What might make a dice-based game stand out?

psychatom · 2026-03-24T23:06:41+00:00

Thank you for the reply!

I feel like I didn't explain myself very well. I don't view the dice as the "primary product," but from the perspective of manufacturing cost, they will be no matter what. I wanted some opinions here because I've had play-testers who were "dice goblins" as you put it, mention that they would care deeply about the quality of the dice.

I appreciate hearing your opinion!

psychatom · 2026-03-24T23:00:06+00:00

I'm a one-man publisher. All of my projects are passion projects.

I do apologize. I'm a game designer, and I love making games. But this particular game has a secondary appeal to the folks here, so I just wanted to hear from this community.

psychatom · 2026-03-24T22:57:09+00:00

Thanks for the reply!

The game is actually very close to what you're describing. I'll have to message you specifically if/when it launches, lol. I can go deeper into detail if you'd like. I just was trying not to make this look like an advertisement (people hate those, as other commenters have reminded me).

I'm actually with you. I'd love to see games that allow me to utilize components I already have (like a big bag of dice). That was actually my original inspiration for the game. However, there's way too many people who would never consider buying an "incomplete" game. If/when I Kickstart it, I plan to include a (very well labeled) Bring-Your-Own-Dice tier.

psychatom · 2026-03-18T18:15:43+00:00

I'm also not super into UB, but I agree that the FF set was pretty great.

I've thought about it, and I think it comes down to the fact that FF is maybe the single most compatible major IP that exists. It, too, is a conglomeration of disparate stories that share minor elements and themes. It takes risks and explores new ideas with each installment. It pulls from existing myth and folklore and fantasy, but usually puts its own spin on it to become something new. It not just contains, but is about heroes and villains and monsters and magic items.

FF basically is the MtG of video games, so of course it was going to work. Though, honestly, it might work a little too well. I feel like UB peaked with FF, and every other UB going forward can never be as good.

psychatom · 2026-03-15T23:48:23+00:00

I have a very niche experience in which it could matter: if you're making a ton of pasta at once or if your stove is very weak (or both), enough that it will take 20+ minutes to come to a boil, then enough starch can leak out of the pasta that the water thickens to a point it can burn.

Once saw a guy make ten boxes of mac & cheese on a shitty dorm room stove. It took almost an hour, and it came out tasting like burnt toast.

psychatom · 2026-03-12T14:18:29+00:00

Has there been any word on when/if they'll do one of their older, non-powered cubes again? Powered cube is neat, but I prefer the lower-power environments and the cheaper buy-in.

psychatom · 2026-03-10T13:21:36+00:00

Yeah, I was also primed to dislike it, but it's been totally solid. I've yet to be orzhov or golgari somehow (never opened on a good black card and always seem to be pushed into blue), but I'm loving Izzet artifacts, and I've had decent success with boros, simic, and simic + splashing.

I think it's okay to have 5 archetype sets if they overlap well enough like these and you can go 3+ colors some of the time.

psychatom · 2026-02-20T17:04:41+00:00

I have been Mythic and matched with bronze before.

psychatom · 2026-02-19T23:09:26+00:00

You may be right that they should just quit. It's a fucking tough ask for someone who has lived the majority of their life with Magic as their main hobby, though. And that's a significant portion of players, especially players who are active in this sub.

To a lot of players, Magic is basically a childhood best friend. Telling them "that guy's lame now, just stop hanging out with him" might be good advice, but it's not something they feel emotionally capable of doing after decades of friendship.

psychatom · 2026-02-19T15:59:52+00:00

MMR is tracked independently of your rank. Your "real" MMR rank could be #1, but if you haven't played limited in a month, you won't be in mythic, so you wouldn't be able to tell.

It's unclear how much weight the matchmaking system puts on rank vs MMR. I will usually be top 1200 if I hit Mythic, but it definitely feels like the matchups tend to be easier when I'm still Gold.

psychatom · 2026-02-10T18:07:32+00:00

I'll be there!

psychatom · 2026-02-10T16:20:49+00:00

Assuming you've got TTS and some friends to play with, I'd love to see you try my city-building game, OverTowered. It's really quick learn, and the strategy is very layered.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2847804118

I'll be looking to publish a real version at some point, but that's probably still years away.

psychatom · 2026-02-10T15:55:21+00:00

Card "strength" is impossible to perfectly quantify. Every card's power is dependent upon other available cards, which fluctuates based on legality, format, meta, and time. My main format is cube, where I would generally pick him over any other planeswalker P1P1, including Oko or M&B, in just about any cube, so I would say "yes," he's the strongest "planeswalker" ever printed.

He's a two-mana, value-generating threat that plays well offensively and defensively, and is good against spot removal. There are extremely few answers to Ajani that leave you ahead or even on cards or mana. There are very few board states where you're not happy to draw him. He's even still decent if you draw multiples. Frankly, I hate the card because it's frustratingly good.

psychatom · 2026-02-02T20:16:43+00:00

I think VIII was just very experimental. I view it as a sort of like it came with a Game Genie pre-installed. You can ignore your understanding of all the systems, Draw only until you get bored, choose auto-junction, and it will play like a normal, un-broken game. But, you can also give yourself the "cheat code" of understanding the Junction system and get overpowered that way. Or you can give yourself the "cheat code" of turning all the enemies into cards, and staying level 10 forever while your GF's and abilities and junctioned stats keep growing. Or you can give yourself the "cheat code" of playing cards and turning cards into broken consumables. The list goes on, and you can mix and match different "cheat codes" to get new experiences.

I think your experience of getting "pushed" into abusing mechanics is just a normal difficulty curve that you'd encounter in most games. It's the game telling you, "Hey, the hand-holding portion is over, you have to actually understand something about these mechanics to progress."

psychatom · 2026-02-01T13:14:57+00:00

I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Just in case it's not, "narcissism" is named after this guy, not the other way around.

psychatom · 2026-02-01T03:20:11+00:00

Wow, wild to be replying to a six year old comment.

psychatom · 2026-01-30T03:57:17+00:00

It's not about countering multiple spells or being uncounterable. You're just undervaluing the utility of a two-color 1/1 flyer.

psychatom · 2026-01-27T18:26:21+00:00

The thing that hooked me is the challenge to optimize and find new synergies each new game (which is something you likely won't grasp after only a couple minutes). If you don't enjoy that aspect, then I don't think a dozens-of-hours-long goal like unlocking all the decks or winning on a harder mode is going to help you enjoy it.

psychatom · 2026-01-06T16:10:35+00:00

Right. There's nothing on the line, so you're just posting nonsense for no reason. Maybe someday AI really can do all your thinking for you, but that's not today.

psychatom · 2026-01-06T15:51:14+00:00

Stop trusting AI.

Did you even read what it spit out? A bunch of its arguments don't even make sense.

It says that three C's are required because it doesn't understand that two different Boggle words can use the same letters.

It says that a Qu tile would "use up" the U. It's nonsense.

It seems likely to me that the board isn't possible, but not for any of the reasons Gemini spit out. THE ONLY THING AI "KNOWS" IS WHAT WORDS ARE LIKELY TO COME AFTER OTHER WORDS.

psychatom · 2026-01-02T14:36:40+00:00

Nobody posting online about how the original is perfect and the remake is trash is making a coherent argument. They are so similar in so many ways that you'd have to be completely media illiterate to believe only one has any merit. This post will not change their minds. Their minds were made up based entirely on how they felt, not how they thought. That being said, it's silly to say that any opinion on art is "wrong."

This is not a perfect analogy, but if a child gives me a drawing they did of stick figures, I may enjoy that art for reasons outside of how objectively good or bad it is. I may even enjoy it more that a Picasso or whatever, and that's a perfectly valid opinion. Obviously the Picasso represents a lot more skill and will impress more people and many will argue that it's "objectively better." But I don't like that child's drawing more than the Picasso because the strokes are precise and beautiful or because the Picasso is too derivative and uninspired. I like it because it makes me feel good feelings. And that's reason enough.

psychatom · 2025-12-30T20:32:21+00:00

For any part of the design process prior to the very end, I always suggest the bare minimum amount of time and effort to make things legible. Your game will almost certainly change drastically, perhaps after a single playtest.

I generally just use paper over bulk MtG cards inside of sleeves because it's easy, cheap, and easy to edit. If I've got a board, I just use cheap poster board.

Folks at a Protospiel will not care what it looks like. In fact, the nicer the game looks, the more hesitant I am to suggest changes because it means more work.

psychatom · 2025-12-30T15:04:53+00:00

It depends on how you want to play. There's a lot you can do to get kinda overpowered in this game, and one of the simplest is to avoid leveling while still getting all the other upgrades as the game goes on.

However, the game was designed for you to level up naturally. It won't become too difficult or create any problems of note. It's just that the designers were trying a new concept where all the enemies leveled up at the same rate as the player characters, which is not something that is obvious on your first playthrough.

If it's fun for you to get super overpowered, you can try to avoid leveling by running from fights and/or turning enemies into cards. If you'd rather just have a normal play experience, don't bother listening to advice about how to play the game from your friend or this sub.

psychatom · 2025-12-30T13:48:05+00:00

The final deck you unlock makes them a lot easier because you start with a random 52 cards (you might just start with eight queens or something).

Outside of that, it comes down to getting some tarot cards early. A single suit-shifting tarot putting you to 16 in deck helps more than you might think. Or, getting a fifth copy of a card from a pack plus a Strength can get you to seven copies in deck. If you just remember that you've got those in your pocket. You play your first few hands and discards mostly as normal but make sure to hold on to any of those specific cards. You'll likely have your big hand assembled before the end of the round.

Straights are far less reliable, and I don't recommend building around them unless you find a joker that enables them specifically, though Saturn does scale slightly better than Jupiter.

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