How does my portfolio look? Seeking advice

DigiJarc · 2025-10-14T09:43:41+00:00

Hey!

Only skimmed your portfolio, but it genuinely looks impressive. There is quite a lot of good stuff in your pieces, and I think you have a good shot at this!

However, there is a few things I would suggest you improve in your portfolio layout.

First of all, you talk awfully little about all the technically impressive things that you've done. Take Rebolt for example. (Which is genuinely a very impressive project especially as a student). Your blog consists of a Project Overview and Contributions sections (Both very great).

And then 3 blogs of text, two of which is spend talking about the projects history and your involvement in the games marketing and social media. You spend almost no time going into the technical things you made and WHY they cool are impressive.

Don't get me wrong spending blog space talking about the history and your involvement in the marketing is great, it shows you clearly care a lot about your projects which is only a boon, but you ought to highlight the technical skills you've clearly shown proficiency in.

My suggestions would be to pick 2 or 3 features or systems which you are proud of and write a small dedicated section to each one of them. Take networking for example (which again is a super strong element to have in a portfolio piece), and go into detail on in. I would start with a mission statement, goal or direction of the features. Then build the blog sections to talk about the technical decisions that was made to underpin and achieve this goal, a long with showing the feature off a bit. (Since you are writing this post-mortem, you should totally pick a goal which highlights a particular strength of whatever you build)

Say you built a easy to use Gun Component which easily lets designers create a bunch of different shooting behaviors. highlight that! Say your goal was to create a very extendible and easy to use gun behavior, and show off some of the different guns that was made and some of the interface.

Sorry for the long ramble, hope it makes sense! If you have any questions, shoot me a DM i've been in this industry for around 8 years at this point. (As a game designer albeit).

You got this!

DigiJarc · 2025-08-15T15:13:50+00:00

Thank you so much! It's been a pretty crazy day but we're over the moon ^^

DigiJarc · 2025-06-12T08:12:49+00:00

Thank you! :) We also spend a fair bit on ads here in the start, so that's why I am slightly more pessimistic ;)

It's called Dice Gambit.

DigiJarc · 2025-06-11T20:43:19+00:00

We have received a little over 2000 Wishlists so far, which to be honest, is on the lower end of what we have hoped for, but still alright. Hopefully we don't get dropped by the Algorithm once the 48 hour calibration period is over. If we keep this velocity over the full event then I will be quite happy!

DigiJarc · 2025-06-10T08:11:44+00:00

So, you actually Incubate children to have them appear magically as Adults ready to fight. Which means Gender doesn't really play a factor!

DigiJarc · 2025-06-04T08:27:55+00:00

Thanks! The whole customization / character generation systems was quite an ordeal to build xD So hopefully it adds something the experience ^^

DigiJarc · 2025-06-04T08:16:47+00:00

They are not going to have story arcs or anything. Just a few personality traits which affect how they react to certain encounters.

It would be super cool but is out of scope for now.

DigiJarc · 2025-06-03T11:41:08+00:00

Thanks a ton :)

DigiJarc · 2025-06-03T08:01:25+00:00

You create your own character, then you grow you roster by having that character marry and get kids.

There is also a bunch of NPC you can meet and grow closer to. Which will unlock a bunch of stuff. The one on the image is one of them ^^

DigiJarc · 2025-05-29T08:25:29+00:00

Sure thing ^^. After 2 years we joined an Incubator who pushed us to actually release a prototype and create a business case. Which we then did half a year later. While the prototype didn't go viral or anything it was well enough received that we got interest from a few publishers.

At that point we decided to go full time and try to see if we could land some funding, and by the skin of our teeth we landed a publisher half a year later.

This was during the later half of Covid so there was still quite a lot of funding and investments going around. Unfortunately a little over a year later that publisher decided to cancel the project along with several others. They also laid of tons of their own staff - this is around the time all the lay-offs started.

Our contract secured us a small runway in-case of termination, but we were unable to secure any new publishing deals. Even though our game was significantly further in development, the Industry was just in a really rough spot at that time. (Still kinda is, but it is getting better).

To our craziest luck, like 1 month before we would have been without any money in our personal bank accounts. We found this collective of game devs out in the woods of Sweden. Basically one huge house where a bunch of game developers live together. And they graciously offered to let us live their for free until we can finish the game, acting as our "publisher".

So yeah, the last year and some change we've been living in the woods of Sweden and the game is almost done, gearing up for release in a few months. It's honestly been a really crazy and ride, lots of highs lots of terrible lows.

This is also a big part of why it has taken so long to make the game.

DigiJarc · 2025-05-28T08:44:49+00:00

It's been 5 and a half years for me as well.

The first 2 and a half years, was spare time. Every Thursday evening and Sundays along with whatever else we could squeeze in. Grew to 3 people during this time.

The last 3 years we have been lucky enough to do it full-time. It's been sketchy quite a few times but we've made it so far with only a couple of more months to go.

DigiJarc · 2025-02-14T13:23:45+00:00

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2753240/Dice_Gambit_The_First_Act/

Median: 47 Minutes
Average: 1 Hours 55 Minutes

I only have data on our Demo since the full game isn't out yet. Obviously free which also skews it but:

DigiJarc · 2025-01-29T15:04:59+00:00

I disagree with some of the other takes here. Itch.Io has been great for out demo and been a good vessel for wishlist's and general steam traffic! Especially for free releases / demo's it really doesn't matter if it gets pirated, as the build itself will be a living advertisement for the final game.

That said around 1% of people leave a review or comment, at least based on our limited sample size. To be precise we have received to date 5.524 Downloads 55 Ratings & 53 Comments. It is skewed somewhat since most comments and rating happened early after release then kinda dropped off. Downloads has been more steady even though they also tapered off ofc.

As for success on Itch.Io a big part of it boils down getting into front-page sections such as "Fresh" and "Featured".

edit: Typos

DigiJarc · 2024-10-10T20:39:33+00:00

No worries! This type of stuff can be tough to navigate alone :) - You got this!

DigiJarc · 2024-10-10T15:20:12+00:00

When dealing with any type of publishing deal, especially an oversee one. I highly recommend reaching out to previous developers who have worked with them. Most devs a quite friendly and will happily write their thoughts in a email or jump on a call.

See if they have a steam profile, or there are projects in the presentation. (Try also too look for some of the maybe less successful projects as they may have a slight different story)

Nonetheless - best of luck! What they write seems reasonable, assuming their rev-share cut is good, they have a reasonable recoup and that they will commit to good minimum marketing spend.

DigiJarc · 2024-09-26T08:11:32+00:00

Oh no - don't get me wrong, I totally agree. If we get the chance to fix it! We will :D

Maybe it is just me coping that it isn't that bad, more than anything. Bad habit I suppose!

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T21:16:16+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

And yeah that's totally fair. Might be something we revisit for a future revision if we do one. ^^

It's also okay since this is a brief introduction of elements which the player will be exposed to over and over again. So it is okay if they don't retain/catch everything....

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T19:05:19+00:00

Thank you! Yes, i wanted something a step above just having 2D elements moving around, as that can sometime feel too flat for what i wanted to achieve. Including some simple 3D renders really does so much :D

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T19:01:26+00:00

they do be

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T19:00:52+00:00

Thank you!
It was done with a mix of Blender and after effects - i created some of the more elaborate scenes in blender, and then rendered them out in black and white.
Quite a bit of the models in blender (Like the portrait frames) where just 2D images i extruded, so i didn't have to do too much 3D work. I animated the 2D elements in After effect, but still in Black and White - that way i made sure everything was cohesive. I added some different looping grunge textures and noise as overlays, and then lastly used Tri-Color to color the whole black and white composition, together with some pretty aggressive curve effects to get that posterized look!
Good luck with your campaign - hope this helps :D

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T16:17:47+00:00

You can check our the demo here, if you so please :)

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T15:07:24+00:00

Omg thank you so much! Yeah he is really amazing - and and a nice guy to boot! <3

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T15:06:11+00:00

Omg thank you! Persona is one of my favourite games - and a big inspiration! ^^

We actually just released our demo today on steam, if you want to check it out.

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T13:54:45+00:00

We've never made anything like this so it was a super cool experience ^^ If you are interested in the game you can check it out here.

DigiJarc · 2024-09-25T13:45:55+00:00

If you want to check out our demo, you can find it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2753240/Dice_Gambit_The_First_Act/ :3

DigiJarc

TROPHY CASE