slot disabled immediately after placed.

[ 2022-06-18 12:35:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small QOL changes this week :). New content will start coming next week.

Balance Changes

• Villagers without brain should not be able to be trained.
• Add Demolish to more buildings.
• Lumberjack now gather twice the wood from Woodcutter Hut.

UI/UX Changes

• Change some dice colours to make them easier to be differentiated
• Fix some misleading UI and wrong tooltips

Bug Fixes

• A certain book will now only appear once per run.

[ 2022-06-17 06:59:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fix UI bug for Conquest Ambition

[ 2022-06-15 14:11:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi everyone, it is finally launch day !!!!! Dice Tribes: Ambitions is now released and I want to reflect and also discuss what is going to happen to the game over the next few months.

The game

In summary, DTA is a dice-based worker placement game, inspired by many games that came before. Your goal is to complete an ambition while keeping your population alive. Each ambition is unique in their own ways and provides different challenges.

The beginning

The game initially started out in a game jam last year.
The original submission is still available online if you know where to search. I cant link it on Steam :(. The game felt different from a lot of games I played, so I decided to take a leap of faith and pause the development of a game I was working on and pursue Dice Tribes: Ambitions. DTA was planned as a 6 months project to allow me to publish my first game. I missed the timeline by 2 months but I had also increased the scope, so I guess thats fine.

Plans

While working towards the 1.0, I came up with ideas for new ambitions and buildings. I also have ideas for new mechanics / systems that might also work in the game. However, because they require a lot of play-testing and balancing, I decided to just focus on the launch instead. Now that the game is launched, I plan to start adding these ambitions to the game. Over the next two weeks, I will be fixing bugs, and preparing the engine for the new features :). If you encounter any issue, feel free to join the discord or post it in Discussions. After those are done, I have 3 ideas for ambitions. They may not all turn out to be fun or balanced, but I do hope to at least add one of them over the next month. I also planned to add some variant to the existing buildings. This should make each run feels more different. As these requires a lot of play-testing/balancing, I will be setting up a beta branch eventually for those who wants to try them before they are ready :).

Conclusion

As a Solo Dev, time management is really the hardest part. There are features that are missing from the game that some might consider the game to be incomplete; i.e. Steam achievements. I hope to add those to the game eventually. I hope the lack of achievements does not reduce the enjoyment you get from the game :). On a related note, some may not feel that the game is worth the price. Do wait for sales, and enjoy the demo in the meantime. The demo will continue to be updated and whatever is available to the first scenario will also be available in the demo. Think of the demo as a F2P version of the game, without ads or any IAP "bulls**t". If you read this far, thank you. I hope you enjoy the game. You can join the discord or follow me on Twitter @ZwodahS for updates. Do drop a review on Steam if you feel like it :). It really helps a lot for visibility. Good luck on your dice rolls!

[ 2022-06-15 08:59:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Balance Changes

• Update fisherman dice faces.
• Update archeologist dice faces.
• Update hunter dice faces.
• Update researcher dice faces.
• Reduce the number of node for archeology ambition.
• Reduce the number of believers needed for Faith Ambition.
• Reduce amount required to clear debris.
• Reduce amount required to clear Rotting Wood event.
• Reduce amount lost from Rotting Wood event.
• Reduce amount required to clear Rat Infestation event.
• Decrease cost of wanderer tribe reroll mechanic.

UI/UX Changes

• Render a bigger map for archeology.
• Add full screen option
• Various other UI fixes

[ 2022-06-09 13:21:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

New Features

• add custom mode

Balance Changes

• balance all the tribes researches.

UI/UX Changes

• Clean up more tooltips

Custom Mode

Custom Mode allows you to customise your experience. More options will be added overtime.

[ 2022-06-06 06:30:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Balance Changes

• Increase food gained from Trapper Hut from 9 to 10.
• Increase food gained from Hunter Hut from 11 to 15.
• Increase food gained from Fishery from 3 to 4.
• Increase starting food for draft mode.
• Decrease food gained from Farm from 10 to 9.
• Decrease food required to replenish Altar from 5 to 3.
• Decrease food construction cost for Altar from 5 to 3.
• Increase fish farm feed gain amount from 2 to 3.
• Change dice requirement for fish farm.
• Change the researches available for Settlers.
• Reduce the difficulty of the death events.

UI/UX Changes

• Add and cleanup various tooltips to make things more clear.

Bug Fixes

• Various UI/UX fixes

[ 2022-05-30 08:11:52 CET ] [ Original post ]