A simple math brain-tickling "puzzle" game for the 2022 GMTK Game Jam, made for the theme "Roll of the Dice". There are thirty levels with a well paced build-up of mechanics throughout.
I don’t believe in the jam culture of sleepless crunch. For this jam, I spent an evening and about two regular working days for a total of 18 hours or so. These were healthy boundaries that forced me to be efficient with the concept and construction.
When a jam theme drops, I give myself a few hours to find a worthwhile concept. With Ice Dice, the core idea arrived quickly: move a die on a grid, rotating it one face per step. Hundreds of others had similar puzzle concepts, usually requiring the player to land on a specific tile with a specific pip count facing up or down
I paper prototyped this concept, which immediately revealed issues that I later saw in many of the finished entries and allowed me to pivot the design quickly before writing any code.
The biggest issue I encountered was that the average player does not have the layout of a standard die memorized. They cannot predict what the next face will be without seeing it. Solving the puzzle became blind guesswork rather than steps taken with intent. Adding UI to reveal the next face, or tutorializing the construction of a die, felt cheap. This was simply not an enjoyable component to the puzzle, so I introduced the ability to twist the die in place.
This solved the guessing aspect but removed the core ‘movement’ challenge. To replace it, I changed the goal. Instead of matching the face on the last tile, each step would accumulate the face value into a larger number.
While building up a number was engaging, having complete freedom of movement made it too easy. Players could pace back and forth to reach the target number. To fix this, I removed the ability to backtrack and forced players to visit every grid tile.
From there, I let the concept marinate overnight and mentally worked through any issues and how I would construct this within Unreal.
The next day, I had the core gameplay built. To intuitively communicate the constraint of only being allowed to visit tiles once, I themed the tiles after a simple real-world concept: ice that cracks when stepped on. This signified both that a tile had been visited and that returning to it would mean failure.
The remaining time was spent testing and introducing special tiles, like multipliers, addition tiles, and slippery tiles that re-introduced movement challenges on top of the simple arithmetic. The final day was dedicated to creating puzzles, some visual polish, sound effects and the entry page.
It came together quickly and I’m quite proud of what I achieved in the short time frame. It was never meant to be complex, and I could tell that it hit that sweet spot where the brain was tickled just enough.